Pocket shut down. Here is where to save links on iPhone now

What Pocket did for you

Pocket combined a few things in one app: a button to save a page from anywhere, a clean reader view with the article text saved for offline reading, tags, and a feed of recommendations. Most people leaned on one or two of those, not all four.

Decide which job you need done

• You read long articles later, often offline. You need a reader app that downloads the article text and gives you a distraction-free view. Safari's built-in Reading List is a free start on iPhone, and there are dedicated read-it-later services if you want highlights and more.
• You mostly collect links to recipes, products, tutorials, places, videos, and come back to them when you need them. You need a link keeper: fast saving, a visible preview so you recognise things, sorting by topic, and search.

Stashful is the second kind. It is not a reader app: it keeps the link with its title, description and thumbnail, not an offline copy of the article. If a reader view was the reason you used Pocket, pick a reader. If you used Pocket as a place to throw links, read on.

Saving links into topic chats

In Stashful every link is a message in a chat, and every chat is a topic. That replaces Pocket's single list plus tags with something closer to how you think about links: "Recipes", "Things to buy", "Watch later".

1. Share from any app. In Safari, YouTube, a news app or a social app, tap Share and pick Stashful. Choose the chat and add a comment if you like. The Share Sheet guide covers the details.
2. Or paste it. Paste a URL into any chat and it unfolds into a preview.
3. Add a word of context. A line like "gift for Anna" or "try in October" next to the link is what makes it useful later, and search will find it.
4. Find it again. Tap the Links filter to see only links in a chat, or search across all chats. Tags work across chats too.

Bringing your old Pocket links

Stashful doesn't import a Pocket export file. Honestly, that is often a blessing: most saved-for-later lists are full of things you'll never open. If you downloaded your data before the export window closed, go through it once and paste the links you still care about into the right chats. Each pasted link gets its preview automatically.

Privacy of saved links

There is no Stashful account and no Stashful server. To build a preview, your iPhone fetches the page's title, description and thumbnail directly from that website; the link isn't sent to us or to a third-party preview service. Your links, together with the rest of your messages and tags, sync through your private iCloud under your Apple ID. Starting with version 1.2, photos, videos, voice notes and files you save alongside them sync too, through your iCloud Drive; with iCloud Drive off, they stay only on your iPhone.

A structure that stays tidy

Pocket's single list encouraged saving everything and sorting nothing. A few topic chats work better than dozens of tags, because the decision happens once, at the moment you save:

• Favorites as the inbox. Anything you can't place right now goes here. Clear it once a week.
• One chat per real use. "Recipes", "To buy", "Watch later", "Work reading". If you can't name what you'll do with a link, it probably belongs in the inbox, or nowhere.
• Tags for status, not topic. Use To-do or Important across chats for the links that need action, and let the chat carry the subject.
• Delete freely. A link you have not opened in six months is rarely one you need. Keeping the list short is what makes it worth opening.

What it costs

Saving links is free. The free plan includes five topic chats plus the built-in Favorites chat, and there is no limit on how many links you keep. Stashful Pro ($2.99 a month or $19.99 a year in the US, with a 7-day free trial on the yearly plan) adds unlimited chats, bigger files, longer voice notes and unlimited tags. Chat export is free on every plan.

Questions