5 ms·

Ask HN: What does your ideal “read it later” service look like?

• billconan 7y ago
  able to remove ads and stuff unrelated to content. great typography able to relayout the content based on screen size, (mobile friendly), especially when the original content is a pdf. able to synchronize to kindle, iphone
• AdmiralAsshat 7y ago
  Pocket already does about 85% of what I want (5% missing features I do want, and the other 10% being removing features I don't want, like the Sponsored content showing up in my feed), so I'm mostly happy with it. But as long as we're talking pie-in-the-sky: - Grabs only content, none of the crap - Should be able to grab images that are core content to the article - Completely FLOSS, with option for self-hosting. Member pricing would basically pay for cloud hosting and support. - Robust platform support. Win/Mac/Linux/iOS/Android support or support for major browser extensions. Client support for popular e-readers also a huge plus--Pocket integration was a major influence on my getting a Kobo instead of a Kindle - Bi-directional article management within the client. I should be able to Archive/Favorite/Delete an article within the RIL client and have those changes pushed back to the server. - An option to read aloud an article using the OS's native Text-to-Speech engine so that it does not require a wifi connection (again, existing quibble with Pocket) - Privacy-focused. Don't share my lists with marketers, don't put "popular" content into my feed if I didn't ask for it. I don't care what other people are reading, much as I don't care what other people choose to Bookmark. My Reading List is for me and me alone. - Ability to crawl older, multi-page articles and consolidate into a single view. - Ability to cache the article itself so that it would still be readable if the content at the URL itself vanishes between the time I add it to RIL and the time I actually get around to reading it. EDIT: RSS support would be cool, too.
• mtmail 7y ago
  I'm happy with instapaper. Even more now that it's independently owned and GPDR compatible. Gladly pay knowing they don't have to sell my data or add advertising to make a living. bthdonohue.com/2018/11/17/ycombinator-operating-instapaper-through-an-acquisition.html https://blog.instapaper.com/post/170231611161 https://blog.instapaper.com/post/170231611161 Saving youtube (or any other) videos would be nice for offline viewing (train, airplane). I can understand it's not a core feature, would use too much bandwidth and storage on mobile devices.
• latexr 7y ago
  I like Safari’s Reading List, except for the fact it’s chained to Safari. What it does right is that it gets the whole page (i.e. it’s not just a reader view) and auto-downloads on the phone so it’s available offline. I’d like something that is browser-agnostic, has the option to download videos for offline viewing (for the websites supported by youtube-dl[1], let’s say), and can be controlled via the command-line. I wouldn’t pay a subscription for it because I dislike subscription pricing and my current system is good enough (a mix of Pinboard’s reading list and Alfred[2] Workflows). Take my points as “pie in the sky” ideas you may wish to implement if you like them, but I’m unlikely to be a customer. [1]: https://youtube-dl.org/ https://youtube-dl.org/ [2]: https://www.alfredapp.com https://www.alfredapp.com
• runjake 7y ago
  Like Instapaper.
• LeonB 7y ago
  Features I rely upon in existing services: - Able to use a favelet (bookmarklet) or a plugin to save any website with 1 click. - Can synchronize to my ereader (thanks to Pocket integration with Kobo) Features I don't have that I really need: - ability to apply tags to articles, including on ereader, and sort/filter by tags. - ability to highlight snippets and put them into some kind of log (particularly from ereader) including tagging the snippets (this would be awesome... for me)
• justhw 7y ago
  Something I want is a periodical (weekly or monthly) digest of my bookmarks (read it later) links, preferably as a browser extension. I'm currently doing that manually to help me decide if the bookmark it worth keeping.
• mersing 7y ago
  Thanks for asking. - Automatically filter incoming content by multiple media types, particularly audio. Pocket has "articles" and "videos" but I get a lot of random stuff in "videos." If my link is coming from soundcloud.com, podcastnotes.org, listennotes.com etc., there's a 99% chance it's audio. - More filtering options without requiring search, particularly by my most-saved content sources. - This is personal preference, but NO (or at least the ability to disable) "discover" feed of suggested articles. I consider Pocket a productivity tool, allowing me to access my own idea of high quality, relevant content whenever I have a few minutes of downtime. I've already removed all the mainstream news/social network/scrolly-feed apps from my phone to resist the temptation to scroll mindlessly through whatever's new. Pocket's prominently featured feed of popular but lowest common denominator articles presents a problematic distraction. I understand that Pocket injects ads and paid or partner content in this feed, but I'd rather pay to have this feature removed than to remove the ads. - No social networking aspect or associated user profiles. Don't care. Actually this just makes me wary that one day Pocket will decide it wants to be a social network and suddenly all my presumed-privately saved articles become "social" meaning visible to everyone on my profile, requiring manual privacy resetting to hide them, a la Facebook. - The option to see which articles were the most-saved by other users in a given subject area could be interesting. This could have feature overlap with Nuzzel (app that shows you the articles that were shared by Twitter users you follow). - Seconding another suggestion for the option to read the article aloud, presuming it's high quality humanish narration.
• gcatalfamo 7y ago
  One thing, most of all: a dark pattern or a habit creating way to help me avoid saving links (because they might be useful) and never ever read/open them