Mozilla's recent announcement about the shutdown of its Pocket service has taken many users by surprise. We wanted to share some thoughts as a farewell message to Pocket and to talk about the available options for Pocket users looking for a new platform.
Pocket and the early days of wallabag
Back in 2013, Google decided to kill one of its most famous product, Google Reader. As a Pocket user at that time, Nicolas asked himself what would happen to his data and all these saved articles if Pocket decided to do the same. Then, wallabag was born. Well, it was known under the name "poche" in its early days, which means "pocket" in French, and for the fun fact, the change of name is a result of a trademark issue with... Pocket's company, Read It Later, Inc. Therefore, poche became wallabag in early 2014.
Here are some articles if you want to read more about this backstory:
In 2017 Mozilla Corporation announced the acquisition of Pocket and planned to open-source the server part, which was never fully done.
So Long, and Thanks for all the Fish, Pocket; Or we should say: thanks for pushing us to change our name and thanks for streamlining read-it-later apps.
Surviving the web by being open
It's always bittersweet to watch a service shutting down, especially when this one was widely known and used. Omnivore is another read-it-later service that was shut down in late 2024. In both cases it was the decision of a for-profit coproration killing a product they bought. Mozilla explained that their decision was made because "the web and the way we are using it changed a lot". Even though this statement is true, we still strongly believe in giving power to people and helping them to keep control of their data and privacy.
That's why we still continue to develop wallabag, 12 years after its creation.
You are a Pocket user? Read this
Further reading from Mozilla:
Now that Pocket is expected to close this year, what to do if you are a user?
The most important thing is to ask an export of your data, ideally an export that could include the content that has been fetched with the links. This will at least let you keep the list of links you've saved over time.
Then if you are seeking for an alternative to Pocket to continue saving articles, here are some ideas:
- You can self-host your own wallabag instance
- Or you can subscribe to wallabag.it if you don't want to manage anything
- You can also find other wallabag instances through CHATONS
wallabag is not the only read-it-later app available, you can also take a look at Readeck and Raindrop, to name a few.
End words
We would like to thank the community and the users and remind you that wallabag is a free and open-source software. You can use it freely, host it and also contribute to it.
The work on this project is mostly done on our free time so, if you are able and want to, don't hesitate to donate to wallabag through Liberapay.
Feel free to come chatting with us on matrix or the fediverse :)
Happy reading.