Latest news with #Pocket
Geek Dad
16 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Geek Dad
Stack Overflow: Here We Go Again
Today's stack is about time travel. Wait, didn't that just happen last week? Maybe you're stuck in a time loop. Costumes for Time Travelers by A. R. Capetta In this book, time traveling is an ability that some people just develop, usually when they enter adulthood, and they find they're able to walk through the mists of time—though it wreaks havoc on regular footwear. Fortunately, most first-timers end up in Pocket, a little village outside of time, the only place to get time boots with specially formulated soles that can survive these temporal trips. It's here in Pocket that we find Costumes for Time Travelers, a shop where you can get tailor-made outfits for any time period, whether you're visiting the Renaissance or the Industrial Collapse. Calisto is an assistant to the store's capable owner, and when Mena takes an unexpected leave of absence, she puts them in charge of the shop. But things get turned topsy-turvy when Fawkes arrives: he's known as the 'time savant,' and he travels through time like a leaf on the wind. He seems to know Calisto already even though it's the first time they've met, and there's something dangerous following him. Costumes for Time Travelers is a time travel romance: Calisto and Fawkes have a relationship that may be a little reminiscent of The Time Traveler's Wife , if only because Fawkes experiences moments in his life out of order, though that's the main similarity. Who are the people chasing Fawkes—and now Calisto—and what is their aim? The pair end up racing through different eras to escape, and I liked the way that different characters perceive and manipulate time in different ways. Although the story is told in the third person, each chapter usually has one character as a focus—I guess it's called third-person omniscient limited. I've always found that a little bit disorienting at first because I don't realize why I'm getting one character's inner feelings but not the others, but I don't always catch when it shifts to another character. The central conflict involves some pretty creepy villains and high stakes, though I don't want to give too much away there. The romance is sweet and the characters take their time getting to know each other, even though Fawkes has already experienced some moments of their relationship in the future. It's not a very long book, but I love the way it introduces you to Pocket, this little place tucked away outside of time. Time Loops & Meet Cutes by Jackie Lau This book is probably more of a traditional romance novel than most of what I usually read—I wouldn't necessarily call it a rom-com though there are certainly humorous scenes in it, and there are also some pretty steamy and explicit scenes later in the book. But before we get to that, let me tell you about the time loop. Noelle Tom has a fairly mundane life as a mechanical engineer in Toronto. She's reliable (which means she gets a lot of extra work dumped on her), deliberate, and ever since a break-up with a serious boyfriend several years ago, she's decided that romance isn't for her. It's too unpredictable and she's not interested in being hurt again. But then she eats some dumplings at a strange little booth at a night market, and she wakes up to find herself stuck in a loop—and soon she's ready to try anything to get out of it. As she goes about different iterations of her day, she eventually wonders if what she's supposed to do is kiss somebody—kisses are supposed to break magic spells, right? But who would she kiss? Maybe Cam, a handsome brewery owner that she keeps running into at different places. Her first few attempts at flirting with him are definitely rom-com material, but when she hits the no-permanent-consequences phase of her time loop, she's able to start taking some risks, and eventually they hit it off. Well, except that every time she wakes up, things have reset and Cam doesn't remember her at all… or does he? There are little signs that maybe some of their interactions are sticking with him, and Noelle wonders if he's somehow key to getting out of this loop once and for all. One of my favorite parts of this book is the way it plays with the question: what happens to everyone else who isn't stuck in a time loop? What version of the world exists once the time loop ends? In almost every time loop story I've seen or read before, when the time loop ends, the world continues the last iteration of the day that the protagonist experienced. This book manages to introduce an alternative that I found really fascinating. If you love time loop stories, this one is worth reading for that alone. I don't have as much of a read on how it ranks as a romance novel, but I did like Noelle's journey through this weird relationship with its ups and downs: getting to take risks without fearing the consequences, but also the feeling of loss every time she had to start over. (And then the opposite when the loop ends: how do you behave when you know your partner will actually remember the things you do and say?) Oh, and if you love Asian cuisine, this book is full of it. Noelle makes several trips back to the night market, figuring that her time troubles are somehow linked to the mysterious dumplings she ate, so over the course of the book we get a smorgasbord of different dishes that she tries. There's also a few different beers (since the brewery plays a significant role in the story), but not quite as many once she finds one that she likes. That's it for today. It's a short stack because I've got a kid graduating from high school this week and things have been really hectic! If only I had a time machine… Disclosure: I received review copies of these books. Affiliate links to help support my writing and independent booksellers. Liked it? Take a second to support GeekDad and GeekMom on Patreon!
Android Authority
2 days ago
- Business
- Android Authority
Pocket is shutting down, so I switched to a self-hosted alternative
Dhruv Bhutani / Android Authority I've used Pocket every single day for over a decade. From quick-hit reads to long-term storage of, well, my own articles, interviews, and hundreds of interesting longreads I didn't have time for in the moment — everything went into Pocket. Over time, it became my cross-platform inbox for the web. I'd save articles on my phone while commuting, then dive into them later on my laptop. See something interesting, hit save, move on. I even built up a tagging system, using it to collect research, writing ideas, weekend reads, and other bits I wanted to come back to. Later, when I had the time and mental space, I'd go back through my queue and catch up, sometimes on an eBook reader, but lately, more often on a tablet or a foldable phone. It became such an integral part of how I consumed the web that Pocket was always one of the first Chrome extensions I'd install on a new laptop or browser. Pocket was so deeply embedded in my daily routine, I didn't realize how much I relied on it — until it was too late. So when Mozilla announced it was killing off Pocket, the feeling wasn't annoyance, it was despair. I won't pretend I didn't see it coming. Mozilla had been quiet about Pocket for a while, and its shift toward AI-curated content felt like a soft pivot away from the original idea of saving and reading later. Still, I clung to Pocket out of habit, out of convenience, and because it just worked. Pocket was the kind of utility I didn't have to think about — until now. I get it. Priorities change. Products evolve. Companies pivot toward things that seem shiny or scalable. But Pocket was too deeply embedded in my daily routine to just let it go without finding a worthy replacement. That's when I started looking for alternatives. As someone who's slowly been moving toward self-hosted tools to avoid the short lifespans of commercial services, my first instinct was to look for an open-source option. Not another startup with a subscription model and a roadmap shaped by market trends, but something I could actually own. Something that wouldn't suddenly disappear. And that's how I found Karakeep. Karakeep, and why it works Dhruv Bhutani / Android Authority I first came across Karakeep back when it was still called Hoarder. It was clunky and unstable, so I shelved it. But when Mozilla announced Pocket's shutdown, I revisited it — and found a dramatically improved, thoughtfully built Pocket clone, minus the fluff and with some smart additions. The core idea is simple. Save links, archive full pages, and read them later. Karakeep stores a clean reader view as well as a screenshot for context. There's tagging support, search, and no algorithm trying to guess what I should read next. It didn't ask for my interests or suggest things 'based on your activity.' It just saves what I tell it to, then gets out of the way. Installing it was straightforward. Karakeep uses Docker, and the instructions on GitHub are easy to follow. I had it running on a Docker container on my Synology NAS within an hour. There's a browser extension, too, that mimics the Pocket flow almost exactly. See something, click save. That's it. Articles show up instantly, formatted with a clean, readable layout. Mobile apps are available too, and while they're not as refined as Pocket's were, they work well enough. Offline reading is still missing, which might be a dealbreaker for some, but it hasn't been a big issue for me yet. Plus, it's on the roadmap. What surprised me was how much Karakeep builds on Pocket's legacy with thoughtful additions. One of my favorite features is the optional RSS integration. It's not meant to replace your RSS reader, but you can use it to auto-save posts from specific feeds. It works great for niche blogs or Substack feeds that might otherwise get lost in your inbox. Stick to low-volume feeds, though, or your archive will get out of control fast. Optional AI-integration simplifies tasks like article summarization and automatic tagging. Another neat addition is AI-powered tagging and summarization. If you hook it up to an OpenAI API key, Karakeep can auto-tag and even generate a short summary of each article. I personally prefer to do this manually as I enjoy the process of tagging and curating my own archive, but it's a nice fallback when I'm in a rush or archiving in bulk. Like most open-source projects, Karakeep isn't perfect. Occasionally, it struggles with edge-case layouts or fails to remove certain elements cleanly. Some dynamic web pages trip it up. But unlike Pocket, when something breaks here, I can poke around and actually understand what's going on. I can fix it or at least file an issue and see what's being worked on. I'm not stuck waiting for a product update or a vague support reply. That transparency and control make a difference. Dhruv Bhutani / Android Authority What I didn't expect was how this shift to Karakeep would change the way I read. For the first time in a while, I'm curating my queue again, not just dumping links into a black hole. I'm tagging more intentionally. I'm reading more slowly. I'm archiving more carefully because I know the content is staying put, not disappearing the moment someone decides it's no longer worth maintaining. The whole experience feels less transactional and more deliberate. Karakeep can keep a full offline copy of a web-page to protect against dead links. It's also turned into a great tool for light research. I'll save blog posts, technical docs, newsletter threads, anything I know I'll need later. And because Karakeep stores a full snapshot, I don't worry about dead links. That's been surprisingly helpful during long writing projects, where I'll need to pull up a quote or reference something that may have changed since I first found it. Looking ahead Dhruv Bhutani / Android Authority Losing Pocket felt like the end of an era. Not because it was irreplaceable, but because it had quietly become part of my digital habits as a holdover from an older, calmer internet. One that wasn't constantly trying to predict or monetize my attention. One where bookmarking something meant I'd come back to it, not that it would disappear under an algorithmic feed. Pocket represented a kind of intentionality that's rare in today's attention economy. But in a way, Pocket's demise also forced me to reassess how fragile those habits can be when they rely on services I don't control. Karakeep continues that legacy with full ownership this time. It's not flashy, but it's stable, capable, and self-hosted. While the core experience is still all about tagging and saving articles, notes, or images, I like that the developers leave the door open for you to extend it. Want AI features? It's up to you. Prefer plain and minimal? That's fine too. If you're staring at your Pocket archive and wondering what's next, Karakeep is a solid option. It takes a bit of effort to get going — but the payoff is worth it. You don't just get a replacement for Pocket. You get a reminder that the tools you rely on every day don't have to be disposable.
Digital Trends
2 days ago
- Business
- Digital Trends
A sticky notes app for Safari transformed how I get work done on macOS
Just a few days ago, the Mozilla Foundation announced that Pocket was shutting down. One of the most popular bookmarking and webpage saving tools out there, especially among journalists and researchers, Pocket leaves a gap that will be hard to fill. The absence will be felt deeply because there's no viable alternative that can offer it all in a polished package. To users tied to the Apple Mac ecosystem, they have even fewer choices for a few reasons. The most notable among them all? Safari's save later and bookmarking system. Recommended Videos Why is Safari a laggard? Safari's lack of a rewarding tool, one where you can organize your ideas and save-worthy content, is quite puzzling. All you have are reading lists and bookmarks. It almost feels like a relic in the face of competitors, and even more so when compared to the solutions you find out there from no-name developers and the open-source community. That's one of the core reasons I stick with Collections in Edge and Pinboards in Opera. They are well-designed, offer plenty of organization tricks, and can even be shared. But they are still hidden behind a UI, not something you can have in front of your eyes at all times. An annotated element, highlighted segments, or personal notes you can fix just at the right spot on a webpage is a solution that no utility has managed to offer in a usable fashion. You can find plenty of sticky notes apps that put stuff on your desktop screen, but not on the web destinations where you get work done. This is where Sticky Notes for Safari comes into the picture. Technically, it's a Mac app that lives as an extension in the Safari browser and costs less than a cup of black coffee. It's light, barebones in just the right way, and captures the true spirit of sticky notes positioned on a scrolling digital canvas. How does it work? Sticky Notes for Safari is pretty straightforward. You install it from the Mac App Store, pay the $3 fee, and give it permission to run in Safari. That's it, and you're good to go. The next time you open Safari, it will appear as a tiny sticky notes option to the left of the URL bar. Let's say you are reading a web page, and want to add a sticky note at a particular spot. All you need to do is click on the extension's icon, and you will have a tiny colored box where you can type your word. The sticky notes are freely resizable, so you can position them to your exact liking. Alternatively, you can right-click on any webpage and click on 'Add Sticky Notes' in the action box. Now, when a sticky first appears on a webpage, it's set to a certain text size and paper color. You can, thankfully, change the default for each. You can also change the paper color on the fly and pick from six options. I prefer this simplicity, instead of having something too fancy, such as a color dial or a massive drop-down of color-coded boxes. As for the sticky notes, they are freely movable, and resizable, so you have that flexibility. It solves a realistic problem I believe the best app is the one that solves a tangible problem and doesn't try to cram more features than users actually need. Sticky Notes for Safari takes the former route. You can pin a note at any spot on a webpage, and it stays there. What happens when I close the browser tab? The next time you visit the webpage, the sticky note will be there to greet you. How about closing the browser itself? Not a problem. You see, the note attaches itself to the specific webpage. And even if you clear the browser cache, the color notes stay. What I love most about the app is that it keeps things simple. Beyond the task of creating sticky notes and pinning them to any spot, you also get a neat catalog where you can search through the entire notes history. First, it serves as a neatly organized place where you can find all the sticky notes you have created so far. There's a neat Search feature at the top where you can look through the notes saved on a page using keywords. I've created an unwritten rule for my sticky notes. I prefer red for more pressing or critical pieces of note. Green represents my own personal opinions, while blue is reserved for notes where the words are destined for my journalistic duties (such as sending media queries) tied to the blue DigitalTrends brand logo. Second, there's also a view all section where you find all your notes arranged in chronological order. When you tap on any of the cards, it takes you straight to the web page where it is saved. To save me the chore of scrolling too much, I simply Search (Command + F) on this page, land on the sticky note I was looking for, and with a single click, go straight to the webpage where it lives. In a nutshell, Sticky Notes for Safari combines the idea of bookmarks and reading lists in one go. In fact, I no longer have any other third-party installed on my Mac except this neat tool for my Safari-based workflow. Boiling it to the core Of course, it's not perfect. For example, when you enable Reader Mode in Safari, these sticky notes away are no longer visible. They appear as you return to the regular viewing mode, though. I wish there were a few more text formatting options for text clusters and the text, but personally, I find it to be a fundamental blunder. The point of sticky notes is just quickly writing what's on your mind, and revisiting it at a time of your convenience. For some reason, you can't trigger the system-level font styling and spell check tools, something you can easily do in other apps such as Notes. By default, the app saves everything as plaintext, even if you save stylized text from another app, it will be stripped of all that formatting in the sticky notes. In hindsight, you don't have to worry about copy-pasting heavily formatted content, as the app will do that for you. If you trying to copy an image, it would be pasted as the image's URL link on the sticky note. Finally, there's this little functional overlap with shortcuts. When you hit Command+T in Apple Notes, it opens the font styles. In Safari, by default, that shortcut opens a browser tab. I wish it could borrow some of the shortcuts and UI customization ideas from Antinote, which offers the best note-taking experience I've ever used in an app. But then, there's only so much you can do with a web extension compared to a full-fledged app. But for the sum of its parts, Sticky Notes for Safari does more than it's intended to. It's minimalist, solves a practical browser problem, and then doubles as a beautiful hub that ends the reliance on dedicated or built-in bookmarking tools. I'd say that's a task well done.
TechCrunch
6 days ago
- Business
- TechCrunch
Read-it-later app Pocket is shutting down. Here are the best alternatives.
In May 2025, Mozilla announced that it was shutting down the popular read-it-later app Pocket, which it had acquired back in 2017 for an undisclosed amount. While Pocket helped users save and discover millions of articles, Mozilla said the way people are browsing the web is changing, and it plans to focus its resources on other projects. Pocket users have until October 8, 2025, to export their saved articles and other items, including lists, archives, favorites, notes, and highlights. This essentially means you will have to find a new home to build a reading list through another save-it-later app. To help users with this transition, we've rounded up a number of apps you might want to consider: Matter is a Google Ventures-backed company that makes an eponymous iOS app along with browser extensions for Chrome, Safari, and Firefox. The app lets you listen to articles and also transcribes your favorite podcasts. Though the app itself is free to use, you can pay $79.99 per year to unlock features like improved transcriptions for podcasts and YouTube videos, tools to adjust reading speed, and additional integrations with other apps like notes apps, Gmail, and Kindle. Screenshot Image Credits:Matter In March 2025, the company also added an AI-powered co-reader to answer questions about different topics users might have while reading an article. Matter co-founder Ben Springwater says Pocket users can email him at ben@ for a personal discount link. The company will soon offer the discount within its app and will launch a migration process for Pocket users. Techcrunch event Join us at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot for our leading AI industry event with speakers from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Cohere. For a limited time, tickets are just $292 for an entire day of expert talks, workshops, and potent networking. Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you've built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Berkeley, CA | REGISTER NOW Instapaper, which was founded by developer Marco Arment in 2008, is one of the oldest read-it-later apps. It's available on both iOS and Android, and lets you save unlimited articles and videos without paying any fees. It was acquired by Pinterest in 2016. Image Credits:Instapaper However, for $59.99 per year, you can add notes to saved articles, have a permanent archive of articles in your accounts, create a text-to-speech playlist to listen to stories, enable full text search for all saved items, and get the ability to send articles to your Kindle. The company says Pocket users can import their account into Instapaper at Users who import this way will also receive an email offering a three-month free trial to Instapaper Premium. Raindrop works primarily as an alternative bookmark manager for web browsers. However, its accompanying mobile apps for iOS and Android allow you to read your saved articles or PDFs at any time. The free version gives you unlimited bookmark saving along with integrations like Zapier and IFTTT. If you decide to pay $33 per year, you will get AI-powered suggestions for organizing your content better, full text-search, reminders for your bookmarks, a duplicate and broken links finder, and a file upload limit of 10GB per month. Image Credits: / Former Twitter engineer Joe Fabisevich created Plinky to allow users to save and categorize any kind of link, including articles, videos, recipes, and memes. The app is available across all Apple platforms, along with browser extensions to save links. Once signed up, Plinky lets you use folders and tags to categorize your links, and even set reminders to read them at a specific time. Image Credits:Plinky You can save 50 links, create three folders, and use five tags with the free version. To remove these restrictions, you can pay $3.99 per month, $39.99 a year, or a one-time fee of $159.99. Pro users are able to save unlimited links, create an unlimited number of folders, use an unlimited number of tags, and set an unlimited number of reminders. With Pocket's shutdown on the horizon, Fabisevich says a dedicated Reader Mode will be added to Plinky's app soon. The app is also offering a 50% discount on the Pro tier through the end of May 2025. Paperspan is a very simple app that offers a reading list across devices; allows you to add notes; and has text-to-speech functionality. The app is free, but it offers an $8.99 per month subscription to unlock advanced search, as well as the ability to create playlists, show reading stats, and send your articles to Kindle. Though the app works, PaperSpan hasn't been updated for some time, which may not be a good signal about its long-term future. The app is available on both iOS and Android. Readwise, a tool to add notes and highlights to articles, launched its Reader app in 2021. The app allows you to import RSS feeds, YouTube videos, Twitter threads, and more to read at your convenience. Because of its integration with Readwise, the Reader app offers great annotation features. It also features offline text search and an AI assistant. Image Credits:Readwise Reader Plus, you can integrate Reader with knowledge management apps such as Obsidian, Notion, Roam Research, Evernote, and Logseq. The app is free to try for 30 days, and then you have to pay a $9.99 per month Readwise subscription to access it. Readwise is letting Pocket users save their entire Pocket archive into Reader and notes that its app supports a number of features — like PDFs, ePubs, X posts, AI, and filtering — which Pocket never did. DoubleMemory is a new indie app focused on the Apple ecosystem, and it has native apps for both Mac and iOS. On Mac, you can easily save any link or content by pressing ' Cmd + C' twice. The saved content will then appear in a Pinterest-style tile format. The app also allows you to read offline and search through text, notes, and tags. You don't need an account to start using DoubleMemory. And if you have multiple apps, it uses your iCloud account to sync content across them. Image Credits:DoubleMemory DoubleMemory is free with in-app purchases. It offers a $3.99 monthly subscription or an annual subscription of $17.99. Recall works as a browser extension and a mobile app that allows users to save content from the web, including articles, PDFs, blog posts, podcasts, Wikipedia pages, YouTube videos, and recipes. However, unlike traditional read-it-later apps, Recall uses AI to automatically summarize content, categorize it, and then resurface it when it's related to something new you're looking to learn about. Image Credits:Recall Designed to enhance your ability to remember information, you can review your summaries from your personal knowledge base on a saved spaced repetition schedule. Recall is free to try with support for up to 10 free, AI-generated summaries. After that, you can continue to use Recall as a read-it-later tool, or you can upgrade to a $7 per month plan for unlimited AI summaries and other features. Wallabag is an open source read-it-later app that's also available as a €11 per year hosted subscription, if you prefer. The app itself works across browsers and mobile devices, offers a reader mode for more comfortable reading, and supports importing data from other services like Pocket, Instapaper, and others. Image Credits:Wallabag Open source web app Readeck is designed to help you organize any web content you want to revisit later, whether that's articles, videos, photos, or anything else. You can also use the service to highlight text, export articles to ebook format, save video transcripts, and more. Image Credits:Readeck Readeck works as a browser extension so you can save your bookmarks as you surf the web. Users can host Readeck themselves, but the company says it will offer a hosted version in 2025. It's also developing a mobile app. Obsidian's web clipping service lets you highlight and capture web pages you want to save with just a click on its browser extension. You can also use templates that customize how certain types of web pages are saved. For instance, articles are saved with their citations and footnotes, while recipes will include ingredients, steps, and nutrition. You can even set up custom templates to save from your favorite websites. Image Credits:Obsidian As an open source app, Web Clipper is free to use, allowing you to highlight text, images, and blocks of content for saving into the Obsidian note-taking app. Karakeep's bookmarking app lets you save links, notes, and images, and then uses AI to automatically tag items and make retrieving them faster. The app includes other features like support for lists, bulk actions, dark mode, full-text search, and more. Image Credits:Karakeep The open source app is available on iOS and Android as a browser extension for Chrome and Firefox. You can support its developer here. Dewey is another 'save everything'-style app that lets you save and organize web links, videos, and images, including posts from social media sites like X, TikTok, Bluesky, Threads, Reddit, Instagram, LinkedIn, and others. Image Credits:Dewey The service offers built-in organizational tools like folders and tags, AI bulk tagging, keyboard shortcuts, automatic syncing to Notion, export, a personalized RSS feed, and more. Dewey offers multiple plans, starting at $7.50 per month, which you can choose to pay annually for $30 off. This is not an exhaustive list, and we will keep adding more tools as we discover them.
Washington Post
6 days ago
- Business
- Washington Post
A fan-favorite app for reading things later is going dark. Use this instead.
After 18 years, Pocket, a service that helped web-savvy readers dig into stories in their free time, is going dark. The Mozilla Corporation, best known for its Firefox browser, said it would soon turn out the lights on Pocket, a handy tool for discovering and saving web articles to a personal archive to be read (and reread) later.
