Links Don't Belong on a Bookshelf
THE EXTENSION
Exploring topics beyond our day-to-day coverage.
Links Don't Belong on a Bookshelf
A I wrote my review of Matter this week, I was struck by the different approaches taken by the developers of read-later apps and link organizers. There’s a lot of overlap between the two categories. Many people use apps like GoodLinks and Anybox as their read-later apps, although to me, those apps are first and foremost link organizers. However, when you think about it, that’s all read-later apps are too. At their most fundamental, both save links for later.
What struck me as curious isn’t how these overlapping genres are categorized but the approach they take to links. Apps like GoodLinks and Anybox support reader modes, but they’re also highly integrated with Shortcuts, which allows bulk processing of links and other metadata, whereas Matter has just one Shortcuts action and Readwise’s read-later app, Reader, has none at all. Why is that?