Pocket Is Gone: How to Move Your Saved Articles to a Private Alternative

Mozilla shut Pocket down, but your reading list doesn't have to go with it. Here's how to import your Pocket CSV export into Savely, what comes across, and what to do next.

3 min read

Mozilla shut Pocket down in July 2025. For a lot of people that meant losing a habit, not just an app: years of "I'll read this later" links, tagged and archived, suddenly needing a new home.

If you exported your data before Mozilla's deadline, you're holding a file that can bring that whole list back. This guide shows how to move it into Savely, a free read-it-later extension for Chrome and Firefox that keeps everything on your own device, so the next shutdown can't take your list with it.

What's actually in a Pocket export

Pocket's export is a ZIP archive with one or more CSV files inside (typically named something like part_000000.csv). Each row is one saved item, with these columns:

  • title: the article title
  • url: the address you saved
  • time_added: when you saved it
  • tags: your tags, separated by a |
  • status: whether the item was unread or archived

Notice what's missing: the article text itself. Pocket's export is a list of links, not a library of articles. That matters later.

Didn't export in time? Unfortunately, once Pocket's export window closed there was no official way to recover the data. If you have an old export lying around (check your Downloads folder for pocket ZIP or CSV files), it will still import fine.

Step 1: Unzip your export

Extract the ZIP file somewhere easy to find. You'll end up with one or more .csv files. Larger accounts get split across several parts; you'll import each one.

Step 2: Install Savely

Add Savely to Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Brave, Vivaldi or Opera. There's no sign-up screen, because there's no account. The extension is ready the moment it's installed.

Step 3: Import the CSV

  1. Click the Savely button in your toolbar to open your list.
  2. Click the ⚙ (Data and backups) button in the top bar. This opens the options page.
  3. Find the Import card and click Choose a file.
  4. Pick your Pocket .csv file.

Savely shows a short report: how many items were added, how many were merged with ones you already had, and any rows it had to skip (for example, a row with a broken address). If your export has several parts, repeat this for each file. Importing the same file twice is harmless, since items with the same address are merged instead of duplicated.

What comes across

From Pocket In Savely
Title and link ✅ Title and link
Save date (time_added) ✅ Kept, so your list stays in the order you built it
Tags ✅ Every tag, ready to filter with tag:name in search
Archived items ✅ Land in your Archive tab
Unread items ✅ Land in To read
Article text ❌ Not in Pocket's export (see below)

An import in Savely never deletes anything and never overwrites content you already have. It only adds. So it's safe to run even after you've started saving new articles.

Getting the article text back

Because Pocket only exported links, your imported items start out as entries without a stored copy of the article. To get a clean, offline-readable version of anything you care about:

  1. Open the original page. Select the item and press o, or double-click it.
  2. Save it again with the toolbar button or Ctrl+Shift+S.

Savely recognizes the address, fills in the article text on the existing entry, and keeps your tags and archive state. No duplicate.

You don't need to do this for your whole backlog at once. Most people find their real reading list is a few dozen items; the rest is history you mostly want searchable, which titles and tags already give you.

Why pick a local-first replacement this time

Pocket's shutdown is a reminder that a hosted reading list is only as permanent as the company running it. Savely takes a different approach:

  • No server to shut down. Your list lives in your browser's own storage. There is no Savely cloud.
  • Export is always one click away. Full JSON backups (articles, tags, highlights) or a standard bookmarks file any browser can open.
  • No account, no tracking. What you read is nobody's business, and Savely was built without anywhere to send it.
  • Sync only if you want it, through a private GitHub Gist you own. Here's how that works.

Quick recap

  1. Unzip your Pocket export.
  2. Install Savely.
  3. ⚙ → Import → choose each .csv file.
  4. Re-save the articles you want to read offline.

That's it. Your reading list is back, and this time it's yours.