According to XDA-Developers, the read-it-later service Pocket was officially shut down on July 8 of this year, leaving dedicated users scrambling for a replacement. The author, after trying self-hosted options like Linkwarden and Hoarder, and even complex systems like Obsidian, found an unexpected solution in Google’s NotebookLM. This tool, initially seen as an AI study aid, effectively replaced Pocket by parsing saved web links, offering distraction-free reading, and providing AI-powered audio overviews. A key, if ironic, feature was the free plan’s hard cap of 50 sources per notebook, which forced curation over hoarding. The shift required a more deliberate saving process, moving from a one-tap “Share” action to copying a URL and pasting it into a specific notebook. This friction, it turned out, became a feature, not a bug.
The unexpected upside of limits
Here’s the thing: we all have a digital hoarding problem. Pocket’s beautiful, frictionless design made it way too easy to amass a “graveyard of good intentions”—thousands of articles you were never, ever going to read. NotebookLM’s 50-source limit acts like a forced spring cleaning. It makes you ruthless. You have to ask, “Is this new link worth deleting something else for?” That’s a powerful psychological shift from infinite, guilt-inducing accumulation to intentional curation. Basically, it treats your attention as a finite resource, which it absolutely is. Who knew a restriction could feel so liberating?
More than just a bookmark
But NotebookLM isn’t just a minimalist bookmark manager with training wheels. It’s leveraging AI to actually do something with your saved content while you’re not looking. You can ask it questions about an article before you commit to reading it, pulling out specific stats or checking if it covers a niche topic. The audio overviews are a genuine upgrade from simple text-to-speech; they’re more like a podcast summary, connecting dots across multiple sources. So you’re not just saving a link for later—you’re pre-processing it. The value isn’t just in storage, but in preliminary analysis. That’s a fundamentally different proposition.
The friction filter
Now, let’s talk about that saving process. Pocket was in your share menu. Tap. Done. NotebookLM requires you to copy a URL, open the app, pick a notebook, and paste. That’s a chore, right? Well, maybe that’s the point. That minor friction is a fantastic filter for casual, impulsive saves. It makes the act deliberate. If a link isn’t worth those 10 seconds, was it ever going to be worth 10 minutes of your reading time? Probably not. This subtly changes your relationship with the “save for later” concept from “maybe” to “yes, and here’s why.” It’s a workflow that encourages quality over quantity from the very first click.
Where does this leave us?
So what’s the trajectory here? We’re seeing a quiet convergence. The tools for “saving” information and the tools for “understanding” it are merging. NotebookLM won’t be for everyone—die-hard self-hosters will stick with their own setups, and some will find the AI summaries too glib. But it highlights a trend: passive bookmarking is dying. The future is active, assisted curation. Tools will increasingly be expected to help us triage and synthesize, not just store. The death of Pocket might just have accelerated that shift, proving that sometimes the best replacement isn’t a clone, but something that solves the deeper problem you didn’t even know you had. Are you a digital hoarder, or a curator? Your choice of tool might just decide for you.
