Saving sites: Pocket’s bookmarking app and its alternatives - The Verge

Pocket will soon be demanding its users register with Firefox. If you don’t have a Firefox account, here are some alternative bookmarking services.

It’s hard to keep up with all the interesting, important, or just plain fun things you come across on the web. You may come across something you just don’t have time to read right now or want to save because it will come in handy later. But, as most of us have discovered, creating a bookmark on a browser for each article and site that we want to read later can result in a huge bookmarky mess.

Years ago, I started getting the better of this issue by signing into Pocket, a popular and long-standing app that allows you to save a bookmarked article to a separate server and then retrieve it to read at your leisure using either a computer or a mobile device. Pocket has been around since 2007. Originally called Read It Later, it started life as a Firefox browser extension, eventually became its own app, and was acquired by Mozilla in 2017.

Back in February, however, I (and at least one other staff member here at The Verge) opened the app to find a warning that “all existing Pocket accounts will need to convert to a Firefox account by June 30, 2022.” The reason, according to Mozilla, is that “products from Mozilla use Firefox accounts as a centralized and secure account system.” The company goes on to suggest that this is an advantage for the app’s fans since they will now be able to use two-factor authentication and other security features.

If you use Pocket, you’ve probably seen this notice.

However, on June 13th, 2022, we received notice that the update has been postponed and the transition is now set for an undetermined future date. (We will let you know here when that date is fixed.)

Still, if you use Pocket and already have a Firefox account or if you don’t mind creating one, you can still simply convert the account (as of this writing, the instruction page still lists the now-invalid June 30th date) and continue with Pocket as before. And, if you’re reluctant to add a Firefox account for any reason, there are alternative apps that you can use to collect bookmarks for reading material.

https://www.theverge.com/22927750/bookmarks-pocket-firefox-instapaper-raindrop

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