This post focuses on the differences and similarities between 3 apps – Evernote, Pocket, and Instapaper – and tips on how you can use these apps to easily organize your digital workflow.
If you’re reading this blog, chances are you have some form of digital life. Personal life, work-life, whatever form it takes, the world we currently exist in requires most people to operate at least partially online, on a phone, or a computer.
That means you also have files, apps, documents, books, contacts, emails… the list goes on and on. All of these digital things can add up to irritating and overwhelming digital clutter really quickly if you don’t take the time to organize them.
I have an organizing problem.
Problem might not be the right word, but it can create scenarios where getting one new thing for one room in my house leads to deep-cleaning, rearranging, and even building new storage or tearing stuff apart. Once I start organizing, I get obsessed.
I like to think long-term for organizing. What can I do now that will be useful and versatile for a while? How can I organize things efficiently, minimizing the clutter?
It’s still a process in my physical world, but where I really need to step it up is my digital world. There are A MILLION apps and services to help organize files, accounts, articles, videos, etc. But to start, I just wanted to compare 3 particular services that have some similar functions…
The Basics: What Are They?
I started using Pocket several years ago – probably right after it became a thing – but stopped for whatever reason. I don’t think I took the time to really mess with it so it started gathering digital dust.
That being said, it’s a really useful little tool for saving content from across the web.
Articles, videos, webpages – with a quick click, Pocket will keep them stored for you until you decide to actually use them.
It’s a read-later app at heart. The most basic point of it is to allow you to save things that you’re interested from across the web all in one place, making them easy to come back to later.
Features:
- Easy in app video play
- Several color modes
- Text-to-speech option
- Organize by tag
Instapaper
Instapaper is the newest to me. Like Pocket, it’s a read-later app. I’d go so far as to say it’s even more of a read-later app than Pocket is.
A lot of the features of Pocket and Instapaper are similar, but personally I think Instapaper’s features go one step further to enhance the reading experience.
It has a newspaper-esque feeling that takes you slightly further away from the feeling of web-browsing, which can be nice. It also has a really cool speed-reading feature that will quickly display one word (enlarged on your screen) at a time, moving through words at your chosen speed.
Instapaper’s priority is clearly being a reading space, and it does an incredible job at that.
Although you can technically use Instapaper for saving other media, such as videos (they even have a tab for videos in the app) I’ve found this feature to be far-less useful (and even glitchy) than the same type of feature in Pocket.
Features:
- Text-to-speech
- Pagination options
- Several color mode options
- Organize by folder
Evernote
Evernote sets itself apart from the other two by being much more than a read-later app.
In fact, if I were to define it, I’d call it a general digital organizer. Not a read-later app. You can save articles and webpages to Evernote, and read them later, but it really shines as a place to save all sorts of media within editable notes – meaning you can actually edit the text of an article after you’ve saved it.
It’s also the most advanced as far as folders (known as ‘Notebooks’ in Evernote) tags, and stacks, for grouping your saves together.
Evernote is the most versatile of the 3 apps, in my opinion, but that doesn’t necessarily make it the best.
Features:
- Organize by tag and notebook/folder
- Add multimedia attachments – video, audio, handwriting, files, etc.
- Edit saved items extensively
- Send items to Evernote through email
What they have in common
Save text/articles from the web
Let’s start with the obvious: you can save web text/articles/webpages to all of them. The options for how you do that varies a little from app to app, with Evernote having the most options and Instapaper the least.
Fav/Like lists
All the apps allow some version of a favorites list where you can store the saves you like the best or want RIGHT THERE on hand.
Videos
All 3 apps allow you to save videos. Instapaper and Pocket even have tabs specifically for videos.
Freeeeeee
All the apps have a free version, with paid versions if you want more features.
Browser Extensions
They all have a browser extension so you can use the app and save items to them on your phone or on a desktop computer.
IFTTT integration
You may or may not be familiar with the automating service that is IFTTT (IfThisThenThat) so you can check it out here. Basically, it allows you to automate some app functions by using “triggers” – in the case of Pocket, Evernote, or Instapaper, it could be something like:
“If this site published something save it to my reading list” ish. kinda. Bascially. Don’t quote me.
All 3 apps work with IFTTT so feel free to mess around and find cool ways to integrate them.
Text-to-Speech
This only applies to Pocket and Instapaper. They both will read the content of a saved article to you, which is pretty rad.
How they differ
I’ll try to make the differences between these apps as clear as possible, hang with me.
Tags, folders, notebooks
Each app has a slightly different way of allowing you to organize your saves, although all have a home tab where you can find your saves in order of most recent.
Pocket: uses tags
Instapaper: uses folders
Evernote: uses tags, “notebooks” and stacks
Multimedia saves
Videos
Like I said before, videos can be saved to all 3 apps, but all are not equal when it comes to saving non-text items.
In Evernote: Videos are saved with a link to the webpage. Although the video thumbnail appears in the app, it’s not playable in the app and you’ll need to click the actual link to open it.
In Instapaper: Videos are saved and are playable within the app on a browser, however if you click the saved video in the app, it will open externally on Youtube.
It’s a little cleaner than Evernote with videos overall.
In Pocket: Videos are saved and playable within the app across devices. Pocket definitely wins when it comes to videos.
Photos
Evernote is the only one of these applications that supports importing a photo all on its own – not embedded in an article. You can save screenshots or upload specific photos, add tags or notes to them, put them in certain notebooks, or insert them to previously saved notes.
Web Extensions
There is a web extension available for all of the apps, but the options that pop up when saving are different for each.
For Instapaper: You click, it saves. And if you’re super quick you can choose a folder to move it to.
For Pocket: You click, it saves, but it also comes with a temporary pop-up that allows you to add tags to the saved piece.
For Evernote: By far the most options for saving from the web. With Evernote you can choose the format you want to save the page in:
- Simplified article – bare bones text
- Article – everything minus the ads or other pieces of the webpage
- Full page – the whole webpage with all it’s links and features
- Bookmark – a small snippet with a photo and link
- Screenshot – allows you to make a screenshot of the page
You also get to designate which notebook you want the save to go into, if you want to add any tags, or add a comment.
SO. MANY. OPTIONS.
How to use the apps to organize your digital life
Let me be super clear, these are nowhere near the only apps that can help you organize your digital stash, but they can certainly help streamline some stuff.
I have SO MANY digital things going on. I follow a lot of people, I’m interested in a lot of things, I manage a lot of accounts. So, rather than trying to juggle all that between a thousand different apps, or going back and forth between my computer and my phone, I’m continually looking for ways to streamline and simplify.
Business and personal
There’s a strong argument to use Evernote for business purposes.
- Create both tags and notebooks (and even stacks – where multiple notebooks live together) to organize your files, notes, photos and videos, all in one app.
- Add attachments to individual notes – new text, handwriting, photos, videos, audio, or files.
- Set reminders for notes
- Integrate Evernote with Google Drive
- Send items directly to Evernote by adding it as a contact
- Allow Evernote to save photos with text in them from your camera roll
All of that makes me feel that Evernote is the most useful of these apps for organizing digital business items. I also think it can be used as a sort of home base in combination with either Pocket or Instapaper (or both, you do you.)
Let me explain real quick.
Instapaper and Pocket are both great for storing and reading content you find around the internet. Some of that content may be personal – interesting articles, short stories, hobby-esque – whatever floats your boat. Some content may relate more to your professional (or even academic) life.
So rather than having to store all your personal AND business reading in Evernote, I’d opt for keeping one (or both) of the reading apps to save all reading to, then, as you find business-related content, share that on over to Evernote as needed.
Sharing from either Pocket or Instapaper to Evernote is very simple. Simply go to the share button on whatever article you’re reading, send it to Evernote.
So here’s the breakdown of how I organize some of my digital life using these apps:
- I designate Evernote for business (of course you could have a separate account for personal, or even just create new notebooks in the same account, but to keep it simple I’m just committing it to biz-related things)
- Choose Instapaper or Pocket as your reading app (One reason to keep both would be to go one step further and designate one of those – probably Instapaper IMO – as your business source and the other for personal)
- Create folders or tags for business and personal in the reading app (remember, Instapaper does folders, Pocket does tags)
- Sort business-related saves as you find them using tags or folders
- If you decide you need to attach some info from your reading app to an Evernote note, share it to Evernote
- Open Evernote, bag and tag the new save however you need to
TL;DR
- Store business/professional/academic items in Evernote
- Pick a reader app to store all general saves in
- Set up business folder/tag in reader app
- Periodically move useful biz items to Evernote as needed
I have A LOT of digital content that needs to stay organized. Research, projects, tools, ideas. It’s a lot and sometimes I can get hung up on the clutter, wanting to organize before I can move forward.
I think it’s worth it to spend a good chunk of time getting an organizing routine down. It pays off in the future if you commit to the habit.
I’m working on wrestling the monster that is my digital life into submission. It’s a process, but this system is one way that you can create some clarity out of the chaos.
The winner is?
*Drummmmmrolllllllll*
There isn’t one. Sorry guys. The truth is all the apps serve their own purpose so it’s hard to say one is particularly better than the other.
Instapaper is the most minimal. It focuses on being a read-later app and the features reflect that. It excels as a reading app.
Pocket is a little more colorful and modern, with the best video integration of the 3.
Evernote is a full-blown note taker, organizer, reminder-setting machine. But it’s also more complicated and a little clunkier than the others.
