I want to read this later.

July 7, 2023 4:38 PM

What's your favorite way to save links for later(ish)?

I often find myself in the situation of coming across a link to a story that I want to read later - not, like, six months from now later, but more like "it's 2PM and I don't have time right now, but I want to remember this particular thing after work today".

I was long in the habit of just setting a reminder in Google Calendar for that instance - if I saw a link at 2, I'd set a reminder for like 7, when I know I'll generally have time. Reminders in Gcal are no more, sadly, and while I know I could use Tasks for the same thing, and I'm not opposed to doing so if that's the best way to accomplish this goal, I found myself wondering whether there was a more elegant way of reminding myself of things I want to read later in a given day. For context:

- I use Google products mostly (Chromebook, Android, Chrome at work) but also occasionally Firefox, so platform/browser agnostic is best
- I have a Pocket account. There are links in there that are 2+ years old that I have never read, so it would seem that Pocket or something similar might not be the right solution for me
- I am aware of things like tab grouping in Chrome and tab group extensions for just leaving links open but obscuring them from view, but those tend to become memory holes for me - I put things in tab groups, collapse the group, and within a day forget the group has things I wanted to read in it
- I'm not opposed to an app-based solution as opposed to calendar-based, but given my tendency to put things in Pocket and forget they exist (and then three months later forgetting I even have a Pocket account), any app should maybe have some sort of active reminder function (like being able to set a saved link to remind me in X hours/days or whatever that it is there)

Essentially, I need a short-term solution for generating reminders to read an individual link, not long-term storage for a big pile of links - if I have the former, I will never inadvertently create the latter.

posted by pdb to Technology (18 answers total)

I pin tabs with things I want to read later. I have to use Edge (thanks corporate!) but I can group tabs and pin the group and they don't really get in the way. I used to like del.icio.us but that's long gone. I would probably use Pinboard if I really needed to save things for awhile.

Oh, and there's always Google Keep (which I use as my online zibaldone so for fuck's sake Google you better not kill that one off)
posted by chavenet at 4:47 PM on July 7, 2023 [1 favorite]

I mean I send it to friends or loved ones do when I check the chat thread I see it and read it. Not a perfect system but had worked well for me.
posted by Carillon at 5:18 PM on July 7, 2023 [1 favorite]

See this previous AskMe before you dive into Pinboard. I’m still using it, but I’m careful about backups. Also, long-term storage for a big pile of links describes it exactly. It’s basically a sin eater for closing tabs without guilt.
posted by zamboni at 5:20 PM on July 7, 2023 [2 favorites]

Yeah, I wasn't impressed with Pocket, but that's personal opinion.

I am also the proud participant in a long (and now consolidated) Mozilla Firefox request stream where people are begging to not **only** be able to send tabs to other devices (as long as you sign-on with the same Mozilla ID) but to cut us a break and allow us to delete a tab that we finished reading from all devices. I would describe Mozilla's progress on that request as a tardy form of glacial.

But what I use now you probably don't want to hear. It is a LAMP (Linux Apache MySQL PHP) application that uses a Linux curl script to read in a file of links I have put in a text file (cut and paste from browser using Ctrl-L to get address bar contents, paste into text file). It removes anything after the question mark (the "query string"), grabs the HTTP header information, finds the title element and then creates a different text file in format: http...url :::: title. The MySQL schema is basically text for everything: URLs, tags, titles, extended descriptions. Everything added thru the automated process is tagged with "Inflow" so if you search for that you will get all the stuff you saved this way. By default search hits are presented in descending order by date added (newest first). So in a sense there is an app, I just haven't published it and even if I did it might not be what you want. But feel free to steal the idea or ask me for code if you want.
posted by forthright at 5:27 PM on July 7, 2023

Best answer: I don't keep a bunch of tabs open so if I only have a couple links I want to read, they'll be clearly visible in my browser, so that's usually what I do.

If that's not going to work (if I'm switching between devices, etc.) I'll sometimes put the link into an e-mail draft. I go into my drafts folder a few times a day so I will see it. If there is somewhere similar you look at regularly, use that.
posted by metasarah at 5:29 PM on July 7, 2023 [1 favorite]

Recently I've been using Signal app, on mobile and desktop. When you message yourself (with strong end-to-end encrypt ion), it's marked as a "note to self" and you can easily skim that buffer later that day or the next few, on all your devices for which you've installed Signal.
posted by SaltySalticid at 5:44 PM on July 7, 2023 [2 favorites]

Best answer: Sounds like you could: Put the link in an email in gmail and click "send later" for the time you want to be sent the link.
posted by oddovid at 5:48 PM on July 7, 2023 [2 favorites]

Best answer: I email the link to my personal email so it looks like an unread email.

On my personal computer, the Brave browser will save all your tabs from session to session, even after a computer restart. So if you want to read it later, leave it up.
posted by blnkfrnk at 5:48 PM on July 7, 2023 [1 favorite]

Yeah, many open tabs. Chrome has a 'reopen window' that will get all your tabs back after a restart if they don't naturally reappear.
posted by How much is that froggie in the window at 6:01 PM on July 7, 2023

Best answer: Seconding gmailing to myself with the “send later” - or almost equivalently, gmailing to myself and then snoozing.
posted by Perplexity at 6:25 PM on July 7, 2023

Check out Raindrop.io. It's an online bookmark manager, but when you save a link, there's an option to set a reminder. The free option works fine for me, and you can import your bookmarks and even your Pocket export (which I have done, because I don't want to pay $45 a year to Pocket anymore).
posted by lhauser at 6:36 PM on July 7, 2023 [2 favorites]

I use Obsidian for this.
posted by forbiddencabinet at 7:03 PM on July 7, 2023

I send the link to myself via a text from the actual number on my phone's sim to my Google Voice number. That produces an unread message in GV until I open it obviously.

That leaves me with 2 chances to see it. One, if I use GV later on to send or receive a text, and two, if I happen to look at the messages app on my Android phone.
posted by JohnnyGunn at 9:36 PM on July 7, 2023

Bookmarking them in my account on
https://raindrop.io/

it has free accounts, as well as premium paid accounts.

I have a free account, which works fine for me.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 9:56 PM on July 7, 2023

This is incredibly old school, but has worked well for me for the best part of two decades, but I have a .txt file synced via Dropbox that I can open up and dump links or clippings into (useful for stripping out formatting as well). I can then go through it at leisure, moving things to keep to the bottom of the file. On mobile, I cut and paste links into Google Keep, where I also have individual notes for recipes, things to buy, music, etc. URLs get shunted back and forth between the two systems, occasionally finding their way on a blog as well for good measure.
posted by jonathanbell at 1:40 AM on July 8, 2023

I'm with jonathanbell's appropriate technology. I really only use one device with a LibreOffice document on Desktop called NotesToSelf.odt where I save all my read-later stuff. Most recent at top. I read/sent them when done. Occasionally I'll write the day's date in the list.
posted by BobTheScientist at 6:00 AM on July 8, 2023

I use the reading list option in chrome. It keeps a list of tabs in a side panel that I can open whenever I have more time to read them.
posted by ljesse at 9:52 AM on July 8, 2023 [1 favorite]

I just maintain a text file on my desktop where I copy and paste links of interest, and optionally, text from their pages as well, along with descriptions, as needed. This file's open and handy whenever I'm web-surfing. (Lately, it's been bulking up with whole recipes.) I restart with a blank file (they're named YYYY.txt) every January 1st.
posted by Rash at 12:45 PM on July 8, 2023