The best Pocket alternatives for Mac in 2026

Pocket is gone, and the useful question now is what replaces it. Mozilla announced the shutdown on 22 May 2025. The apps stopped working on 8 July 2025, the website stayed open only for exports, and on 12 November 2025 that closed too and account deletion began.

So everyone looking for a Pocket alternative now is in one of two places. Either an export file is sitting in a Downloads folder, or nothing was exported. Both are covered below, followed by the apps worth moving to and what each one costs today.

Can you still use an old Pocket export?

Yes, and it is worth finding. Pocket's final export arrived as a .zip file holding a spreadsheet (a CSV) of your saved links, with each link's title, address, the date you saved it, its tags and whether it was unread or archived. Older exports were a single web page called ril_export.html holding the same links under Unread and Read Archive headings.

Neither one contains the articles themselves, only the links. Pocket Premium kept a permanent copy of most saved articles, but that copy was never part of the export. Any page that has since gone offline is gone, whatever the file says.

To see what is in yours, drop the .zip or the .html into our free Bookmarks Converter. It opens either kind in your browser, without uploading anything, and lists your links under Unread and Archive (Read Archive in the older file). It can also turn them into a plain list, a CSV or a bookmarks file that most of the apps below can import.

If nothing was exported, there is no way back in. Mozilla queued every account for permanent deletion on 12 November 2025, so there is nobody to ask for a copy.

The best Pocket alternatives

Pocket did two jobs for most people: a queue of articles to read later, and a pile of links worth keeping. Most apps below are built for the first job. Muse is built for the second.

Muse: our pick if you saved more than articles

Muse is our own Mac app, so weigh this accordingly. It has no reading view: it does not strip ads or read articles aloud, and it is not a place to read an article later. It keeps a picture of each page and the start of its text, so you can search for it. What it does is keep everything you save on your own Mac: links become living bookmarks with their title, favicon and key image, next to your screenshots, images and notes, all searchable. Your old Pocket links come in with their tags, dates and Pocket's own groups intact (steps below). It costs $29 once, for Apple Silicon Macs running macOS 14 or later, with a 14-day free trial and no card.

Instapaper: the closest thing to Pocket

Instapaper does what Pocket did: save an article, read it later in a clean view. The free plan covers unlimited articles, folders and syncing. Premium is $5.99 a month or $59.99 a year and adds full-text search, a permanent archive, a PDF reader and unlimited notes. It runs on the web, iPhone, Android and Kobo, and on Kindle with Premium. There is no native Mac app, though the iPhone app runs on Apple Silicon Macs, and it has its own Pocket import page.

GoodLinks: the read-later app made for Apple devices

GoodLinks costs $9.99 once and runs on iPhone, iPad and Mac. That price includes a year of new features; after that, new features need an optional $4.99 a year, but the app keeps working and getting fixes either way. It needs no account, syncs through your own iCloud and stores the full text of articles on your device. Highlights export as Markdown, and its help pages list Pocket among the services it imports from.

Readwise Reader: for people who highlight everything

Reader is the most capable reading app here. It handles articles, newsletters, RSS feeds and PDFs, with highlighting at its core. It comes only with the full Readwise plan, $9.99 a month billed yearly or $12.99 billed monthly, and there is a 30-day free trial but no free plan. It imports Pocket's .zip as it is, with no need to unzip it.

Raindrop.io: for organising thousands of links

Raindrop.io is a bookmark manager with apps for Mac, iPhone and Android and extensions for every main browser. The free plan has unlimited bookmarks and collections, plus highlights and a clean reading view. Pro is $3 a month or $28 a year and adds full-text search, permanent copies of pages, and a finder for duplicate and broken links. Its import page lists Pocket's HTML export; to bring in the final zipped export, convert it to HTML first.

wallabag and Karakeep: the open source options

Both can run free on your own server. wallabag is a read-later app; its hosted version, wallabag.it, is €11 a year, and it imports Pocket with tags and read status kept. It has apps for iPhone, Android and Kobo and PocketBook e-readers, but no official Mac app. Karakeep saves links, notes and images and tags them with AI. Its cloud plan is $4 a month or $40 a year, the free cloud plan stops at 50 bookmarks, and it reads Pocket's CSV directly. It has no native Mac app.

Matter is the one popular name missing here: it has no Mac app, and we could not confirm its current price.

How do you move a Pocket export into Muse?

1. Open the export in the converter. Drop Pocket's .zip, or the older ril_export.html, into the Bookmarks Converter.
2. Download it as HTML. Choose HTML, then Download. You get a standard bookmarks file with your tags, dates and Pocket's own groups.
3. Import it into Muse. In Muse, choose File, then Import Bookmarks, and pick that file. Pocket's groups, such as Unread and Archive, become collections.

Muse also reads the older ril_export.html directly, without the converter; this guide walks through that route.

What should a Pocket replacement promise this time?

Pocket was run by Mozilla, a large and established organisation, and it still closed. Before trusting another app with years of links, ask three things.

1. Can you export at any time, in a format you can open? An export you can use today is worth more than a promise about tomorrow.
2. Does it work without an account? An account on one company's servers is something that company can switch off.
3. Is anything kept on your own device? A save stored locally survives whatever happens to the company that made the app.

Muse keeps its library as plain folders on your Mac, with no account, and can export it whenever you like. GoodLinks needs no account and keeps your library on your devices and in your own iCloud. Instapaper, Readwise Reader and Raindrop.io let you export at any time, but the main copy of your library sits on their servers. Self-hosted wallabag or Karakeep keep it on a server you run yourself.