Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Show HN: We built an app for reading articles saved for later

alfreadapp.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 97 posts

Re: Show HN: We built an app for reading articles saved for later

#31

Post by shkliarau »

tnjm wrote: post #23
shkliarau wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is on-topic :) Thanks for saying that, I felt a bit like that when designing it but the feedback we’ve gotten so far was really positive. Might consider something less in a good sense overwhelming for the next version

While this isn't for me as I don't use iOS daily, I wanted to say that I'm impressed with your response to feedback. And, for what it's worth, I saw the landing page on desktop and it felt nicely done, and the animations had a purpose.

Ha, thanks! Just trying my best, first time (or maybe second) posting here

Re: Show HN: We built an app for reading articles saved for later

#32

Post by AJRF »

shkliarau wrote: post #29
AJRF wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On Desktop Safari the reading list is stored in a Bookmarks plist file you can grab and filter out Reading List items from, might be worth having some little desktop util for a 1 time sync to move people onto your platform? It's not ideal, but it's better than nothing. Here is an example with some code showing how someone did it so they could upload it to Pinboard: https://brettterpstra.com/2015/01/06/reading-list-ca…

Ah, could be good actually. Definitely better than nothing, thanks for finding that link, appreciate it

No problem - and congrats on the launch!

Re: Show HN: We built an app for reading articles saved for later

#33

Post by shkliarau »

als0 wrote: post #26

For anyone else looking for the privacy policy https://alfread.notion.site/Alfread-Privacy-Policy-5e67f4f92...

Thanks for sharing! Did anything stand out to you? To be honest, we did it last second but basically we don’t have accounts, don’t store any personal information, and everything stays on your device

Re: Show HN: We built an app for reading articles saved for later

#34

Post by gnicholas »

I'm excited to try out a new reader app, especially one that integrates with Pocket and Instapaper. Those apps haven't added many new features in years, so there's room for innovators in the space, and using their APIs gives people an easy offramp. Smart!

One bit of feedback on the onboarding process: you hit people with the subscription prompt before they've started using the app, and you show them the features they can only have if they pay. At this point in the process, they have no idea what other features are in the app, and whether they want to keep using it at all.

I would never subscribe to an app — or even start a free trial that will automatically rollover into a paid subscription — before exploring the app a bit. Perhaps you could put a comparison checklist at this stage, so people can see what features are included in the free version? I probably still wouldn't subscribe at that point, but at least it would feel like the app has shown me the relevant info before asking me to sign up.

I do realize this is for a free trial, not the paid subscription, but I don't want to put another to-do on my calendar for "cancel app subscription for $appIJustDownloaded".

Looking forward to trying out the app and seeing what's under the hood. Good luck!

Re: Show HN: We built an app for reading articles saved for later

#35

Post by vbo »

shkliarau wrote: post #30
mtrovo wrote: post #22

I think this could be very useful, any plans for Android or web app? Also maybe a nice to have feature would be to group similar articles by theme so that when I sit down to read one article I can read all articles around the same theme while I'm still focused.

One day :) We’re a 2-person team with 1 dev, so resources are quite limited, but hope to get there. Great suggestion! We have auto-tags for that right now, but of course it’s not perfect yet. But could be nice to suggest similar ones at the end of the one I just read, like you suggested

Alfread looks great, congrats. I'm going to give it a spin, but I would desperately need a web app to go with the iOS one.

I usually just open a myriad tabs on my computers and my phone and hope I recall there was something I meant to read later. Doesn't work too well. Google Keep comes close, but the UX doesn't really do it for me.

What I'd love it a simple (think HN) interface where I can scroll through article titles. And being able to save articles seamlessly from anywhere (app, bookmarklet, maybe even email to a custom address).

Any other apps I've tried were sadly bloated.

Re: Show HN: We built an app for reading articles saved for later

#36

Post by marban »

I created a read-later service pre-Instapaper ca. ~2005 and only recently ditched all of them after having ~10k articles in the queue. Today I only use Safari's reading list and purge it every morning. If it's important/really interesting, I'll read it immediately — all these services just provide peace of mind but won't solve the time or discipline issue.

Re: Show HN: We built an app for reading articles saved for later

#37

Post by mywacaday »

shkliarau wrote: post #30
mtrovo wrote: post #22

I think this could be very useful, any plans for Android or web app? Also maybe a nice to have feature would be to group similar articles by theme so that when I sit down to read one article I can read all articles around the same theme while I'm still focused.

One day :) We’re a 2-person team with 1 dev, so resources are quite limited, but hope to get there. Great suggestion! We have auto-tags for that right now, but of course it’s not perfect yet. But could be nice to suggest similar ones at the end of the one I just read, like you suggested

As a android user I see a lot of IOS only apps on Show HN but can't recall an Android only one. Is there a business reason for this given that android has over 70% of the market.

Re: Show HN: We built an app for reading articles saved for later

#39

Post by smoldesu »

mywacaday wrote: post #37
shkliarau wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One day :) We’re a 2-person team with 1 dev, so resources are quite limited, but hope to get there. Great suggestion! We have auto-tags for that right now, but of course it’s not perfect yet. But could be nice to suggest similar ones at the end of the one I just read, like you suggested

As a android user I see a lot of IOS only apps on Show HN but can't recall an Android only one. Is there a business reason for this given that android has over 70% of the market.

The people who use HN frequently are startup fiends, and Apple is an expert at extracting value from their users. The rest of the story writes itself.

Re: Show HN: We built an app for reading articles saved for later

#40

Post by dillondoyle »

Cool app. But that website really buggy for me (chrome macos).

Looks like they are - kind of cool idea - placing 'overlay' screenshots on top of a phone, then css transforming them on scroll to 'swipe away.' But it doesn't really work for me.

Maybe the apple idea of using a video and controlling the timeline on scroll might work better

Post reply on HN