I just got the email saying Omnivore’s data is going to be deleted on November 15. I have hundreds of articles saved in there, and had just gotten a tablet specifically to make progress on going through them two days ago. “Disappointed” doesn’t begin to describe how I feel about it. I’ve been intensively ramping up my efforts to make sure I actually own all the data I want to keep, so the timing on this is just terrible.
What are people using for read-it-later now? For me, being open source is REQUIRED. So is being able to export to Logseq in some format, whether before or after I do the reading/highlighting.
I really liked the ability to subscribe to newsletters with a special-purpose email address, but I can live without it.
The annotation tools are excellent, and you can just drag-and-drop all the annotations when you’re done straight into a Logseq page, and it even includes properly referenced quotes with backlinks into zotero that open the doc at the annotation.
Zotero is a good suggestion, thank you @naught101!
@smeej what kind of tablet did you get? If you go for Zotero, there’s the PaperShip app for iPad (and macOS) (though you probably went with an Android tablet as open source is an important consideration). I’m not sure whether the annotations fully sync to Zotero (which would enable you to sync them to Logseq); it’s been some years since I’ve had a real need to annotating papers and syncing them to my note-taking apps. You could always check with their support via email.
Hopefully others who read this can chime in and suggest other apps that work with Zotero and Android (and iOS).
So, far I have also been using Wallabag (an open-source read-later app, that can also be self-hosted), but to my knowledge, there is nothing to connect it to Logseq, like Omnivore. This is the reason I turned to it initially and I must say that their decision to delete data is quite annoying. I guess, I’m gonna have to use their “solutions” to export all my data, that is, install Obsidian to do so (and then disinstall it, as I’m not going to use both Obsidian and Logseq…I don’t have enough space for that).
I’m definitely looking into setting this up now! I think I have Zotero installed and the Connector working correctly, but can you tell me more about this dragging and dropping of annotations? I tested the “/zotero” command and just picking the one article I snipped with the Connector, and it made a link to a snapshot with an “open” button, but that seems different from what you’re describing.
I should be able to run Zotero on the tablet itself (probably, in a Linux container), so if I can get it working to highlight and annotate the different content in Zotero and then move the notes to Logseq, I think that’d be even better than Omnivore. I’d still have to solve the auto-import thing for email subscriptions if I want to do that, but I’m guessing there’s a rabbit hole to go down that might be able to help me with that and/or automatic RSS imports.
What I want to avoid is having a parallel repository of notes. I want Logseq to be the tool that connects all my research and notes about a thousand different topics more than I want to have some things in Logseq and others in Zotero or elsewhere.
It would be nice if Pocket and Instapaper had plugins for Logseq. Both offer good enough free plans. For now I will use Raindrop, for links-saving, but it does not qualify as a read-it-later app
How have you found Wallabag for highlighting/annotating and saving the notes? It’s admittedly been awhile since I tried it out, but while I found it was fine for reading, I didn’t really have any way to process or save the info that especially mattered to me about it. I could easily believe that’s much better these days though.
I’ve been using Zotero + WebDav to do this. Here’s my workflow:
Use Zotero browser extension to save the article. The extension uses SingleFile to do this, which is a nice future-proof way to store the articles in .html format, which can also be opened normally in browsers.
Use Zotero’s reader to read and highlight/annotate the article. Once done, right click on the article entry → add note from annotations. This combines all the highlights into a single note.
Use logseq-zoterolocal-plugin to pull up the zotero item inside Logseq. This uses the local web server introduced in Zotero 7 to fetch the items and consequently is much faster than the native zotero integration in Logseq.
Sync my Zotero library via WebDav
Use Zotero’s android app to sync the items to my phone. The android app is currently in closed alpha, but the unofficial nightly builds can be obtained from this repo.
You need to either drag the annotations into your Logseq page manually, or only add the article entry via logseq-zoterolocal-plugin once you’re done processing the article fully and manually created a note which contains all of your annotations in Zotero. The plugin currently cannot sync annotations once it has already been pulled into Logseq which means that you’ll not be able to pull any annotations made “after” you’ve already pulled the article into Logseq.
I am thinking I will go to Readwise. I hate to spend the money, but I don’t want to invest in converting all my entries again only to see my platform acquired by another company and shut down. I’m currently on the 30 day free demo. It seems to work well for me so far. I am still working through the Logseq integration, but I just converted over yesterday so hopefully I’ll figure it out soon.
Thanks for the details! Do you also leave everything in the same library, so it all syncs through Zotero online, but also takes up storage space? Or do you pull things out of that system and/or only use WebDav for it? Can you use the Android reader for things that aren’t stored in your Zotero account?
For my use case, once I’ve read/annotated an article, I’m fine with only archiving it locally since I don’t anticipate needing to refer to it more urgently than I could get to my computer (or one of the backups), and I think it would save space I don’t really need to use, but I haven’t quite worked out how to do that yet.
I’m not using Zotero’s online storage, so there’s no need to worry about taking up storage space. Zotero gives you an option to sync your library using Webdav which is what I’m using.
Since I only use Zotero for personal usage, this works for me (Webdav doesn’t allow syncing group libraries).
Android app is pretty basic for now and is tightly integrated with Zotero ecosystem. I’m not worried about running out of storage space since my Webdav mount is just a pointer to a Backblaze B2 bucket.
I’ve used Readwise in the past (I stopped paying… 9€/mo per highlight and webclipping? no way). I’ve been using Omnivore, too… adapting the Mustache template for a structured Logseq block property captures. That transition also meant a decrease in my web capturing number of items, and now I wonder if this lack of proper solution will mean I stop highlighting at all.
The read-it-later movement made me tired of reading+highlighting. I’d like a read-it-now easy annotation feature that keeps it, in a good structured way, in Logseq block + properties.
Oh, OK, thanks for the clarification! I thought the Android app only worked with things synced through Zotero’s servers, since it made me sign into an account to use it.
I just realized my tablet’s ARM architecture means Zotero won’t run even in a Linux VM. I could get an Android version of it running, but I mostly want to use it for reading and highlighting, and it seems like that’s not supported yet.
Do you know of anywhere I can track the development progress for the Android app? Like see what’s in the works? I have the nightly build you mentioned installed, but it can’t even do highlights or annotations, or at least not in a way I have figured out. When I highlight text, my only options are Copy, Share, Select all, and Web search, but what I want is to highlight and annotate.
Otherwise I may have to head down a different rabbit hole, even though I love the idea of collecting complete snapshots of a lot of my favorite resources this way.
Anyone have any ideas for webclippers that will capture exactly what’s on the page as you’re viewing it? I read a lot of paywalled content and Omnivore’s ability to capture it was a killer feature for me. It could even be done on mobile using a browser on Android that supports extensions. I’d love to find something with similar capabilities, but I’m guessing that’s going to be difficult or impossible.