About Pocket’s Service Termination
It seems that Pocket has ended its service. I just found out today and was a bit surprised. Many people might think, “Now, after all this time?”
Pocket was one of the web clipper or bookmarking services. Sometimes it was called a “web clipper,” and if it had sharing or public features, it was called a “social bookmarking service.” I think Pocket was one of the oldest services of that kind. It was owned by Mozilla but was originally an independent service. It became popular around the same time as Evernote (probably).
There were iOS and Android apps at the period, and I think many people used them.
With Pocket, when you found an interesting webpage, you could instantly save it and read it later. You could also organize what you saved, and later features even allowed you to highlight parts of saved articles. It was a really good service — but now it’s gone.
There have been many services like this, but Pocket lasted quite a long time. That’s amazing.
The History of Web Clippers and Bookmarklets
About ten years ago—though not twenty—smartphone apps weren’t yet as common. As a web service, you could still access it through your browser and view your stored information (such as saved articles).
Nowadays, browser extensions are the standard way to use as a web clipper, but there was a time when such extensions didn’t exist. Back then, we used a tool called a bookmarklet to save web pages. A bookmarklet was something you stored in your browser’s bookmarks not as a URL, but as JavaScript code. When you clicked that bookmark, the JavaScript runs and it saves the page you were viewing to a web service. That’s what a bookmarklet was—and it was common at the time.
I think Pocket also had a bookmarklet. If it did, I must have used it, but I don’t remember.
Back in the days of social bookmarking and web clipper services, bookmarklets were quite standard. Learning about bookmarklets was actually how I first discovered JavaScript and became interested in programming.
Once again, it’s really shocking to see a service that lasted for more than ten years (though not quite twenty) disappear from the scene.
Termination and Data Export
As of November 8, 2025, Pocket’s web export mode is about to end, and all saved data will be deleted. In other words, the service will be completely shut down.
Right now, the iOS app is already gone. When I opened it a little while ago, a message saying “Pocket has shut down” appeared.
There’s an “Export Data” option that allows you to export your saved clips. It seems the export is available in CSV format, but that too will end on November 12.
If you haven’t noticed yet, you should export your data soon. When you access Pocket’s web version and click the export option, it shows a message saying “Exporting…”
It apparently takes quite a while—up to seven days—for the export to complete.
Reason for Termination and Alternative Services
The reason for Pocket’s termination is written as follows:
Pocket は、記事を保存し、読む価値のあるストーリーを発見するサービスとして何百万人ものユーザーに利用されてきました。しかし、ウェブの使われ方が変化しているため、今後は今のブラウジング習慣やオンラインのニーズにより一致したプロジェクトにリソースを投入します。
https://support.mozilla.org/ja/kb/Future-of-pocket#w_pocket-gazhong-liao-suruli-you
Pocket has helped millions save articles and discover stories worth reading. But the way people use the web has evolved, so we’re channeling our resources into projects that better match their browsing habits and online needs.
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/future-of-pocket
There are third-party services that support importing data from Pocket. That’s nice, but what’s even more appreciatable is that there are still many similar services out there.
I think Instapaper is a relatively well-known one, but there were several others I had never heard of before.
It might be interesting to research them as well.
