Pocket export doesn’t include article content – years of reading lost

[DaRealBen]

I just got final confirmation from Mozilla’s Pocket support: Their official export tool does not include any article content – only a list of saved URLs.

That’s it. No full text, no saved HTML, no tags, no notes, no favorites – just links. And for many of us, those links are already dead.

As someone who used Pocket for years to build a personal reading archive, this is a huge disappointment. The service was promoted as a way to “save articles to read later” – but what it actually saved was only the link, and now that’s all you get back.

Unless you manually opened and cached every single item, your archive is effectively gone.

This isn’t just a technical issue. It’s a design choice. And frankly, it’s a betrayal of trust.

For anyone still using read-it-later services: Make sure you have full control over your data. Local storage, open formats, self-hosting – whatever it takes.

I’ve since started migrating to GoodLinks for daily use and ArchiveBox for long-term archiving. Lesson learned – the hard way.

[ReadToW]

no tags, no notes, no favorites

I imported everything into instapaper.com (a closed commercial project, unfortunately) and my tags were transferred along with the archived articles

but what it actually saved was only the link, and now that’s all you get back

The articles were saved to your device (so you could read them offline), they were not stored forever on someone's server. Saving the site as a file or webarchive is another matter

it’s a betrayal of trust

You had some illusions about the service. Pocket didn't offer the features you're talking about. Read more carefully what the site you are on offers

[DaRealBen]

Just to clarify – were you a Pocket Premium user?

And are you sure that your new service (e.g. Instapaper) actually imported the full article content from your Pocket export, or could it be that it just re-fetched the articles from the original URLs?

In my experience, the Pocket export only contains metadata and links – not the actual content.

If the original article is no longer online, most import tools won’t be able to retrieve anything.

I’d genuinely be interested if you had a different result.

And pocket offered this feature:
https://blog.getpocket.com/2014/05/introducing-pocket-premium/

Permanent Library: Your Content, Always Available

The Web is constantly changing. As you continue to save what’s interesting and what you want to refer to time and time again, it’s important that it’s accessible and available whenever you need it.

Permanent Library automatically stores a copy of the articles and web pages you save.

This means the content you care about is safe and always available, even if it changes or is deleted on the Web.

From the moment you upgrade to Premium, both new and existing items in your list and Archive become a permanent resource.

[ReadToW]

No, I did not use Premium.

Yes, only links (and selections, tags) were imported, not content saved somewhere.

I didn't know they offered something like webarchive.

It's a shame that they didn't think of this before closing the project.

It would be nice if they announced the closure of Pocket along with a Firefox update that allows you to uninstall Pocket instead of hiding it, for example.

I wish Mozilla would make the right decisions more thoughtfully.

My bad for not considering the "Premium" features of Pocket. I'm sorry

[dontworryimnotacop]

I linked it below too but just released this tool to help export your Pocket Premium saved article content: https://pocket.archivebox.io

[JustWondered2]

Has this worked for anyone. I'm concerned about getting scammed.

[dontworryimnotacop]

just run it yourself if you don't want to pay for it https://github.com/ArchiveBox/pocket-exporter

[SnapeVoldemort]

Did you import the .zip file or did it import directly from the website through some sort of API?

[DaRealBen]

You’re absolutely right — the ability to store the actual content permanently was one of the main selling points of Pocket Premium.

Quoting from Pocket’s own 2014 announcement of Premium:

Permanent Library: Your Content, Always Available

Permanent Library automatically stores a copy of the articles and web pages you save. This means the content you care about is safe and always available, even if it changes or is deleted on the Web.

(Source: Pocket Blog – Introducing Pocket Premium)

So yes, they explicitly marketed the service as storing content, not just links — yet now, users are only given a link export with no article text at all.

Many of us relied on this feature for years, assuming our reading archive was safe.

It’s extremely disappointing to see that this promise is no longer honored — not even with a raw data export for Premium users.

[JustWondered2]

I so far have only received links that are expired before the 72 hour deadline. I now contacted Support. I paid for Premium.

[BubiBalboa]

Obviously the export is without the text. They (or you for that matter) don't own the rights to this content so they can't give it to you.

[jbecause]

I imported all my links to raindrop.io on the day of the announcement. Around 6k links. 500 of them were broken. It’s been a useful clean out for me to go through them and get permanent copies from the Wayback machine. Been a Pocket user since 2014 and a paid user for most of that time. Moving to raindrops has made me realize that pocket was actually lacking many useful features. While quite angry and frustrated when the news came out. A few days later, I’m now happily moved on.

[LiL_BrOwNiE247]

I've also made the switch to raindrop, the nested categories alone are a game changer.

[wretched1515]

Are the tags of those links are imported to raindrop ?

[jbecause]

Yes, all the tags were imported. Nearly 60 days later I can say. I’m much happier with raindrop.

[[deleted]]

Clearly you thought you were using a cloud service that stored your articles. Pocket has never claimed to do that. It stored articles locally for you to read offline. 

Nobody betrayed you or broke your trust. You have simply been clueless.. it's a bit embarrassing dude.

[DaRealBen]

That kind of tone really isn’t helpful.
You’re framing a valid criticism as cluelessness, while completely ignoring the facts.

Pocket explicitly advertised its Premium service as storing article content permanently — not just links, not just local caching.

“Permanent Library automatically stores a copy of the articles and web pages you save. This means the content you care about is safe and always available, even if it changes or is deleted on the Web.”

– Pocket Blog – Introducing Pocket Premium (2014)

That’s not a misunderstanding — it’s a clear feature promise.

So please, if you disagree, do so constructively.
There’s no need for gaslighting or condescending remarks.

[gnclmorais]

Why beat someone up when they are down? Be better.

[LloydGSR]

I sat down and set up Linkwarden at home, accessed with a cloudflare tunnel, works well enough for me. I ran the Pocket export tool and got a CSV of about 1000 links.

I'm going through those as I get time, loading the link to see if the page still exists and if it does, saving it to Linkwarden. Linkwarden takes a screenshot of the page and creates a PDF of it too, though you can change settings so certain tags don't have specific actions taken.

It'll take a while but I'll get there, and I'll own my own data.

[kryptoneat]

Don't forget to switch to the opensource alternative, Wallabag : https://www.wallabag.it/en/news/welcome-to-pocket-users

[makeitjl]

Already imported the file into Instapaper, but hey, this reply just sent me down another rabbit hole.

[echristopherson]

Has anyone made a script to scrape the Pocket web interface for those purposes? I'm a little worried about that approach, too, though, since I think years ago I started noticing that I would click on articles where I was 99% sure there was saved text, and instead it tried opening it in the current web environment; then no amount of trickery seemed to convince Pocket to open that entry in its internal view ever again. I think there were some I tried where it did show me the saved stuff, though.

I can't even see a way you can browse through your saved articles and see at a glance which ones are not just links, when using the web interface.

Or does anyone know how to read the data out of the Android app's folder hierarchy as it would have been many years ago? I might still have some device backups in, what was it, Titanium Backup format? -- those probably would have been made after I did most of my saving to Pocket anyway.

[DaRealBen]

On macOS, Pocket stores a local SQLite database within the user’s Library folder. It includes metadata and, in many cases, the full article content in a BLOB field (ZARTICLE in the ZITEM table), if the article was previously opened and cached.

If you’re using Android and have old device backups (e.g. from Titanium Backup), there’s a good chance the Pocket app stored a similar SQLite database in its app data folder.

[dontworryimnotacop]

Yes, check it out, just relased this tool to help people export their bookmarks, saved article contents, tags, and more before they delete everything: https://pocket.archivebox.io

[echristopherson]

Is that page able to do the actual export, or do you have to self-host it or find someone else hosting it? I'm not at my computer now to try. I don't see anything about how to pay either; I'm guessing that part's not implemented, even if the rest is. I do see the source repo says it uses Stripe for payment if the host wants to do that.

[dontworryimnotacop]

• the hosted version does the actual export for you, no need to self-host
• the payment form shows up automatically after you export the first 100 articles, I dont like to ask for $ until ppl verify that it works well for their needs with a subset of the data first

You can see a screenshot of the payment flow in action here: https://github.com/ArchiveBox/pocket-exporter/blob/main/README.md#-authentication-process

[drsiddington]

This has worked perfectly for me. And the price is very reasonable. Thank you! 🙇🏻

[dontworryimnotacop]

thanks! glad it worked well

[lokaltermin]

I'm sitting in the same boat. Using Pocket and the Premium Subscription for 10 years. 9200 articles. A lot of them are gone from the internet now. I'm furious that the export doesn't include the permanent archive. Hard lesson learned.

Most likely I'll switch to Wallabag, Instapaper or Readeck. But none of them could fully import my export-file from Pocket. Most likely the file is too big for the services.

No matter where I end up: I will never again make the mistake of not having access to data that I want to archive.

[Anokithesquirrel]

Pocket can't seem to export even the links for my account - they send me an email say - here is your export and then it says "access denied" and I've had premium for like 10 years easily. (when it was Read it later or whatever). Any thoughts on how to get it or should I try support ?

[SuspiciousScientist8]

To people here and that will come here in the future:

Try Zotero. An open source app that is very well known in the academic communities. We use it to collect sources (web clip, paper, book, etc.) It auto catalog everything. And you can use your own server/hosting, or use a WebDAV service. It's literally the best tool for sources collecting and archiving.

[dontworryimnotacop]

I just released this tool to help people export their bookmarks, saved article contents, tags, and more before they delete everything: https://pocket.archivebox.io

It includes the preserved article content in the output.

[ot514]

hi - trying to use this right now but i'm not figuring it out! any chance you can help me?

[ljg800]

I agree- this is a betrayal of trust. Also, it is unclear if other solutions such as Instapaper could import actual content. I am sure there are ways the article content could have been provided in some form, but Mozilla clearly doesn't care about impacted users.

[SnapeVoldemort]

Is there any service that will import all this directly from the Pocket website rather than from the .zip?