In case you don’t know, Pocket is a read it later app launched in 2007 that lets you view articles in a consistent style and highlight phrases. Before Pocket was acquired by Mozilla in 2017, I used it daily. During my commute or late at night in bed, I was reading up on ux principles and catching up on my library of unread articles instead of doom-scrolling. I felt pretty smart.

Why not Pocket?

In recent years, several key updates (or downgrades) to Pocket’s suite of apps has made me seek out alternatives:

• Highlighting feature was removed from iOS app
• Sepia theme was removed from iOS app (only light/dark mode now)
• Premium plan required for unlimited articles, unlimited highlights

Designers, take a look at the old Pocket. The difference in line height is glaringly obvious! (Non-designers, trust me, the difference is HUGE)

Ok, enough about Pocket, what am I using now?

Omnivore

Omnivore has a clean, beautiful reader with an iOS app that supports highlighting. For free!

But it keeps getting better. In addition to a browser extension to add article URLs, Omnivore also supports:

• RSS Feeds
• Annotation for highlights
  • write notes in the margins!
• Email newsletter subscriptions
• Progress indicator for % read for each article
• PDF Highlighting
• Ability to share highlights with your friends via Clubs
  • still in beta, but I can’t wait to see this feature take off so I can share curated snippets of articles with friends instead of expecting them to read an entire article
• Text to speech
• Obsidian & Logseq plugins

RSS Feed Reader

Remember Feedly back when it was just an RSS feed reader? Feedburner? Thunderbird RSS? Zapier RSS?

None of these hold a candle to Omnivore because it integrates RSS feeds directly in your article queue and lets you highlight them, just like an article you saved from the web.

All your highlights & notes in one place!

Importing from Pocket

It’s pretty easy to import all your articles to Omnivore from your settings! All my articles and highlights got synced even though I’m on the free pocket plan and theoretically some of my old highlights from >10 years ago should’ve been lost. But they weren’t!

Readwise Integration

Now that I have all my highlights in one place, I’m trying out Readwise, which sends me a daily email newsletter of random highlights.

I’m still on the 30 day free trial, so I’m not sure if I’ll continue using this (it’s $4.49/mo after the trial). So far, it’s done a great job of surfacing old things I forgot that I highlighted and making me really think about how I create highlights so that they contain just enough context.

This is truly a set it and forget it integration that brings value to my daily life, so I might end up keeping it. It’s probably worth it for the ease of setup, but you could also try creating your own free version through Obsidian plugins.

To join Readwise with my referral link and get a free month, click here.

Omnivore is great

It’s free, it’s got tons of relevant features, and integrates with all the trendy knowledge management apps.

If you’re reading this, you’re probably my friend, so please sign up and let me know so I can send you an invite to my Club and we can share highlights!!!

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Cover image was generated by me using Photoshop Generative Fill.