Mozilla to Shut Down Pocket on July 8th, 2025

[Dr. Drib]

I tried Dotepub to see how it looked and worked. I kept mispronouncing the word using Spanish vowels, until I realized my mistake.)

It works fine, as the public domain attachment shows. [Copyright is restricted to U.S.]

It took about 30 seconds to correct the AUTHOR and TITLE field, and then to attach an appropriate cover.

I haven't tested it for images.

It looks like it might be an OK replacement for Pocket, although it lacks the convenience of Pocket.

[Cactus Chef]

Originally Posted by rcentros

No, I hadn't. I relied on others (not on this forum) who said that Pocket was never open sourced. I guess they didn't know about it either.

Does this mean anyone can use the code to create a new Pocket?

EDIT: Is this the Github site for the actual Pocket "engine" or the clients using Pocket?

Until the shutdown announcement, that GH repo had been up for several years, but incomplete. IIRC there was some client code but not much else.

It looks like following the announcement, Pocket developers uploaded a monorepo (which basically means an emergency dump of everything, not organized and prepped for public consumption). It's better than nothing, but it will likely take some community effort to turn it into a full, self-hosted solution.

It would be great if someone were able to make a self-hosted Pocket, and Kobo exposed a value in the conf that would simply let you change the Pocket endpoint URL to whatever alternate self-hosted instance you have.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by Cactus Chef

…
and Kobo exposed a value in the conf that would simply let you change the Pocket endpoint URL to whatever alternate self-hosted instance you have.

I've been saying that for a decade about the "hard-coded" services in ereaders, such as Google (storage or search), Wikipedia, Goodreads etc. Arrogance and lazy not to have box you can change in "Settings" even if those are defaults. Why no email simple text only client either that can save a received ebook or send annotations or one highlight?

Dropbox shouldn't be hard coded in either.

[PeterT]

Unfortunately remember that it's more than just the URL; it's also the APIs that those URLs support. So while it might be easy to expose the URL, how do you propose exposing the APIs. If you're assuming that the APIs are fully documented and can be re-implemented .....

[Sprout7175]

It sucks to see it shutdown, I've decided to move over to wallabag as most of my reading is done on an android phone.

[rcentros]

Originally Posted by DNSB

I'll miss FakeSpot more than Pocket.

My feelings for FakeSpot are basically the opposite. My only interaction with it was when I posted a small "review" about an $8 gigabyte switch from Amazon on Reddit. I didn't say anything like they're the greatest thing since sliced bread, or anything like that, just that they worked well for the price. I was flagged by FakeSpot for a "phony review," (or however they worded it). So, as far as I'm concerned, good riddance. AI bots are clueless, in my opinion. Garbage in, garbage out.

[rcentros]

Originally Posted by Cactus Chef

Until the shutdown announcement, that GH repo had been up for several years, but incomplete. IIRC there was some client code but not much else.

It looks like following the announcement, Pocket developers uploaded a monorepo (which basically means an emergency dump of everything, not organized and prepped for public consumption). It's better than nothing, but it will likely take some community effort to turn it into a full, self-hosted solution.

It would be great if someone were able to make a self-hosted Pocket, and Kobo exposed a value in the conf that would simply let you change the Pocket endpoint URL to whatever alternate self-hosted instance you have.

Thanks for the clarification. At least somebody dumped it, which is better than nothing.. Not being a developer it wouldn't do me any good even if it was well organized. I tried Pocket years ago but never really felt much need to use it.

But, for those who do use it and like it, hopefully someone can either revive it, or (at least) improve one of its competitors to the point where it can take fully its place.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by rcentros

My feelings for FakeSpot are basically the opposite. My only interaction with it was when I posted a small "review" about an $8 gigabyte switch from Amazon on Reddit. I didn't say anything like they're the greatest thing since sliced bread, or anything like that, just that they worked well for the price. I was flagged by FakeSpot for a "phony review," (or however they worded it). So, as far as I'm concerned, good riddance. AI bots are clueless, in my opinion. Garbage in, garbage out.

My experience with FakeSpot were the opposite. It flagged multiple reviews of an item on Amazon as being probably false and looking at 14 5 star reviews posted over 6 hours, I tended to agree. Oddly, the only sites it seems work on were ecommerce sites. I was just looking at the FakeSpot FAQs and Reddit was not listed as a site it worked with. Amazon, Best Buy, eBay, Sephora, Walmart and Shopify were listed. Reddit was not. Discord was not. SubStack was not.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by PeterT

Unfortunately remember that it's more than just the URL; it's also the APIs that those URLs support. So while it might be easy to expose the URL, how do you propose exposing the APIs. If you're assuming that the APIs are fully documented and can be re-implemented .....

Yes, it is for some things. Like Pocket. Not for Search or Wikipedia.

[rcentros]

Originally Posted by DNSB

My experience with FakeSpot were the opposite. It flagged multiple reviews of an item on Amazon as being probably false and looking at 14 5 star reviews posted over 6 hours, I tended to agree. Oddly, the only sites it seems work on were ecommerce sites. I was just looking at the FakeSpot FAQs and Reddit was not listed as a site it worked with. Amazon, Best Buy, eBay, Sephora, Walmart and Shopify were listed. Reddit was not. Discord was not. SubStack was not.

They definitely had it on the home networking subReddit (I used to work in telecom). And it definitely flagged my switch recommendation as "bogus" or "spam" or something like that. I know it was FakeSpot because I had never heard of it before (or since) and traced it back to Mozilla. I don't like being called a liar by a brain dead AI Bot.

[Cactus Chef]

A week since the announcement, and no one has swooped in to save the day yet. Rather surprising, given that several other entities have voiced interest in buying Pocket from them. Hopefully there's some backroom deals being inked.

A pity that Rakuten shows no interest in buying Pocket outright, the way they (briefly) did with Overdrive. That would certainly solve the Kobo side of things.

[compurandom]

Originally Posted by Cactus Chef

A week since the announcement, and no one has swooped in to save the day yet.

A week is far too fast for a large company to react.

Most large companies take a week and a half just to reconcile their payroll to make sure it gets paid on time.

Buying another company in a month or three is basically an impulse buy.

[PeterT]

Just saw this BlueSky thread by Michael Tamblyn that was linked from Reddit.

https://bsky.app/profile/mtamblyn.bs.../3ls5wbcqjl22m

[Cactus Chef]

Originally Posted by PeterT

Just saw this BlueSky thread by Michael Tamblyn that was linked from Reddit.

https://bsky.app/profile/mtamblyn.bs.../3ls5wbcqjl22m

Time's runnin' out, Michael!

[badrihippo]

I wrote to Instapaper about taking on Kobo integration and they responded positively, though implying that "it also requires a buy-in from the other side". If Kobo got on board, they'd just has to update the API calls in the read-it-later app they already have. Heck, if it was open source I'd have done it myself.

On a different note, I wonder how easy it is to "translate" the API, i.e. have something running on localhost that pretends to be getpocket.com and relays requests to an external Wallabag?

(All this is because I dig the interface. A more permanent solution would of course be to write a proper Wallabag app with a similar interface and options for favouriting, etc.)