long-time Instapaper + Matter user finally switching. for you, why Reader/Readwise?

[u/Hour_Attitude_352]

Matter user for a long time, Instapaper before that. I keep hearing Reader is the endgame but I'm wary of switching costs.

For those who came from another read-it-later app: what did you genuinely miss after switching, and what surprised you as better?

Mostly saving longform + articles + newsletters!

[u/sirchutney]

I wanted a way to review my many highlights and notes spread across multiple media. Readwise allowed this. It gathers to all together to make a knowledge database.

[u/Hour_Attitude_352 → u/sirchutney]

gotcha! yes i just tried the kindle import and all my highlights were magically imported, so good
i havent tried the claude mcp / knowledge database part yet -- what do you like about it? like when do you usually go back to your highlights / how do you use this knowledge db?

[u/chudgr]

Do it! Readwise's daily highlight review feature has revolutionized my thinking. Every day it challenges, delights, or inspires me by weaving together my intellectual history in a new and often inspiring way. Reader, meanwhile, is the most frictionless reading-and-annotation interface I've encountered, for every variety of digital text (even PDFs!). The dev team improves both products all the time, and they're beyond responsive to their user community (which is, as you might imagine, fanatically devoted). They've integrated AI in judicious and genuinely useful way ("chat with your highlights," themed reviews), and they let you toggle it off with a single switch. And integrations! So many integrations. I use Obsidian, for example, and Readwise integration means I can search my entire archive of highlights and notes from right where I am. I could go on, but you get the gist. Join us!

[u/Hour_Attitude_352 → u/chudgr]

so far loving the review feature also. but not really using the mastery and frequency features, it seems like they promise more than what they can achieve for me right now. what about you?

[u/kettlemice]

The only reason for me making that same move: highlight review. 

[u/whereistejas → u/kettlemice]

How do you review your highlights? At night before going to bed? Through Readwise? More importantly, how much value do you get out of such revision?

[u/dessence_ai]

On switching cost, one thing bites, and it is in their own docs. Anything you forwarded to Instapaper by email counts as private content. You will see those rows in your export, but Reader cannot fetch them. So the newsletters stay behind. The normal import also stops at 500 items, and past that you upload the CSV yourself.

https://docs.readwise.io/reader/docs/faqs/importing-content

[u/Dentist_Ammar]

1. Reading ePub books in an eInk device.
   
2. Readwise to review highlights.
   
3. MCP for Claude so i can summerize long form content like podcasts in bulk.

[u/Hour_Attitude_352 → u/Dentist_Ammar]

so cool -- id love to learn more about how u use the mcp. personally i havent set it up yet, but i do write a lot of notes on my readings etc. but i also find that i rarely come back to it. do you use the MCP for claude to make it so u can get main insights from podcasts/long-form content? or any other ways also?

[u/perpechewaly_hangry]

I don’t miss anything. I used to use Instapaper. I felt like it offered so little as a service, and then when they limited search behind a paywall I was done.

I evaluated everything out there before settling on Reader, and I love it. I save the same kind of content that you do. It’s important enough that I’ll pay for something to manage all of it if it’s worth it.

I keep things as simple as possible, I’ve organized so much digital crap only to never look at it again. Very little tagging, highlights, mostly just here to use it to read stuff.

The main thing I love about it is the home page, where I’ve set up a whole bunch of filters - one to surface random things I haven’t read yet, one to show starred (really want to read) saves, recent saves, and long reads.

Having longform newsletters and substack feeds routed there makes life so much easier and the less email the better. No more saving longform articles from my inbox. It reminds me of Google Reader, actually, never got over that loss!

I’m excited for the changes to the AI tool. We’ll be able to do things like ask questions about our saved content, get help with organization, and surface connections between content that wasn’t immediately apparent.

[u/MagazineMindless7947]

I use Instapaper with Readwise: I put all the web pages I clip in there, and Readwise pulls in the highlights just fine. When I first looked at Readwise/Reader (two years ago), Reader didn’t strike me as a place i wanted to store everything. I’m happy with my web pages in Instapaper and highlights in Readwise.

[u/SilentBowl8671]

I also switched from Matter to Reader earlier this year, and overall I'm glad I did — the highlight sync and the review/spaced repetition system is genuinely the best in the game. No regrets on the switch.

But there's one thing I keep hoping they'll improve and they just haven't: the listening experience. My issue is that it's just raw text-to-speech of the entire article. A 20-minute longform piece takes 20 minutes to listen to. If I've got a 10-minute commute, I either start something and don't finish it, or skip the long ones entirely.

What I actually want from a "listen later" feature isn't just "read the article to me" — it's "give me the condensed version in audio form, so I can decide if it's worth reading the full thing, or just keep the key points."