Pocket · laytr.app
Pocket shut down in July 2025 and kept exports open until October 2025. If you still have the file Pocket sent you, Laytr reads it. Every link, tag and date comes across, and the saves live on your own device from then on, with no account and no server behind them.
iPhone, iPad and Mac. Free is the full app with room for 30 saves. Import and export are free on every plan, and on none.
What happened to Pocket
Pocket kept every save on its own servers. When the service closed, the only way to keep a library was to ask for an export before the window shut. Anyone who missed it, or who never knew a window existed, lost years of saved reading in one go.
That is not a Pocket problem. It is what happens to anything kept on somebody else’s server, and it is the reason we built Laytr the other way round.
If you have the export file
Pocket mailed a ZIP of CSV files, or an older
ril_export.html. Laytr reads either one. The steps are
below.
If you do not
Nothing on this page can bring those saves back, and we will not pretend otherwise. What Laytr can do is make sure it never happens again to what you save from today.
Coming from Instapaper or Omnivore
The same import reads an Instapaper CSV and an Omnivore backup. Details for each are in the last section, and Instapaper has a page of its own.
Why it cannot happen here
What you save is scattered across apps and never returned to. Laytr puts every save from any app under one roof, and it keeps that roof on your own device. There is no Laytr account and no Laytr server, so there is nothing of ours to close, nothing to migrate away from, and nothing we could read even if we wanted to.
Your iPhone and iPad keep each other up to date through your own iCloud, on by default with one switch in Settings to turn it off. Laytr for Mac is on the Mac App Store today and a version that joins the same iCloud sync is coming. Even then it is your iCloud, not ours.
Export is free, forever
Settings, Export gives you one ZIP: every save as readable Markdown and HTML, your original files byte for byte, your preserved articles, notes, tags, cases and dates. On any plan, or none, and after a subscription lapses.
Lapsing locks nothing
Stop paying and everything stays readable, searchable and exportable. The only thing Premium changes is the room to add more than 30 saves.
Articles are kept, not linked
A saved article is its full text and images, stored with the save, so it still opens years later, after the original page is gone.
How to import your Pocket export
Laytr detects the file by what is inside it, never by its name or extension, so a renamed export still works. The whole import happens on your device.
Re-running the same file never duplicates anything. If the import is interrupted, open the file again and it carries on from where it stopped.
1. Find the file
Pocket’s export arrived by e-mail as a ZIP holding files named
part_000000.csv, one per few thousand saves. Older
exports are a single ril_export.html. Put the ZIP, a CSV,
or the HTML file somewhere the Files app can see it, such as
iCloud Drive, or AirDrop it to your iPhone.
2. Open the import
In Laytr, open the Now tab and tap the gear to reach Settings. Under Archive, choose Import, then Choose a file and pick the export. Leave “Skip links already saved” on unless you want every match listed for review.
3. Read what it found
Laytr shows a count of what it read before anything changes. Titles, links, tags and the date you saved each one come across. Pocket’s unread saves land in your Library as saves; its archived ones arrive already marked done.
4. Let it fetch the pages
Pocket’s export holds links, not the articles themselves. After the import Laytr fetches a readable copy of each page it can still reach and keeps it with the save. A page that no longer exists stays a link with its title and tags.
On the free plan
Free has room for 30 saves. If your export is bigger, the first 30 come in and the report says how many are waiting. Nothing is changed or deleted. Open the same file again once you are on Premium, or below the limit, and Laytr imports exactly the rest.
What does not come across
Pocket never exported the article text it had fetched, its highlights, or its recommendations, so no importer can bring them. Laytr rebuilds the readable copy from the live page instead.
After the import
A read later list that only grows is the other half of the Pocket problem. In Laytr you can give any save a day, tonight, the weekend, a date, and on that day it returns to the top of the app. The pile shrinks instead of growing. “Not now” is always an acceptable answer.
Cases instead of folders
Saves file into cases: a trip, a project, a course, a purchase you are still deciding on. Your Pocket tags come in as tags, and a case can hold a save that carries any of them.
One app on iPhone, iPad and Mac
Save from any app with the share sheet on iPhone and iPad, and from the menu bar on the Mac. Screenshots and scanned pages are searchable on the device too.
The price
Free is the full app with room for 30 saves. Unlimited is $1.99 a month, $14.99 a year, or $39.99 once ($24.99 during launch).
Instapaper and Omnivore
Settings, Import reads all of these. Choose the file and Laytr works out which service it came from.
Instapaper
Export the CSV from Instapaper’s settings page. Its columns are URL, Title, Selection, Folder and Timestamp, and newer exports add Tags. Unread and Archive map to saves and done; a custom folder becomes a case of the same name. More on the Instapaper page.
Omnivore
Omnivore closed in 2024 and its backup ZIP still imports. Links, titles, dates and labels come across. Omnivore’s own saved article HTML and its highlights are not imported; Laytr fetches a readable copy of each page instead.
A Laytr archive
The ZIP Laytr exports imports back whole, articles and files included, and restoring one is exempt from the free limit. An export you could not restore would not be ownership.