Omnivore Is Joining ElevenLabs

(blog.omnivore.app)

100 points | by janpio 2 days ago ago

43 comments

  • xz18r 2 days ago

    I was already wondering why development on Omnivore was halted…

    This isn’t good news at all for Omnivore users. It made me legitimately consider switching away from my self-hosted Wallabag instance because everything looked so sleek and promising; in terms of read-it-later apps, it really held the promise of the big next thing (as far as that can apply to such a “simple” category).

    I’m not sure if articles read aloud is the thing that Omnivore users are looking for, per se. Ah well, they’ll know why they did it…

    On a side note:

    > All Omnivore users will be able to export their information from the service through November 15 2024, after which all information will be deleted.

    Just me or is that extremely short notice? That’s in 2 weeks…

    • theschmed 2 days ago

      > Just me or is that extremely short notice? That’s in 2 weeks…

      It is not just you.

    • a20eac1d a day ago

      The internet is volatile and it has happened multiple times that a page I have saved to read later has disappeared.

      Do you have any good recommendations for self hosted services that allow me to save a link and have an archived copy of the website saved to disk?

      So far, I've tried Wallabag, Linkwarden and Archivebox but I feel like they don't quite work the way I want to.

      What are you experiences with this?

  • bsnnkv 2 days ago

    After many years wasted on RIL apps, probably one of the best lifestyle changes I made was to adopt a "read it now or read it never" (RINORIN) approach[1].

    I'm still very happy with RINORIN + archiving the interesting bits of what I read in the moment[2].

    [1]: "If it's not immediately interesting enough for me to read when I see it, I just let it ago, trusting that if it's important enough, I'll be exposed to it again sooner or later, and at that point it'll be interesting enough for me to read it when I see it." (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38355803)

    [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41697228

  • freeqaz 2 days ago

    Damn they're giving under 3 weeks to export before you lose all of your data? That's insane! If I were on an extended vacation and missed this, my data would be gone when I get back.

    They _really_ should increase that to be longer! Switch to read-only, but give at least 3-6 months to export. That's crazy otherwise

    • lfarquad 2 days ago

      “Some of you may die, but that is a sacrifice I am willing to make.”

  • darrmit 2 days ago

    Ugh this is the only read-it-later service I ever found that "stuck". It was so simple and good. This sucks.

    • cstuder 2 days ago

      I came from Instapaper after their price hike to Omnivore and went back to Instapaper. I felt that Omnivore was over-complicated with their "every folder is a filter" structure. Instapaper feels much more straightforward.

      • darrmit 2 days ago

        I did the same and will likely end up back with Instapaper. Omnivore’s export leaves a lot to be desired, though. Trying to find a script that will give me something usable to import.

  • jamil7 2 days ago

    I built and ran a read it later app in the iOS app store for a few years as a side project. I found it pretty difficult to monetise and the support burden got to me. I eventually just pulled it from the store as I was getting emails and reviews and felt I couldn’t really give it the attention it needed. I saw quite a few competitors coming and going over the years, either through acquisitions or developers just losing interest. It seems like a difficult thing to make work sustainably.

  • bberenberg 2 days ago

    For what it’s worth I’ve contacted them to see if they would be open to handing over the hosted version. The current answer is no, based in part on wanting to delete user data. I suggested I could take it without data and users could reimport their data post handover. If you’d like to see this happen send them an email and voice your support.

  • thylacine222 2 days ago

    this really sucks, it's by far the best reader app out there. Hoping that people will be able to figure out a straightforward way to do self-hosting, because I would be willing to use the app as it is right now forever.

    • 0x6c6f6c 2 days ago

      Except on Android, where you couldn't even tag saved articles.

      I noticed development had stopped weeks ago. Sort of figured something like this was going to happen. Unfortunate, but I'll be happy on Wallabag again. I'd been just waiting for a push to do migrate back.

      • thylacine222 2 days ago

        I seem to be able to tag articles, do you not have an "Edit Labels" option in the article menu? Regardless, they definitely were lagging on Android development, but it was still finished enough to use it. There's even a version that supports pagination: https://github.com/tent4kel/omnivore/releases/

        • 0x6c6f6c 2 days ago

          When you're actually creating an entry via the share prompt there are no options at all unlike the browser extension (for Android at least)

          So yeah, you can tag it.. if you exit your current app, find Omnivore in your launcher, open the app, find the entry you just made, then edit it, then add tags.. but that's a terrible UX.

          • thylacine222 2 days ago

            Ah yeah, the share dialog is really basic, I ended up using Firefox and installing the full extension when I wanted to save pages (also allows you to save pages from places you're logged into)

  • dmje 2 days ago

    I use Raindrop[0] for all bookmarks and have flirted with Omnivore and Wallabag over the years. But I always come back to just using Raindrop and "Unsorted" for my read-it-laters. I've got a feed into Reeder from here which works well too. At the end of the day a likely next step after reading something is to want to bookmark it so this workflow works well for me.

    [0] https://raindrop.io/

    • avinassh 2 days ago

      I love one Raindrop’s feature where it lets you bookmark all the tabs in a window

  • petemir 2 days ago

    I have not tested them yet, but (actually) self-hosted potential alternatives: linkwarden [0], hoarder [1]

    [0] https://github.com/linkwarden/linkwarden

    [1] https://github.com/hoarder-app/hoarder

    Edit: fixed wording

    • 2 days ago
      [deleted]
  • Phlogi a day ago

    Here is a script to convert your exported omnivore into an importable wallabag format: https://gist.github.com/Phlogi/f96a5ca0d65d5264df1fe636a8aac...

  • Than3s a day ago

    What would be your recommendation for best parsing? I've found Omnivore really reliable, definitely much better than Readwise Reader (which can't even show Youtube videos in article afaik)

  • dod9er 2 days ago

    Too bad... I also really liked it and used. Seems like I go for wallabag again. Maybe it will be possible to selfhost omnivore at some point in time ?!

  • Carbon1603 2 days ago

    So, where to go next?

    • paulmorabito 2 days ago

      I'd love an easier self hosted option too.

      In the meantime, if you are in the Apple world then Goodlinks is a privacy friendly option for saving articles to read later.

      I haven't found a decent alternative that can add articles via email like Omnivore. My workaround is to get the RSS link from Substack and add these to my RSS reader that I self host (FreshRSS).

      • samantha-wiki 2 days ago

        I’m looking into migrating to FreshRSS from omnivore now.

        Does [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/selfhosted/comments/165nnk6/comment...) solve the email ingestion issue for you?

        • paulmorabito 2 days ago

          I've heard of this but didn't use it because all of my email newsletters are on substack and substack supports RSS. Also, with substack RSS, you get a feed per newsletter whereas Kill The Newsletter gives you one feed for all newsletters going to their address.

      • leshokunin 2 days ago

        Feed in gives you an email address for newsletters

    • kirso 2 days ago

      Raindrop, Obsidian web clipper, notion web clipper, Readwise

    • lawgimenez 2 days ago

      I am using Reeder 5 for RIL.

  • novoreorx a day ago

    Is there any chance that Omnivore's features will be shipped to ElevenReader?

  • raybb 2 days ago

    Ugh anyone have a rundown of how good the parsing is on wallabag vs instapaper vs pocket (or something else)?

    • darthwalsh 2 days ago

      I had been using Pocket until a few months ago, and pocket's parser was a little better. It wouldn't choke on GitHub repos, for example.

      But both would miss significant article content :/

  • andreagrandi 2 days ago

    Thanks for making the code base open source

  • lxgr 2 days ago

    tl;dr: They got acqui-hired and are shutting the app and service down.

    Ugh, it was so good!

    Self-hosting it seems quite complicated, though. I really hope somebody will step up and offer a hosted version of it.

    • dod9er 2 days ago

      Yes, just as it is right now I would love a cheap alternative. No need for fancy speech or AI features from my Side. Do one thing and do it good...

    • guptarohit 2 days ago

      why good things don't last longer.