As much as I love Craft, its current version is unsuitable as a read-later solution. I do keep a list of bookmarks within Craft, but the article’s content is not fetched and saved into Craft, something Notion is able to do. This list is kept for other purposes, like helping me build my newsletter and other long-form articles. I need a better reading solution.

Reading is something that requires the least distraction possible. Safari reader mode is great. I use it quite frequently to remove the noise from a webpage, but it lacks the highlighting feature of Instapaper or Pocket. Using a shortcut to save a text highlight is possible but distracting. This is where an app like Instapaper or Pocket comes into play. But which one is the best? For me, it is Pocket1, here is a quick comparison of both solutions.

  • Pocket design is richer, while Instapaper’s is minimalistic, which could be seen as an advantage. Yet, Pocket is still frictionless for reading.
  • Pocket updates are more frequent.
  • Pocket is more expansive than Instapaper.
  • IFTTT support is more extensive with Instapaper than it is with Pocket.
  • Instapaper allows quick notes to be created next to the highlighted text. This could prove useful. Think of it as meta-highlighting.
  • Instapaper seems stuck in the past when it was created by Marco Arment.
  • Instapaper allows you to organize bookmarks into folders, something I wish Pocket would support. I’m a bit compulsive about organizing my content.
  • Pocket supports iOS widgets, not Instapaper.
  • Share sheet allows tagging with Pocket, which makes me more efficient.
  • Page rendering seems better in Pocket.
  • On the Mac, Instapaper Safari extension doesn’t work. It keeps asking me to authenticate with the application, which I did. See next observation.
  • Both Pocket and Instapaper don’t support Sign in with Apple within the macOS application; only on the website. Because of this, the Instapaper is useless on the Mac, while Pocket supports creating a password for the account, which fixes this issue.
  • Pocket offers a public profile page where article recommendations can be shared.
  • I have more confidence in Pocket’s future and sustainability than in Instapaper’s.

The following screenshots are page rendering examples of the same article from both services.

Instapaper page rendering example.

Pocket page rendering example.

If Craft is ever updated to extract an article from a website, allows tagging and highlighting, I’ll probably reconsider my use of Pocket. For now, I’m a very happy user of Pocket, a service which helps me read more and better.

My Pocket profile. My Matter profile.

  1. I used Pocket when the service was first started, but somehow, I stopped using it, maybe because of Apple’s introduction of the Read Later feature in Safari. ↩︎