4w ago

Manage things "To be Read"

I am looking for a tool/workflow, with which I can manage a collection of all the stuff I see on the internet and elsewhere, that they are worth reading at a time in one place.

This includes:

blog articles I randomly find on the internet
social media posts
news articles from RSS feeds
books (pdf,epub,...)
wikipedia articles
topics I want to do further research on
aso...

A lot of these things are bookmarks, I know that. I tried to manage my "ToBeRead" list in bookmarks before, but it didnt work out for me, because some things simply aren't URLs, that can be bookmarked (e.g. PDFs, just names of research topics).

Besides that, longer threads on mastodon/lemmy e.g. can be easily bookmarked in the app itself, but than you start to manage multiple lists in multiple locations, which I want to avoid.

I am running my own Nextcloud instance and would like to also sync this stuff across devices with it.

I figured out (while using obsidian) that my brain works better when I dont have to worry about where to put things, but just tag them with topics, by relevance, e.g. So tags and the option to filter them would be nice!

Thanks beforehand :)

Edit: Doimg this with Nextcloud Deck, or synching an Obsidian Vault with Nextcloud came up to my mind, but I couldn't come up with an idea for a conveniant workflow, but maybe it's easier than I think?

32 comments

I use Linkwarden. It’s similar to Raindrop, as mentioned by the other comment, but self hosted. It even creates archived copies of saved pages, similar to archive.org. My Links is a community made iOS client for it, and there’s an android client as well which I don’t know the name of.
Another popular option is Karakeep. It seems to have slightly more features, and it’s been a hit since I’ve tried it, but Linkwarden had the edge on UI/UX imo. Try both and see what you like.
- The thing I like most about linkwarden is that it integrates with my existing single sign on (authentik). After you get to a certain number of apps, it becomes extremely annoying to not have this so I now look for SSO as a major factor when deciding what app to use.
  The small android app that allows android share button to send links to the app and full archive options also make it fantastic

I use Zotero for this. Used to use it as purely a reference manager for scientific papers, but started storing all kinds of stuff for archiving or later reading. My workflow is getting all news/articles I might want to read from RSS, and add to Zotero what I want to keep.
With the browser plugin you can store snapshots as well, so you can preserve it if it changes or is taken down. Not sure how a mobile experience would be as I only filter RSS-items on my phone, but no reading.
You can use file sync through a paid subscription or use youe own WebDAV server for it (I will be moving to this). Other than that, it is a database and folder with files, so you can probably use SyncThing or store it directly in Nextcloud also I would think.
I am a folder-person, but it also supports tags so you have flexibility in how you organize.

Have you considered karakeep (formerly hoarder)? It does all of this really well - drop it a URL and it saves a copy. Has lists & tagging (can be done by AI if you want), IOS & android apps as well as browser extensions that make saving stuff super easy.
https://karakeep.app/

I use org-mode, which is kind of a structured text format, like Markdown but far fancier, in emacs. Can have to-do lists, deadlines, tables, display a weekly/monthly agenda with planned items, etc. I sometimes use it as a sort of mini-spreadsheet, as it can act something like a spreadsheet, with recalculating tables. I don't go in for the "whole life organizing in a tool" thing, so there's a lot of functionality that I don't use, but it's generally a superset of what I want, so it works well. There are various other software packages that support it.
I figured out (while using obsidian) that my brain works better when I dont have to worry about where to put things, but just tag them with topics, by relevance, e.g. So tags and the option to filter them would be nice!
Org-mode supports tagging, though I don't use them.
https://orgmode.org/manual/Tags.html
That being said, while other software packages do have varying degrees of support, and vim has some support it's really an emacs thing at its core, so I think that it's most interesting if you use emacs.

I clicked on this post to bookmark it and read it later
I believe that I need these answers more than anyone else xD

raindrop.io works well for me for most of what you've mentioned, but its not selfhosted so I’m interested to find out other options also.
- i used that for a few years. really nice looking UI. the closest thing ive seen to that is Blinko
- I actually used raindrop.io for a long while. Tight little app. It's too bad it's not selfhostable

I use wallabag.it for this. I don't actually self host it, I've been a paying subscriber to the maintainer's hosted service for a few years now and I've had no complaints. It hasn't had many new features lately, but it does do what I want it to.
It doesn't capture comments in fediverse threads (see here: https://app.wallabag.it/share/6813d1f1616096.02317152 ), and there are some websites where it doesn't detect the contents of the article, but it does work the vast majority of the time.
I'm not sure what you could do about a Nextcloud integration. You can export articles as epubs and pdfs; I've done that a few times and put the exported files on my Nextcloud server. But there are also a bunch of wallabag apps for your different devices, which is what I use to read articles on those devices.
edit: Oh, I forgot to add that you can generate an RSS feed of your unread articles. So that could be added to Nextcloud's RSS reader.

Karakeep might work for you

Make a textfile you sync between your devices. Save the URL, book name, or whatever; each on a new line.
So tags and the option to filter them would be nice!
You can tag them at will. Put "#TagName" next to an entry and later you can ctrl-f "#TagName" (or anything else) in the file. Notepad++, grep, and other tools will even give you a list of everything that matched your search criteria if you want to see all items that match at once.
I like to keep things simple!

I use Readeck for 'read it later' type articles, things of interest. The downside of Readeck is that there is no one-click-easy way to back up your database if you want to move it to another server. You can, however go to /volume1/docker/readeck/ and download all the db files there manually which will allow you to move to another server. Make sure to grab the config.toml in the same directory. It has a Firefox extension as with most of these apps in it's genre. Probably has a chrome extension but I avoid chrome.
I use Karakeep (Hoarder) for stuff I've looked up to try to solve issues, such as pages from Grok where I have inquired about certain problems I may have been having.
- What is keeping you from using karakeep for you "read-it-later" articles, too?
  
  I use both as well. Karakeep is a fantastic bookmarking app and could definitely work as a “read it later” application, but I think the differentiator is how they approach content. Karakeep more or less preserves the link and all content, but Readeck provides the content in a simplified version without ads/margins/navigation menus/etc. this also allows you better customization of fonts/sizes/etc.
  When I want to bookmark a website for access/interaction later, it goes to Karakeep. When I want to save content to read later it goes to Readeck
  
  Nothing. It's just the whack way I like to keep things separated.

i only found this 2 days ago but i seems like what youre after. its like a more modern version of wallabag
https://github.com/omnivore-app/omnivore
- Just in case you’re not aware, Omnivore is no longer in active development: https://blog.omnivore.app/p/omnivore-is-joining-elevenlabs
  
  Nooo, I just read the omnivore Readme and was so excited, just to read this blog post afterwards realizing that now you buy in some proprietary AI shit with it :(
  Edit: it seems like the selfhosting software is still seeing some traffic, but until now I didn't understand, whether there will be further development or just documentation...

Not really related to selfhosting per se, but two things come to my mind:
Anytype is kinda like obsidian, but with a different approach. Every object is of some type and those can be searched, filtered etc in collections and sets - based on tags, attributes, … IIRC there even is a pre-made type „bookmark“ for links and documents.
As of a workflow: for stuff like this I really feel that a „simplified“ GTD-approach works best for me - dump everything into an „inputstream“ as you encounter it and process this on a daily (or weekly) basis; prioritise, tag, remove it

Not selfhosted - tried a lots of solutions there but each of them fell short at one point. But I’m paying for Readwise Reader for a while and it’s the swiss knife for anything you listed up there. Plus, you can enable (optional) AI summaries, including for videos.
I never had time or patience for video essays that can give once sentence idea in a minimum 8 minute video (minimum for monetization), so I just throw them at Reader, have them summarized and I’m off to go in 30 seconds.
Check here: https://readwise.io/read

I've actually been curious about something similar, and unfortunately I don't have an exact answer.
I'm currently self hosting ArchiveBox which saves a copy of the web page, but I find the UI to be pretty bloated. As an alternative, I've been curious about LinkWarden, but I have yet to set it up.
I know those two options aren't ideal as they don't directly integrate with NextCloud AFAIK, but they might support your other use cases?

Prediction: you'll never actually read most of what ends up on this to-read list.
- I consider storing articles more as building a starting-point for research, rather than something I definitely think I will read at some point. I store by topic that is of interest to me, and when I want to do a deep-dive, I already have a bunch of articles waiting for me.
  
  So, a bookmarks list basically.
- Actually I do. In the evenings when I take my nightly meds with a bowl, I sit in my bed and peruse the 'read it later' articles.

32 comments