Pocket: Stay Informed Reviews

by Sherryist

So I’ve been using this app since the day it launched and I consider myself a friend of Pocket . I’ve watched it grow and I’ve love so many of the features. However, I also feel like this app missed the mark on it’s sweet spot and has made so many “improvements” that they hurt the productivity of Pocket itself. For example, I thought it was so great when you incorporated the voice reading. I myself am a busy person and sometimes I don’t have time to read what I want versus what I’m required to read. This tool used to be decent. However, now you can’t get even the most basic article to replay back to you. I’m talking Wikipedia here folks. I used to love to line up articles to read and then get in the shower and let them play. Not anymore. Pocket freezes or gives up play halfway through even one article. Then it fails to move on to the next. It’s so inconsistent that I barely use it anymore because it’s such a waste of time.

Edit: Per the recommendation from this app, I reached out and sent several videos of the issue to their technical support. Not only was the issue NOT resolved but the person I spoke with implied that it’s not an issue and it’s by brand new iPad’s problem even though it’s also happening on my phone which I shared. I don’t know what happened to you all but I’m glad I’m not a Premium account now.

by AT Bangkok

this app used to be my absolute favorite app. I used it constantly for the text to speech function, which made reading much easier when commuting or engaged in mundane tasks. Then Pocket had a soft relaunch where the focus was placed on turning articles into quasi-podcasts. I couldn’t have been more pleased, until I found how poorly the changes were designed. Without exaggeration, this app crashes at least nine times out of ten when I try to use the text to speech function. This is an app that worked perfectly fine in text to speech mode before the developers decided to make tts a central feature!

I would happily give this app a five star review and pay for premium of it actually worked. It would be a great pleasure to retract this review of the developers could fix whatever is wrong with this app so I don’t have to open it with reluctance thinking “maybe I’ll get lucky and it will work without crashing this time” (as it very occasionally does). I wouldn’t be so annoyed if it weren’t the case of an app that worked perfectly becoming virtually unusable - at least insofar as how I use it - due to ostensible improvements. Please fix Pocket.

by Tommy 22's

Every time I sign on and see something new, meaning you guys did a new update, I shake my head like "oh no, what isn't going to be working now?" Like clockwork, now I can't add tags, at all. First off, as of yesterday, I could click on "add tags" and type a letter or two of the tag, it'd search and come up with the word, I'd click on it and be done. As of today, it doesn't search for the tag, so I put the whole word in, but can't click on "save", so there's no tag function working now. Of course this is only on desktop, I have no idea what you guys messed up on the mobile version. If you really wanted to "support" your customers "technically", you'd revert Pocket and program to the functionality it had 7 or 8 years ago, it just worked, everything just worked, perfectly, every update you guys have done since then has made it "look nicer", but everytime it breaks some other function that I used to love about it, then by the time that's fixed I'm just thinking oh no what isnt going to be working now, it’s a great way to lose customers

by Lee-Zammer

This once was a serious app that allowed for much flexibility in how it was used. If you were taking a long hike, you could load hours of reading material for both eyes-on reading (when you were taking a break) as well as audible read-to-you content (for paying attention to the trail). This functionality was stripped many months ago. Now, if you’re not on the grid, forget such access. You must be connected to the Internet simply to read your saved articles.

In audible mode, the text used to scroll with a highlight of what was being read. This is much how Kindle for iOS works when you have Audible content installed. It’s not particularly necessary for light reading. But for non-fiction, where there are names, and terms, and complex explanations, you may well want to stop the read-to-you mode and examine the text more carefully. This is now totally broken in this app.

If you stop the audio you will be dumped at the beginning of the article. You’re now expected to scroll around attempting to figure out where you stopped the audio. this app doesn’t even provide a simple text search. This is so high friction that attempting this once or twice will dissuade you from ever trying to find the part of the article you want to read closely.

It’s a fair app for consuming simple, short and unsophisticated material. But if you aim higher, this app will fail you.

by Nessell

I'm a frequent user but I have always despised the tags feature. It is absolutely not convenient to use in terms of searching up articles simply by typing the tag word in the search bar. The search bar is only useful for searching words in the title of the article. I do not like having to manually rake through the countless tabs to find the one I'm looking for so I can find the corresponding articles. It makes zero sense to me why this app has not improved this over the past several years. Who wants a search bar that cannot filter articles according by tag words? That defeats the point of tags. That alone takes away two stars.

It's been over a week since the "Save to this app" sharing function stopped working and I've resorted to saving them to my Bear or Evernote apps. Looking forward to this being resolved ASAP.

Otherwise, great app. Just. Fix. The. Tabs. Search. Function. And fix the bug preventing users from saving to this app.

by Notnalias

I use this app regularly, but can’t believe they’ve still been unable to fix something that’s been now broken for years. Before, if you wanted to share an article w a small grp of folks, let’s call them regulars, you’d just highlight a box/circle, click send and they’d get it. This functionality was removed more than 3 years ago. Why? I don’t know. When I contacted you guys you said you were working on it. From the evidence, you weren’t and you aren’t. this app is by your omission, much less useful and I share far fewer links than I did. I don’t like retyping addresses of regulars, so I rarely do. If this is your intention, you’ve succeeded. It’s still pretty good for saving most articles/links of interest, but clearly some sites seem to be designed/built to not be viewed enjoyed by this app users later. That’s their and our loss.

Beginning recently (Oct 2019) this app’s gotten significantly worse. Now I can even the above, irritating technique. Now I have to open an email app to share. Great, yet another extra step. How is it your new, “improved” (sarcasm mine) versions get worse. I’ll continue to use this app, but I won’t recommend it.

Since 2021 it’s become still less user friendly. I still use it, but, oh well.

by GrA.V

I LOVE Pocket. But after downloading it I get this recurring error message on my iPhone that says “Unable to download file.” This error repeatedly popped up a couple times each day for over two years. It doesn’t matter whether I click “Cancel” or “Try Again”.

This error is one of the reasons I WIPED my phone entirely and didn’t transfer the apps and settings - because that just brought the error back. Instead I’m setting up manually and the error was fixed until I loaded this app again.

I don’t think this is Pocket itself, I think I saved something to this app that wasn’t the article but a download link. But it took me years to figure that out. I think the developer should help this app detect when an item isn’t saving as it should, and either cancel it or give the user more info to help find the problem. Thanks

by Doggrowl

I’ve used this app for years now and subscribe to Premium. Overall, Pocket does what it’s supposed to; making for an excellent way of storing nearly anything for later viewing.

However, I don’t understand the logic of having to click multiple things to share or recommend articles, adding to one’s favorites, or adding to a custom folder. It’s tedious!
Instapaper has a button one can click to add to one’s “Likes” (favorites) list, as well as sharing the item to a social network, all with a single tap! this app could really use such a customizable feature to speed up the process of not only reading but also sharing things with others. As well as sorting content as desired.

Some of the buttons in the article list are not properly labeled for VoiceOver accessibility. The Search and other menu options are labeled with a random set of characters, and have not been fixed after I’ve made reports to support about that issue.

Lastly, Pocket tends to crash when browsing the Recommended list of articles. It’s one of the best features offered by this app, but again, reports of crashes have gone unanswered.

That’s why I give this the lower rating. If Instapaper didn’t have its own crashing issues, I’d simply use that. But I believe this app is superior, but has these minor annoyances which actually add up to using additional time to complete simple tasks (IMO).
Again, it’s nice, but could be so much better!

by Kosi124

UPDATE: the developer contacted me directly to let me know this issue is fixed, so I've updated my rating and am happy with Pocket once again. I appreciate the responsiveness and am so happy I can use Pocket the way I want to.

I have used this app for years to store and read articles, and it has worked flawlessly. Recently I discovered the listen feature and was able to enjoy more content by listening when I wasn't able to read. However all of a sudden Pocket started crashing when invoking the read feature, and now crashes even on simply opening. I have deleted Pocket , restarted the phone, and redownloaded Pocket , to no avail. Reluctantly I'm now looking at switching to Instapaper. I'm loyal to apps that work well, but can't keep waiting for this to get fixed.

by I Love My Freaking IPhone

I don't know what I'd do without this glorious app. In a world of essential tools to organize, entertain and complete your life, I highly recommend the this app app in the top five of your infinite list of never-ending useful applications. I use it everyday. It's quite addictive! I organize countless articles, videos, bits of information from all over the internet in one easy to navigate and highly efficient place and the most important detail of all. The freaking app never let's me down. I can't say the same for a lot of the other apps. This one does its job and allows you to enjoy its purpose without bugs, crashes, or anything else that'll get in the way of your happiness. Great job guys!

Suggestion to the creators of this wonderful app. If you ever decide to make any significant changes... Don't you dare. Create a second app and call it this app II. Don't mess with perfection. It's the demise of most great products. Ain't broke, don't fix it!

Footnote: Any chance we can get a search and scroll feature on the widget, so we can locate links without going directly to Pocket ?

by Brady Bisel

Been using Pocket since it was first available. Love love love it. I want to put this out there in case Pocket designers might consider it, but when adding tags to articles, it’d be nice to slide the screen down so that you can see the article because sometimes I simply forget what I was tagging and have to exit Pocket and look again at the article and then go back into this app and re-save with tags. It would almost be nice if tagging was only half the screen with the ability to scroll up or down in the article yet if you want to explore some more tags. But the main suggestion being the ability to simply slide the screen down to see the article behind it instead of the “save to this app” screen.

by Al Havemann

I really love Pocket, I use it constantly, I only wish it were cheaper. I’d be happy to pay $5-10 dollars one time for it but unfortunately the current subscription pricing scheme pretty much rules that out.

You see, once you set reoccurring subscriptions they can run on forever, and that’s a real issue. I know several widows that I’ve spent hours with trying to stop them after their husband passed away.

I’m not young anymore, thing happen and if I were to subscribe the subscription may run on forever since my wife is, to say the least, non-technical.

So if something happened to me she wouldn’t have the slightest clue what’s going on, why are these things showing up on a credit card and have no idea how to stop them.

Problems of re-occurring charges could go on for months, even years, so I can’t do it.

So a sincere “Sorry” to the authors. I wish there were a direct purchase at a reasonable price, but it is what it is. I subscribe to the Wall St. Journal, the paper edition, I’d like to have the digital as well but the same issue exists. My wife understands a news paper and how to cancel it, digital, no way.

But thank you for this app even without the premium app. I highly recommend it everyone as an essential tool.

by Johnhh04

I love Pocket even more since I discovered the ability to have the article read to me. I constantly come across articles that I want to read but don’t have time to read it in the moment. Pocket allows you to save across all browsers and devices. The biggest problem I have always had with saving something to read later is the fact that I don’t return to actually read it because of time. But today I was up early and opened Pocket because I wanted to read an article that I saved yesterday and when I did this I noticed the headphone icon. I clicked the icon and it started reading the article. So today I was able to catch up on a dozen articles. Now I love Pocket even more.

by AnimewithFood

i started off using apple’s ibooks for saving fanfiction that i really liked. i had been using it for 2-3 years and i loved that it could save stories as PDFs so that if the webpage was no longer available, i’d have a copy. recently, i updated my phone and a whole bunch of my stories were gone and i was so devastated because the webpages have been taken down ),: this app is a nice alternative to ibooks because none of my files have disappeared! the only small thing i have is that the main interface seems so cluttered and i wish i could put my stuff into categories instead of tags because it looks cleaner and be able to merge different articles because i have multiple chapters of a story but i have no way of connecting them. all in all, this app is a wonderful app! 💓

by Simoun31

Update July 2021: still my top 5 most used apps. Still hogging my storage and need to manually delete downloaded files. Update March 2010: voice just keeps on getting better. Now it is already at the level where you can use it everyday and understand the articles. Thanks again! Downloaded files still hog my device storage and need to be manually deleted from time to time. Hope a fix is scheduled sometime in the future. Been a user for years since the ReadItLater and prior days. Great new UI. Please keep it up! The voice reader is better as well. The check/read button is a tad more difficult to reach using the thumb. Hope the downloaded files get to be auto deleted as well in future releases. Thanks for the continuous app updates!

by Bina Bully Mom

Wish I could read an article to follow along while listening at the same time sometimes. Pocket has been great otherwise.
Definitely has helped optimized news reads for me and now I consume much more constructively.
So much news is happening all the time now I had been having news article ADD and not a good way of going back to a story I didn’t finish. Then I tried Pocket and have been super happy and much more organized.
Maybe an update where you can read and listen so you can see graphs and visuals if you are sitting and listening anyway. I have always struggled to read for long periods of time so the listening feature was kind of what I was looking for when I found Pocket. Still it works well and I use it often.

by John Johanna

This incredible app helps me focus on great stories and spend my device-time in a more positive, constructive, productive and fulfilling ways. Scrolling through Apple News today left me feeling empty. So I hopped over to this app and read 3 stories that I had saved. One article I read, I’d saved from the this app content feed in the Firefox New Tab — THE reason to switch to Firefox is to get this app article recommendations BTW (and ALSO better privacy). On the bus today, rather than reading crap, or scrolling through attention-grabbing headlines on Apple and Google news, I read an article about the gut microbiome, the state of glaciers in Alaska, and an article for work. And I learned something. this app is my favorite first-screen app that keeps me from wasting time on Insta/other places...and helps me stay sane, get smarter, focus on the things I care about. 6-stars for this app. 😀

by Lea Kleinhenz

I’ve used this app for awhile now and so far I have to say that Pocket is amazing. It does it’s job and never crashes, and it doesn’t lag or have any trouble loading any articles either. I’ve seen other apps that offer this service make you pay for them. While Pocket does have a premium that you can upgrade too, the free version works perfectly. The articles offered in Pocket are interesting and fun to read as well. I have no complaints for Pocket whatsoever, as if I did, it would have less than five stars. Don’t take only my word for it however, download Pocket or read the reviews!
There’s a reason Pocket has an “App of The Day” reward, it’s honestly perfect. I haven’t had any crashes or awkward send-offs since I’ve downloaded and used Pocket . If you figure out to not like it, that’s fine too, however I must recommend that you try it out.

by Cb4ujudge

For months now I’ve been using this app to capture articles and stories of interest, primarily from browsers, either on my phone, my tablet, or my PC. The user interface to capture articles could not be more simple. I often find I do not have the time to read an article immediately, so I save it to this app so I can leisurely read it later on. This also saves me time having to look up the article since I might not even remember where I saw it. The other benefit is that this app removes all the annoying advertisements and links that distract you while reading. I also like the fact that this app organizes all of your saved articles in one place allowing me to print an article or share with a friend later on. I’ve shared my love of this app with many other individuals - all who have thanked me very much for sharing such a timesaving and convenient tool for capturing information of interest.

by MissRidiculous

A powerful organizational tool. I think both extremes of personality types would benefit—the type who needs organization done for them but also the type who can’t function without organization.
As long as you take the time to create tags, keeping the articles organized is super fast.
Then you don’t need your 10 different sources of articles in your life, only this one.
As we are bombarded with new information not just daily but all day long, this is a complete necessity.
You take each article you are interested in as you come across it, and simply hit your share button which will have your links to text, email, and social media, and will also now have your “this app” icon. You share it to this app, and if you have tags set up it’s even better to instantly organize.
So then you won’t have to save that email anymore that told you to go to that link, you trash that, you don’t have to save a news article to your browser folders or to any news app, you won’t have to save any articles in folders on your social media apps. You can delete all that info in all those inboxes, and have all your articles in one place, in a format that removes all those annoying pop-ups!
Then when you are at a better time of day (or at a later date), you can peacefully read all your articles in one place, grouped into topics you can pick to read as a group, whichever topic you feel like at the moment, all collected in one place.

by Keep On Laitening

I absolutely love Pocket and solution for being able to listen to blogs that are worth listening but don’t have to read.

Glitches:
-the status on how far you’re in on listening to the post isn’t working (it’s always frozen on the beginning) or partially works if you press stop/resume inside Pocket .
-the listening stage doesn’t get updated on the lock screen of the phone so you can t quickly glimpse how much you have left tot go.
-if you hide the in-pp listening mode playvirw it won’t continue listening in the background and what’s even worse is when you go back to the listening view it won’t remember where you were but instead starts from the beginning.
-the listening speed adjustment button doesn’t work seamlessly- sometimes you have to stop and adjust and then resume but it doesn’t adjust on the fly while you’re listening.
-LinkedIn blog posts are not a supported format for listening.
-some rare posts get clipped prematurely / the reader doesn’t accurately read what’s the end of the post.
-there should be an option to automatically mark the posts as listened / move to archive as you move to the next.

I hope these glitches get fixed as have been looking for such a solution and already a power user.

by Acarroll1

I’ve been using this app for years! I travel for my job and it’s great to be able to save articles/stories to read later while in airplane mode. However, if there’s one feature I’d like with the next update it would be the option to not include already tagged items in Pocket badge count. I have over 150+ articles/stories that I’ve already read that I haven’t deleted and chose to tag so I could refer to them later if needed. You can select to only see untagged items, but already read and tagged items are still included in the badge count making it impossible to know exactly how many items I’ve yet to read at a glance. If the option was added to be able to not include already tagged items in Pocket ’s badge count that would absolutely make Pocket 5 stars!

by Kosi723

UPDATE: the developer contacted me directly to let me know this issue is fixed, so I've updated my rating and am happy with Pocket once again. I appreciate the responsiveness and am so happy I can use Pocket the way I want to.

I have used this app for years to store and read articles, and it has worked flawlessly. Recently I discovered the listen feature and was able to enjoy more content by listening when I wasn't able to read. However all of a sudden Pocket started crashing when invoking the read feature, and now crashes even on simply opening. I have deleted Pocket , restarted the phone, and redownloaded Pocket , to no avail. Reluctantly I'm now looking at switching to Instapaper. I'm loyal to apps that work well, but can't keep waiting for this to get fixed.

by Hms271

Reasons I love this app:
- some website are full of adds and other things that make scrolling difficult. Save to this app and see the text only.
- read off line on my flight
- background is set to sepia color and text larger. Easy on the eyes
- I see something I like and wanna read. It may disrupt my task at hand. So I save it to this app and will be there to read.
- store all the articles I like. And if I am even I a situation “one time I read” I can just search it and find it in my archive. I don’t have to try to remember where I read it.
- save recipes. All my cooking is here
- after a while it’s like a resource of all the good stuff on a topic. For example, a friend asked me about hiring. So I searched my archive on this app for all the articles that when I read I though were worthy of archiving on hiring. Within a minutes I sent him 5 solid helpful articles.
- I save from recommended/ popular articles if I have nothing saved or didn’t have time to save something good and my flight is taxing.
I could probably come up with few more. But the best really is when I want to read something and I am annoyed by the layout/ adds I just this app it and open it in this app. Clean and comfortable to read.

by Pcman3550

I love being able to save articles for reading, especially when I take long flights were there is no internet access. Pocket does a great job of including graphics and tables from most articles and at the same time left out the ads. For some reason, it is unable to include graphics from a few articles that I found of interest. I can only assume that the internet page includes ads and may not be able to discriminate between an ad and an actual article graphic. This may likely be because of how some ads are peppered between paragraphs. I found this a little difficult when the article referred to an illustration that was missing. In any case, this is very nice app and highly recommend it.

by David_Burns_Red

I don’t know how I ever lived before this app. I use it to save everything I want to reference later—whether it's a web article, product I might buy, or just to share links easily between my devices. It's one of the most useful services I have ever used. It really is the “Save button for the Internet”.

Suggestions:
- The UI in version 7 is a lot more spread out and has a lot of empty space, making Pocket feel “blown up” when viewed on the iPhone Plus. I prefer the more compact UI of the previous version. It would be nice if there was a setting in Pocket ’s options to control the scale of the UI. I would prefer to see more articles listed with smaller photo thumbnails so I don’t have to scroll as much.