Pocket App Review – Best Offline Article Reader App

What if you could read or even listen to your favorite articles while traveling without even having access to the internet?

Yes, this is possible with the Pocket App – save any article as you come across and read it later on any of your connected devices.

As, I’m a full-time blogger and come across a lot of great articles related to SEO, Affiliate Marketing, Productivity Hacks, etc. and the Pocket app has been my all-time favorite.

In this blog post, I’ll review the Pocket reader app and explain how using this can boost your productivity.

So, here we go…

tl;dr

Pocket App lets you save articles and videos for later use so that you never lose an important article. Once the articles are synced, you can read them later without even having access to the internet.

Pricing: Free + Premium

Get Started

What is the Pocket Reader App?

Pocket is an article reader app that lets you save articles to read later, even offline and provides a distraction-free reading experience. The app is available for Android, iOS, macOS, Windows, Windows Phone, BlackBerry, Kobo eReaders, Kindle Fire, and even Web Browsers.

The application was originally designed for computers only but later it was released for other platforms and other operating systems also. Earlier, the Pocket app was named “Read it Later” but later it rebranded itself in 2012.

In 2017, Mozilla acquired Pocket and integrated it in the Firefox Browser. Now, with a single click, you can save important articles directly to your Pocket list directly from the Firefox browser itself.

Pocket Integration in the Firefox Browser

Why should You Use it?

The internet is like a huge library of unlimited useful information and once you come through any important article, it is difficult and sometimes impossible to search for that again to read later.

Yes, it used to happen all the time with me.

Back in 2014, I came through an interesting article on Twitter and thought to read it later after replying to a few emails. And, guess what, I forgot to read and the next day I tried searching for that again but couldn’t find it.

So, I started looking for an app that can save articles to read later and found Instapaper, which is also great, no doubts. But, last year (2018) I came through the Pocket Reader and I’m absolutely in love with it.

It’s like a personal library where all your favourite articles remain forever. Also, it has a feature that lets you sync all the articles while you have the internet which you can read later even without the internet.

Device Lineup of Pocket App
Image Source: Mozilla Blog

So, let’s talk about the features of the app.

Features of Pocket

With each coming year, Pocket keeps introducing new and interesting features. Let’s take a closer look at the amazing features currently offered by the app.

1. Reading Time Estimates

When you save an article to read later, it estimates how much time the article would take if you start reading.

Reading Time Estimate
Image Source: Pocket Blog

For example, if you have a waiting time of 15 minutes at the airport and you want to read something in that time. So, better would be to start reading an article that takes 10-12 minutes rather than a massive blog post of 30 minutes. Right?

Well, Reading Time Estimates come in handy in these situations.

2. Highlighting

Highlighting while reading has a lot of benefits. Currently, in the Pocket for Android and iOs, you can highlight important lines and paragraphs in an article so that next time you don’t have to read the whole article to find that important section.

Highlighting Feature
Image Source: Pocket Blog

Not only this, but you can even share the highlights with other apps like Evernote and Google Keep. Also, you can filter your articles list by Highlighted articles.

I just love this highlighting feature.

3. Listening to Articles

Taking a walk? Or, Driving?

Don’t worry, Pocket has a feature using which you can Listen to Your Articles and that too offline. It uses the Text-to-Speech feature of your device and you can even switch between multiple male and female voices.

Listen to Articles via Text-to-Speech Feature

It supports almost 20 worldwide languages and can be used on the Pocket for Android, iOs, Firefox Browser, and even on Amazon Alexa.

4. Discover New Articles

Pocket has an Explore feature that lets you discover new articles and videos by topic. Just enter your topic in the search box, and it will show you all the popular articles on the web related to the topic that people have saved the most on Pocket.

For example, I just searched the topic “SEO” and look, here the best articles on the topic that I can store to read later or read now.

Explore New Articles on Pocket

5. Organize Articles with Tags

Of course, you need to organize your articles so that you don’t get frustrated. And, the Tags in Pocket are great to do that.

Organize Articles by Tags in Pocket Reader App

Pocket premium plan adds a suitable Tag to your articles automatically and when you need to look for articles on a specific topic, you can sort all your articles by tags.

6. Browser Extension

If you are using Mozilla Firefox then you don’t need to install any kind of browser plugin because Save to Pocket feature is available by default.

But, what if you’re on Chrome or Brave browser?

No worries, Pocket has got you covered. It also has browser extensions/plugins for all the major browsers including Microsoft Edge.

Save to Pocket Browser Addon

7. Sharing Articles with Your Friend

Yes, recently Pocket has launched a feature using which you can share articles and videos to your Pocket friends with just a few clicks and your friend can do the same too.

Sharing Articles to Friends

You can also enable notifications so that you can immediately see what your friend has shared with you.

Automate Your Pocket App

I use Twitter a lot and have come through a lot of great articles on Twitter. And, now I have set up automation which saves all my liked tweets containing a link to my Pocket list.

To do this, I used an IFTTT Recipe which you will need to authorize with your Twitter as well as the Pocket account and done.

Save Links from Liked Tweets to Pocket

There are many other kinds of Pocket related automation recipes in IFTTT which you can use to supercharge your productivity.

Pocket vs Instapaper

Well, I see no major differences between these two except the cross-device and cross-platform compatibility. Pocket is available for almost all the devices and all the operating systems whereas Instapaper lacks a bit in this.

Below are a few differences between the two:

  • Instapaper gives a kind of clean and minimalist newspaper feel but Pocket looks a kind of modern and colorful.
  • Instapaper costs $29.99 yearly whereas Pocket costs $44.99 yearly.
  • Instapaper has an additional feature of adding custom notes to any section of the article but Pocket doesn’t have.
  • Instapaper has many fonts in the free version but Pocket only has 2 fonts in the free version.
  • The Text-to-Speech feature on Pocket works a lot better than that of the Instapaper.
  • Pocket lets you search the best articles on any topic but Instapaper doesn’t.

Migrating from Instapaper to Pocket

So, if you decide to migrate from Instapaper to Pocket without losing any of the previously saved articles, this section will help you do that.

Here’s the 2-step simple process:

#1. Login to your Instapaper account in the web browser on PC and navigate to the Settings tab and export all your saves as HTML.

Navigate to Instapaper Settings and Export to HTML Format

#2. Now, open this Pocket link in your web browser and import the downloaded HTML file.

Import Instapaper to Pocket

Instantly, all your articles from Instapaper will be migrated to the Pocket.

Wrapping it up

I love the Pocket Reader App and specifically the IFTTT automation – whenever I like a tweet containing a link to an article, it automatically gets saved to my Pocket list and if I mark an item as a favourite, it automatically gets tweeted.

If you’re into blogging or a student, you must use the Pocket app to save articles so that you never miss any important ones.

And, always make sure to sync and offline download your content before travelling or leaving the internet zone.

That’s it.

Now, it’s your turn.

Which app do you like the most – Pocket, Instapaper, or any other?

Let me know your thoughts by dropping a quick comment right now.

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2 Comments

  1. What this article does not address is that any recipes save to Pocket are not save complete. I have experienced this many times when I have save recipes for later reading only to discover ingredients or steps are missing!

    1. DeepakNess says:

      I still use the Pocket app and haven’t experienced anything like that yet. Can you share more information on this? What’s the exact problem you’re facing?

      Thanks.