Read It Later

Pocket billed a premium subscription for years, then Mozilla shut the service down in 2025, and anyone who had not exported saved articles in time lost them for good. Read It Later is a free GTK4 desktop client that logs into a Wallabag account you control, so the thing holding your reading list cannot vanish on a vendor's timetable.

Why Read It Later instead of Pocket

Read It Later covers the daily loop Pocket's app handled: it lists unread, starred and archived articles, adds a new one from a pasted URL, and opens each in a reader view with dark mode and syntax-highlighted code blocks. It also caches articles locally, useful on a laptop that loses wifi more often than a phone does. What it does not do is store anything itself — the app is a window onto a Wallabag instance, self-hosted for free or on a paid wallabag.it plan, and without that account the client shows nothing.

The cost math splits into two pieces where Pocket sold one. The app costs nothing and always will, since it is GPL-3.0 code with no premium tier. The backend can cost nothing too if you self-host Wallabag; a paid hosted plan sits far below what Pocket charged for premium, and no single company can shut it off for everyone at once. The trade-off: Pocket bundled tagging and full-text search into its app, and Read It Later's client does not — the top open issue on the tracker is a still-unresolved request to add tag support.

What it does well

• Adds, archives, deletes and favorites articles against a Wallabag library without opening a browser tab.
• Reader view strips ads and layout clutter, with a dark mode for long evening reading sessions.
• Syntax highlighting in code blocks, useful for anyone who saves technical posts or documentation.
• Caches article content locally so previously opened pieces stay readable on a flight or with no signal.
• Runs as a native GTK4/libadwaita window with its own keyboard shortcuts, not a browser tab.
• Ships as a Flatpak on Flathub, so updates skip your distro's own package timeline.
• Adapts its layout to narrower screens, so it works the same on a Linux phone as on a desktop.

Limitations

• No tagging or search inside the app — the top open issue asks for tag support, and independent reviews on AlternativeTo and kvibber.com both flag this as the main gap versus Pocket.