I was already wondering why development on Omnivore was halted…
This isn’t good news at all for Omnivore users. It made me legitimately consider switching away from my self-hosted Wallabag instance because everything looked so sleek and promising; in terms of read-it-later apps, it really held the promise of the big next thing (as far as that can apply to such a “simple” category).
I’m not sure if articles read aloud is the thing that Omnivore users are looking for, per se. Ah well, they’ll know why they did it…
On a side note:
> All Omnivore users will be able to export their information from the service through November 15 2024, after which all information will be deleted.
Just me or is that extremely short notice? That’s in 2 weeks…
theschmed 6 hours ago [-]
> Just me or is that extremely short notice? That’s in 2 weeks…
It is not just you.
freeqaz 3 hours ago [-]
Damn they're giving under 3 weeks to export before you lose all of your data? That's insane! If I were on an extended vacation and missed this, my data would be gone when I get back.
They _really_ should increase that to be longer! Switch to read-only, but give at least 3-6 months to export. That's crazy otherwise
lfarquad 42 minutes ago [-]
“Some of you may die, but that is a sacrifice I am willing to make.”
darrmit 4 hours ago [-]
Ugh this is the only read-it-later service I ever found that "stuck". It was so simple and good. This sucks.
cstuder 3 hours ago [-]
I came from Instapaper after their price hike to Omnivore and went back to Instapaper. I felt that Omnivore was over-complicated with their "every folder is a filter" structure. Instapaper feels much more straightforward.
darrmit 1 hours ago [-]
I did the same and will likely end up back with Instapaper. Omnivore’s export leaves a lot to be desired, though. Trying to find a script that will give me something usable to import.
dmje 1 hours ago [-]
I use Raindrop[0] for all bookmarks and have flirted with Omnivore and Wallabag over the years. But I always come back to just using Raindrop and "Unsorted" for my read-it-laters. I've got a feed into Reeder from here which works well too. At the end of the day a likely next step after reading something is to want to bookmark it so this workflow works well for me.
I built and ran a read it later app in the iOS app store for a few years as a side project. I found it pretty difficult to monetise and the support burden got to me. I eventually just pulled it from the store as I was getting emails and reviews and felt I couldn’t really give it the attention it needed. I saw quite a few competitors coming and going over the years, either through acquisitions or developers just losing interest. It seems like a difficult thing to make work sustainably.
bberenberg 3 hours ago [-]
For what it’s worth I’ve contacted them to see if they would be open to handing over the hosted version. The current answer is no, based in part on wanting to delete user data. I suggested I could take it without data and users could reimport their data post handover. If you’d like to see this happen send them an email and voice your support.
thylacine222 5 hours ago [-]
this really sucks, it's by far the best reader app out there. Hoping that people will be able to figure out a straightforward way to do self-hosting, because I would be willing to use the app as it is right now forever.
0x6c6f6c 5 hours ago [-]
Except on Android, where you couldn't even tag saved articles.
I noticed development had stopped weeks ago. Sort of figured something like this was going to happen. Unfortunate, but I'll be happy on Wallabag again. I'd been just waiting for a push to do migrate back.
thylacine222 4 hours ago [-]
I seem to be able to tag articles, do you not have an "Edit Labels" option in the article menu? Regardless, they definitely were lagging on Android development, but it was still finished enough to use it. There's even a version that supports pagination: https://github.com/tent4kel/omnivore/releases/
petemir 2 hours ago [-]
I have not tested them yet, but (actually) self-hosted potential alternatives: linkwarden [0], hoarder [1]
Too bad... I also really liked it and used. Seems like I go for wallabag again. Maybe it will be possible to selfhost omnivore at some point in time ?!
It's not a great self-hosting option, tbh, depends on a lot of Google services and the support for it in the apps can be finicky.
xz18r 5 hours ago [-]
The license allows forking, become a hero!
raybb 5 hours ago [-]
Ugh anyone have a rundown of how good the parsing is on wallabag vs instapaper vs pocket (or something else)?
darthwalsh 2 hours ago [-]
I had been using Pocket until a few months ago, and pocket's parser was a little better. It wouldn't choke on GitHub repos, for example.
But both would miss significant article content :/
Carbon1603 5 hours ago [-]
So, where to go next?
paulmorabito 4 hours ago [-]
I'd love an easier self hosted option too.
In the meantime, if you are in the Apple world then Goodlinks is a privacy friendly option for saving articles to read later.
I haven't found a decent alternative that can add articles via email like Omnivore. My workaround is to get the RSS link from Substack and add these to my RSS reader that I self host (FreshRSS).
samantha-wiki 3 hours ago [-]
I’m looking into migrating to FreshRSS from omnivore now.
I've heard of this but didn't use it because all of my email newsletters are on substack and substack supports RSS. Also, with substack RSS, you get a feed per newsletter whereas Kill The Newsletter gives you one feed for all newsletters going to their address.
leshokunin 3 hours ago [-]
Feed in gives you an email address for newsletters
andreagrandi 8 hours ago [-]
Thanks for making the code base open source
lxgr 6 hours ago [-]
tl;dr: They got acqui-hired and are shutting the app and service down.
Ugh, it was so good!
Self-hosting it seems quite complicated, though. I really hope somebody will step up and offer a hosted version of it.
dod9er 4 hours ago [-]
Yes, just as it is right now I would love a cheap alternative. No need for fancy speech or AI features from my Side. Do one thing and do it good...
This isn’t good news at all for Omnivore users. It made me legitimately consider switching away from my self-hosted Wallabag instance because everything looked so sleek and promising; in terms of read-it-later apps, it really held the promise of the big next thing (as far as that can apply to such a “simple” category).
I’m not sure if articles read aloud is the thing that Omnivore users are looking for, per se. Ah well, they’ll know why they did it…
On a side note:
> All Omnivore users will be able to export their information from the service through November 15 2024, after which all information will be deleted.
Just me or is that extremely short notice? That’s in 2 weeks…
It is not just you.
They _really_ should increase that to be longer! Switch to read-only, but give at least 3-6 months to export. That's crazy otherwise
[0] https://raindrop.io/
I noticed development had stopped weeks ago. Sort of figured something like this was going to happen. Unfortunate, but I'll be happy on Wallabag again. I'd been just waiting for a push to do migrate back.
[0] https://github.com/linkwarden/linkwarden
[1] https://github.com/hoarder-app/hoarder
Edit: fixed wording
It's just not documented well.
But both would miss significant article content :/
In the meantime, if you are in the Apple world then Goodlinks is a privacy friendly option for saving articles to read later.
I haven't found a decent alternative that can add articles via email like Omnivore. My workaround is to get the RSS link from Substack and add these to my RSS reader that I self host (FreshRSS).
Does [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/selfhosted/comments/165nnk6/comment...) solve the email ingestion issue for you?
Ugh, it was so good!
Self-hosting it seems quite complicated, though. I really hope somebody will step up and offer a hosted version of it.