Got Pocket? - Review of Pocket Reader App

There are some apps that seem to have been around forever, but that for some reason, you’ve never really noticed before. Okay, that may just be me, I’ve been known to walk through life with blinders on on occasion. However, it wasn’t until late 2022 that the app in question drifted out of the background and into my online life. The app in question? Pocket. A simple app that has turned out to be a surprisingly useful tool for me. Now, Pocket is one of those ancient apps that has been around since the beginning of the internet, or at least 2007, which for many people amounts to the same thing. It started out life as a browser extension for Firefox, before being spun into a full-scale app. In 2017, Mozilla Corp., the organisation behind the Firefox browser, acquired Pocket, which by that time had 17 million active users. Unfortunately, that‘s about as much as I was able to find out, there doesn‘t seem to be anything more recent available in the public domain.

Personally, I first noticed Pocket a few years ago, on the German language IT news site Heise Online. Whilst intrigued, I didn‘t really pay it much heed. After all, Germany is a country that had successfully weaponised privacy, so any app linked on a niche website like that would probably be hampered considerably by privacy restrictions. Consequently, I arrived to the party suitably late, only really starting to look into Pocket over Christmas 2022, before joining it in January 2023. I guess when the Christmas gifts have been cancelled for budgetary reasons, you have to satiate your instant gratification habit some other way.

So, with all this prattling about, what exactly is Pocket? Well, Wikipedia calls it a „social bookmarking service“, which is about as helpful as calling a tornado a sudden air movement. The best way to describe it would be as a cross-platform reading list & article reader, similar to what you already have in browsers such as Safari or Chrome. Pocket allows you to save articles & pages for later reading, allowing you to read them offline. Articles are displayed in Pocket‘s own reader, with ads being mostly filtered out. And of course, you can sort and tag your articles according to subjects or other criteria. It‘s a simple enough premise. So how does this hold up in real life?

I'll be honest: Pocket is one of hose apps that you never really appreciate until you try it.

I wasn’t expecting much if I’m honest. I’ve tried using Safari’s built-in reader mode in the past and wasn’t terribly impressed, but Pocket has turned out to not only be surprisingly convenient but also an actual pleasure to use. For starter, it’s available across all major mobile device platforms. Whilst phones and tablets get their own dedicated apps, a web app has to suffice for users of Windows or MacOS. Browser extensions are available for all major browsers, with Firefox of course having it built in by default. So getting articles into your particular Pocket library is as easy as clicking a button or selecting the appropriate option from the sharing menu of your mobile device.

Pocket's reader mode in its natural environment - On a couch, accompanied by a coffee. Reading is pretty damn comfortable on that app, as it should be.

Once an article has been “ingested” into Pocket, the convenience continues. Pocket’s default reading view is easy on the eyes in all the right ways. The reader utilises a pleasant font and basically kicks out all of the default formatting of the original source page in favour of its own, much more pleasant layout. Fonts and background are of course customisable, though the selection of fonts is limited for users of the free tier. The same goes for the number of tags available to organise the library, but to be honest, I’ve never felt in any way restricted or restrained by that. There is also an audio reader available, however this is just your basic text-to-speech functionality, with no fancy voices available. But hey, if it’s good enough for the God Emperor of Mankind… In all seriousness though, Pocket is a classic example of a simple concept done well, a combination of article reader and cross-device reading list that combines the best aspects of both.

Whether it's on my couch at home...

...or in one of the break areas at work, I've found myself using pocket much more often than I'd initially expected.

But of course, this is the internet, so before someone else comes running to blurt out the downsides, I’ll do it myself. At least that way, I can ensure that it’s done properly. And to be fair, the list of negatives is thankfully pretty short. For starters, the browser extensions have a tendency to log you out when you least expect it, which has caused quite a bit of scrambling around to log back in, especially since this invariably happens at the most inconvenient time, Murphy’s Law and all that. In addition, Pocket is sometimes a bit too generous when it comes to grabbing articles, grabbing some embedded ads as well and integrating them into the main body of the article. For some reason, the Irish Times seems to be particularly vulnerable to this, as if I needed another reason to dislike that paper. Finally, and to be faire this is not really Pocket’s fault, some websites simply do not work with the service, allowing Pocket to only grab the paywalled version of an article, even when you’re a paid subscriber and logged in with your account. Surprisingly, it is not some greedy tabloid or self-important German news site that is the biggest culprit in this regard, but the Wall Street Journal.

In addition, in the months between me finishing the first draft of this blog post and its eventual publication, pocket pushed out a major new update for the app. And while the general gist of this post still remains the same, I find it difficult to label this latest update an improvement, at least on iPads. With this latest update, the home screen of the app gets a major new update, something that is indeed very welcome, as the previous layout didn't really do it for me. Unfortunately, the revamped Saves screen undoes a lot of the improvements that were made on the Home Screen. Previously, the Saves would be neatly organised into tiles, making it easy to see what you had on your reading list while also looking good. With the latest major update, all of that is gone, replaced instead with a straightforward list and a *lot* of wasted space on iPad. That change was actually the primary reason for my delay in publishing this blog post. I simply wasn't sure whether the new version of the app was still something I could recommend.

Whilst I really appreciate the new Home view that was introduced in the latest update to Pocket,...

...I'm not really a fan of the massive amount of wasted space that is now present in the Saves view.

However, at the end of the day, these are all minor issues. In general, Pocket executes its simple concept surprisingly well. It is a joy to use and has quickly become a mainstay of my weekend mornings or slow work-from-home starts, which now generally start with me catching up on some reading on the sofa with a cup of coffee. I guess there’s no bigger endorsement of the concept than that Pocket has caused me to slow down and read more again. In this day of “Hustle Culture” and upheaval, this is something we could all do with a little more.