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Guide
Pocket has closed. Where do your saves go now?
The short answer: Mozilla retired Pocket in 2025 and the apps stopped working that July. Everything you used it for still has a home. The useful question is not which tool is closest to Pocket, it is what you actually save now, because that changed while Pocket stood still.
Pocket was built in the era of the long article. Most saving today is video: a Reel, a Short, a TikTok, a recipe someone filmed. If that describes your saves, choose a replacement on capture speed, playback, filing that happens for you, and whether your library depends on a company staying open.
What happened to Pocket
Mozilla announced in May 2025 that it was retiring Pocket, and the apps stopped working that July. An export window followed, so anyone who acted in time could download their saved list as a file. After that window closed, the hosted libraries went with it.
Pocket had been the default answer to "where do I put this for later" for well over a decade, which is why its closing sent so many people looking at once. It is also the clearest argument for asking a question most people never think to ask: what happens to your library if the company stops?
If you still have your export file
Keep it. A Pocket export is a plain list of links, and it stays readable in any browser or spreadsheet long after the service is gone.
Later Jar does not import that file in bulk today. It captures from the share sheet, from a paste, from the bookmarks bar, and from screenshots you already took, but it will not read a Pocket export in one action. If you are sitting on hundreds of saved links and want them moved in one go, a tool with a dedicated importer will serve you better right now, and we would rather say so than have you find out after signing up.
What to look for in a replacement
These are the same criteria worth applying to any save-for-later tool, covered in more detail in the guide to saving videos for later:
- How fast it captures. If saving takes longer than what you were already doing, the habit will not hold.
- Whether video plays back properly. Article-first tools store a video as a link and a title, and the title is often just "you have to try this".
- Whether it organizes without you. Filing you have to do yourself is filing that quietly stops in week three.
- Whether it works with no account. This also tells you whether your library sits on someone else's server at all.
- What happens if the company stops. Pocket made this concrete.
How the usual options compare
| Tool | Genuinely good at | Worth knowing |
|---|---|---|
| Instapaper | Long-form reading, clean reader view, highlights | Closest in spirit to what Pocket was. Text first. |
| Raindrop | Organizing bookmarks: collections, tags, nested folders | Rewards people who enjoy organizing. You do the filing. |
| Readwise | Resurfacing highlights from books and articles | Built around revisiting text, not watching video back. |
| mymind | Private saving of notes, images and quotes | Deliberately minimal, with a strong privacy stance. |
| Browser bookmarks | Free, already installed, yours forever | A URL and a title, in one browser, sorted by you. |
| Later Jar | Video: one-tap capture, inline playback, automatic filing | No bulk importer yet. Free tier is 5 saves with no account. |
There is no single right answer here, and a page that told you otherwise would be selling rather than helping. If most of what you kept in Pocket was articles you meant to read, a text-first reader will feel more like home. If your saves have quietly become mostly video, that is a different tool.
What Later Jar does with a video
You share it from wherever you already are, whether that is TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Reddit or Safari. It lands in one library, filed into one of twelve categories automatically, keeping the title and the artwork so you recognise it weeks later. Search finds it by what it was rather than by where you filed it, because you did not file it.
The free tier is 5 saves plus 1 sealed save, with no account at all, and every capture method included. Pro is $2.99 a month or $19.99 a year for unlimited saves, automatic filing, sync across devices, and unlimited sealed saves under a PIN.
Common questions
When exactly did Pocket shut down?
Mozilla announced the retirement in May 2025 and the apps stopped working that July, with an export window afterwards for anyone who wanted their list. If you exported in time, that file is still readable today.
Can I import my Pocket export into Later Jar?
Not in bulk today. Later Jar captures from the share sheet, a paste, the bookmarks bar, and from screenshots, but it does not currently read a Pocket export file. If moving a large existing library in one action is what you need, choose a tool with an importer.
What is the closest thing to Pocket?
For long-form reading, Instapaper is the closest in spirit: a clean reader view, highlights, and a focus on articles. Pocket was article-first, so a like-for-like replacement is a text tool. Whether that is what you want depends on whether your saving has moved to video since.
Is there a free Pocket alternative?
Several, though free varies more than it looks. Some are free with a cap on saves, some require an account before you can save anything, and some are trials. The Later Jar free tier is 5 saves plus 1 sealed save with no account and every capture method included, which is enough to find out whether the habit sticks before money is involved.
Why did Pocket close?
Mozilla said it was focusing its efforts elsewhere. The wider context is that the read-later category was shaped around long articles at a time when most saving has moved to short video, which article-first tools were never built for.
Somewhere to put things again
Five saves free, no account, every capture method included.
Open Later JarLater Jar is made by Meadow Mountain AI LLC. This page names competing products because a comparison that only flatters its author is not worth reading. Details of other products were accurate at the time of writing and are worth checking against their own sites.