This used to be among my favorite apps, but lately I’m using it less and less and using safari more and more because of the poor integration of text to speech in the latest version. This is an easy fix for the team, but here are the problems: 1) the integrated voice will not read all the articles which pocket will download. 2) Sometimes the voice is not available in these cases I have to use iOS TTS ‘two finger swipe’ from the top, but the layout of Pocket’s buttons on the top means that two out of three times, it takes me back to the menu, rather than reads the article! 3) while I like the feature of being able to continuously read multiple articles, I miss the ability to follow along the text as it’s being read. 4) it would also be a nice feature if it would indicate, if if it has been fully read or what percentage has been read in the past. It would be nice also to turn off the screen and treat it like a music play list while exercising. The bottom line is that without the ability to easily have Pocket read aloud, the app is much less useful. The spotty availability of the integrated reader and poor placement of buttons on the top complicate the use of the iOS text-to-speech is particularly frustrating, especially if trying to listen to something while walking or driving.

They have completely destroyed this mobile app. I don't understand what compels developers to do this, but Pocket did it all right. They had a simple UI with a simple layout. You saved articles. You read or listened to articles. You deleted articles you read. It was simple. Now you can't swipe to delete articles. The tiny button to delete re-opens the article more often than not. It would take me hours to delete articles at this point. The tagging system is not visible on the screen due to being crowded out by the promotion, header, and search window. LOL you literally cant even SEE your tags anymore. Stepping back, the recommendations eat up a bulk of the genera layout now. A 'Home' section shows algorithmic pics. Pocket chooses 'hits' for you, and tries to behave as a social media/news aggregator. Literally no, I don't want your shock tragedy stories. This is amazing. These developers are unwell. Coming soon: unnecessary useless 'ai' features. Just watch. *Update: upon using the app again, as a early adopter, in the interest of objectivity, I should know to the team has improved the audio playback feature. It is more accessible and more intuitive to use. This was always a needed improvement, and the team appears to have done a good job here..

The two-star rating is specifically for the iPad version of the Pocket app, not the service. I’m a Premium subscriber and have been for years. It’s one of the services that always seemed worth it. Given that major features of the app appear to have been removed, I almost decided to move to one of the alternatives suggested in other reviews (Readwise Reader, Matter, or Omnivore). I’m rating the iPad app 2 stars for its barebones capability, missing content, bugs (archived articles still show as saved), lack of highlighting, and more. But here’s why I stayed with Pocket as a Premium member: the web app still works very well, though it’s missing audio capabilities, but it seems to have all the features the iPad app is missing. So, with iOS 17 I was able to add the web app (go to the Pocket website in Safari > click the share button > select “Add to Home Screen”). Now I have most features back, including my full list of saved articles from the past 10 years, with permanent cached versions, as needed. Pocket works well with IFTTT (the others do not) and the monthly premium fee is the lowest of all the ones I looked at. So maybe don’t abandon Pocket but switch to the web version of the app.