I am finding a flow where I save interesting articles, then come back to carefully read/annotate/repost them as a separate activity. Read-it-later apps seem to be a great way of collecting before reading.
| Feature | Omnivore | Instapaper | Reader | Raindrop | Matter | Smashing | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Verdict | Too expensive | ||||||
| Tags | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | ||
| Folders | Ye | Yes | No | No | Yes | ||
| Offline? | Yes | Sometimes | |||||
| AI? | No | No | No | Yes! | No | Yes | Yes |
| Cost/mo | - | $5 | $3.75 | $10 | $2.33 | $6.67 | free |
| UI | B | A | B | A+ | B | ||
| Social? | |||||||
| Discovery? | - | C | - | - | D | C | |
| RSS? | Yes | Yes | No | ||||
| PDFs support | B | In-app | No annotation | ||||
| Annotations can be exported? | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Raindrop.io
Raindrop is a bookmark collecting app that supports highlighting. It is very web-oriented, and documents are meant to be viewed in a browser as they were published to the web.
Pros
- Supports tags, folders
- Grabs WSJ
Cons
- Cannot save paywalled content (see Permanent copy ― Raindrop.io Help)
- Default preview experience is Inconsistent between mobile (which opens previews) and desktop (which opens a new browser)
Features
- Clipping: The app will clip text from a page (if it can) to generate a “preview.” In cases where this preview cannot be generated (including for PDF files), the link is just opened in an internal browser.
- Annotations: Highlighting requires previewing the page in the in-app browser (desktop) and highlighting from there or using the browser plugin. Unclear what happens if the source page changes. Annotating PDFs is not yet supported. Adding notes to highlights is a paid feature.
- Searching pages: Is a paid feature.
- PDFs: Requires viewing in a web browser. Drag-and-dropping a PDF into the app uploads it to an AWS bucket which the app then opens in-browser.
Readwise Reader
Pros
- Nice UI
- GhostReader is a nice ChatGPT integration
- Captures WSJ from web (not app though)
Cons
- Costs money after 30 days
- Very expensive ($10/month)
- Figures are not imported when an article is clipped
- Desktop experience is janky - no easy way to clip from browser (Edge/Chrome) as far as I can tell
- Does not handle arxiv well
- PDF annotation for two-column documents results in highlights being out of order
- Does not render LaTeX from the HTML version generated by arxiv correctly
- Does not import figures
Features
- Annotations: Built into the in-app reader mode.
- PDFs: Does a good job of extracting metadata from PDF URLs or files dragged-and-dropped into the app. Highlighting in PDFs works, but the ordering of highlights are zig-zag for two-column PDFs (like conference papers).
Cons:
- Doesn’t capture Reuters, aip.org, WSJ (paywall)
Omnivore
Pros:
- Exports to Obsidian (though haven’t tried it to see how well it works)
Cons:
- Got acquired and is shutting down
- Desktop app lacks many features of web app
Instapaper
Pros:
- Captures WSJ (paywall), Reuters
Cons:
- No tags or ways categorize articles along multiple dimensions (e.g., AI and energy)
- Doesn’t capture aip.org
Matter
Pros:
- Nice summarizer
- Exports to Obsidian (though haven’t tried it to see how well it works)
Cons:
- Costs money after 7 days
- Randomly doesn’t save stuff when captured via Share
- Can’t capture WSJ
Smashing
Pros:
- Seems like it has novel ideas around social and summaries
Cons:
- UI is a mess
- Recommendations are poor/repetitive
- No annotation
Flipbook
Pros:
- Nice iPadOS UI and social features
Cons:
- Flooded with junk news sources and recommendations never improve
- No reader mode or annotations