Pocket Alternatives

[Tawn]

With the Pocket shutdown I thought it would be interesting/informative to have a thread on what people are using instead. I'll start off with my current choice...

epubPress (Firefox addon, but available otherwise)

Pros:

• Free!
• No need to register, create an account or sign-in to save articles
• Multiple articles in one epub file (less clicks to get them all downloaded & doesn't clutter up UI with a slew of separate articles)
• epub format allows highlighting/export of highlights
• Adds a references page to epub showing the web location of the articles
• Can be hidden from Nickle while shown in KOReader (via 'show hidden files') which avoids cluttering up "My Books" with articles.

Cons:

• Difficult to delete individual article in multi-article epub (probably could be done via Calibre, though I haven't tried)
• Cannot mark favs (though you could add them to a collection)
• Doesn't work on Firefox Reader View (this seems to generally be an extension API limitation)
• Doesn't sync; requires USB connection (I queue these up in a tab group & then move them in occasional batches)

PS: Someone please post and let us know if kobo decides to delete our previously downloaded articles (or the entire Articles UI) !

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by Tawn

PS: Someone please post and let us know if kobo decides to delete our previously downloaded articles (or the entire Articles UI) !

To quote from the emails sent out by Pocket to all Pocket users:

You’ll be able to keep using the app and browser extensions until July 8, 2025, and you'll be able to download your saved articles (including URLs, titles, notes, and highlights) through our Export Page until October 8, 2025. After that date, all Pocket accounts and data will be permanently deleted.

At this time, Kobo has no plans to remove downloaded Pocket content from Kobo ereaders but note that this is volatile data.

[Cactus Chef]

Unless Kobo themselves finds a new vendor (or buys one), I don't think any of the alternatives will work for me. I played around in Calibre years ago with using recipes to scrape XML feeds and download articles. I didn't really like it, because I don't like having my longform articles mingled with my books in the My Books view. I liked the way that the Pocket integration kept that entire backlog in an entirely separate view.

[wherahiko]

Originally Posted by Tawn

With the Pocket shutdown I thought it would be interesting/informative to have a thread on what people are using instead. I'll start off with my current choice...

epubPress (Firefox addon, but available otherwise)

Thank you for this. I hadn't come across that one. I have been using Dotepub, which has similar functionality (but has the disadvantage that it automatically strips out images if there are more than ten of them). I'll check out EpubPress, as the option to bundle multiple web pages into a single epub is very appealing.

[Tawn]

Originally Posted by DNSB

At this time, Kobo has no plans to remove downloaded Pocket content from Kobo ereaders but note that this is volatile data.

Google's AI Overview is stating:

Users were able to export their saved articles until October 8, 2025. After this date, all Pocket data, including articles saved on Kobo devices, will be permanently removed.

...but it's been known to serve up BS on occasion

I saved a copy as per:

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...d.php?t=368317

just in case, but obviously the kobo article UI is much better.

I also did the export from Pocket, but it basically only includes title, url and reading status, not the actual text or whether they were favs. Eventually I'll probably save off my favs into epubs, but likely won't get to that soon.

Originally Posted by wherahiko

I have been using Dotepub, which has similar functionality (but has the disadvantage that it automatically strips out images if there are more than ten of them).

Hope EpubPress works out for you. I tried dotepub previously, but the first article I attempted to convert gave me a nearly blank page.

Originally Posted by Cactus Chef

I liked the way that the Pocket integration kept that entire backlog in an entirely separate view.

which is why I'm only making them visible in a KOreader folder, but obviously that's not a suitable solution for everyone.

[Cootey]

You may be happy to learn that Kobo will officially replace Pocket with Instapaper by the end of the summer. It was just announced yesterday.

You should be able to export your Pocket data into Instapaper. I couldn’t get the export feature to export more than one entry, however, so I ended up manually transferring the bookmarks.

Edit: But I was given this link today which should make transfers easy.

https://instapaper.com/pocket (thanks, meeera!)

[Tawn]

Glad to hear that. I'll keep using epubPress for awhile and later decide if I want to switch.

[DNSB]

For the last while, I've been using Web2Epub. Handles images and structure better than dotEPUB and a couple of other download web page to ePub plugins I tried.

[ownedbycats]

Originally Posted by DNSB

For the last while, I've been using Web2Epub. Handles images and structure better than dotEPUB and a couple of other download web page to ePub plugins I tried.

Sadly it crashes Vivaldi.

[wherahiko]

Originally Posted by DNSB

For the last while, I've been using Web2Epub. Handles images and structure better than dotEPUB and a couple of other download web page to ePub plugins I tried.

Thank you for this. Do you mean Web2Epub (https://github.com/eklop/web2epub) or, rather, WebToEpub (https://github.com/dteviot/WebToEpub)? The latter seems to have more documentation. I've tried both Dotepub and Epubpress, but neither seems to handle well the images in an art history–focused Substack I read.

(One advantage of this Pocket situation as it's led me to find these epub converters which don't require wi-fi to transfer articles to the Kobo. I'm hoping I will find one that supports images well, though!)

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by wherahiko

Thank you for this. Do you mean Web2Epub (https://github.com/eklop/web2epub) or, rather, WebToEpub (https://github.com/dteviot/WebToEpub)? The latter seems to have more documentation. I've tried both Dotepub and Epubpress, but neither seems to handle well the images in an art history–focused Substack I read.

I'm using WebToEpub.

[wherahiko]

Originally Posted by DNSB

I'm using WebToEpub.

Thank you!

I've just tried it, but when I try to save a page, I get an error message (attached). The 'help' button then leads to another page with complicated instructions that are beyond me (see second attachment). Is this normal. Do you know how to set it up so it will work properly? Thank you for your help!

[DNSB]

Quick question. Did you sign in on that substack page? Without signing in, I had to do quite some manual configuration to get the download and it was not pretty. I've included the setup from WebToEpub that I used after the test and the output ePub which is pretty ugly.

I suspect one issue with this page is the heavy use of JavaScript causing that Javacript modules errors when opening the ePub (see image from calibre's e-book viewer.