A Matter alternative that keeps your reading local on Windows, Linux and Mac

Matter is a polished read-later app. It gathers articles, newsletters, feeds, podcasts and YouTube videos into one queue, and it reads them to you in a natural voice. It is made for iPhone, iPad and the web, though, and many of its best tools come with a subscription. If you want a Matter alternative that lives on your computer (Windows, Linux or Mac), Barside's Reading inbox saves articles and newsletters as readable copies on your own drive, with highlights, comments, tags and read-aloud. It imports your Matter export, and it is free.

This page compares the two honestly, including the jobs where Matter is the better choice, and shows how to move your library in a few minutes.

The short answer

Matter does a lot well. Its reader is clean and free of distractions. Its voices sound close to human, and you can highlight while you listen. It saves YouTube videos and podcast episodes and turns them into text synced to the audio. It brings in newsletters from Gmail or a Matter email address, and it follows writers and feeds.

People look for a Matter alternative for three common reasons:

• They read on a Windows or Linux computer, where Matter is a browser tab.
• They want their library on their own drive, not in a cloud account.
• They want reading next to their notes, tasks and meetings, not in a separate app.

Barside is a free desktop app with a read-later inbox built in. It runs on Windows, Linux and Mac. It does fewer reading tricks than Matter, and it has no phone app. In exchange, your articles, newsletters and highlights live on your computer, open without an account, and join the same library as your notes, where search and your own AI can use them.

Why people look for a Matter alternative

• No app for Windows or Linux. Matter's website calls it the modern read-later app for iPhone, iPad and the web. On a Windows or Linux computer, you read in the browser. On a Mac with Apple silicon, you can install it from the App Store.
• Key features are paid. Matter's App Store page says the free version includes an uncapped library, as many tags as you like and full-text search. Premium adds HD text-to-speech, the AI Co-Reader, newsletter sync, writers and RSS feeds, no limit on highlights, notes and integrations, and Send to Kindle. Its API and command-line tool need a Matter Pro subscription.
• Several price points. Matter's App Store page lists more than one Premium and Pro subscription, at different prices. The pricing table below shows them.
• A cloud account holds everything. Your library lives in your Matter account. Matter's privacy policy says it stores data primarily in the United States, including the articles you save, highlights, notes, tags, reading statistics and AI summaries.
• Reading apart from your other work. Matter sends highlights to a notes app through an integration. Some people would rather read, highlight and write in one place.

None of these make Matter a bad app. They make it a phone-first, cloud-first app, and that is not what everyone needs.

Barside at a glance

Barside is a free desktop app with notes, reading, tasks, bookmarks, recordings, meetings and AI features, docked at the edges of your screen. Reading is its read-later inbox, with five lists: Inbox, Newsletters, Favorites, Archive and Highlights.

• Save in one step. Paste a link and choose Save, or choose Save the page open in your browser. From any app, press Alt+Shift+Space, type later and pick Save to Reading. No browser extension is needed.
• A copy that stays. Your computer downloads the page and its pictures once, without your browser's cookies, and keeps a clean, readable copy. Nothing loads from the web when you read, so reading works offline.
• Newsletters by email. Sign in (free) and get Your Barside email address. Subscribe with it, or forward newsletters to it from Gmail with a filter. Tracking pixels are removed and never loaded.
• Read and mark up. Select text to Highlight it, with an optional comment. Star favorites, add tags, and archive what you finish. Listen reads the article aloud at 0.8× to 2× speed.
• Pick up where you stopped. Unread items have a dot, each item shows its reading time, and an article opens where you stopped scrolling.
• Part of your library. Reading items are notes, so the search bar, AI search and the assistant find them. Keep as a note turns an article into an ordinary note when you want to write around it.

The read-it-later guide walks through every button, and Reader Mode shows only Reading, notes, bookmarks, On my desktop, the note map, Library, agents and the assistant when you want a quiet setup. See app modes.

Matter vs Barside: feature comparison

Matter facts come from Matter's website, App Store page, privacy page and developer docs, as of September 2026.

Pricing compared

Barside's price is simple: free. Matter's depends on the plan and on where you subscribe.

Matter prices are from its US App Store page and its own Premium announcement, as of September 2026. The App Store lists several in-app purchases under the same names. It also lists a Matter Premium purchase at US$99.99 and a Matter Patron Tier at US$149.99, without a billing period. Check the price in the app before you subscribe.

Barside has no AI of its own and sells no AI plan. If you connect Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini or OpenRouter in Settings → AI, that company bills you for what you use.

What stays on your computer

A reading app sees what you read, so it helps to know where each part goes.

• Articles. Your computer downloads each page once, without your browser's cookies, and the copy lives in your library and your backups. Nothing loads from the web while you read.
• Newsletters. Mail to your Barside address passes through Resend, Barside's email provider, and waits on Barside's server until your computer collects it, about every 5 minutes while Barside is open. Then it is deleted there. Mail never collected is deleted after 30 days, and attachments are not kept.
• Listening. Listen uses the voices on your computer.
• AI. Nothing you read goes to an AI unless you connect one. Answers send only the excerpts they need to the company you picked.

The details are in Reading and your data and your Barside email address.

Where Matter is better

Matter is the stronger choice for several jobs, and you should know them before you switch.

• Reading on your phone. Matter has iPhone and iPad apps, with highlighting by long press or Apple Pencil. Barside has no phone app.
• Listening. Matter's voices sound close to human, it turns your queue into a playlist, and Audio Highlights lets you mark a passage without looking at the screen. Barside's Listen uses the voices on your computer and suits an article at your desk.
• More than articles. Matter saves PDFs, threads, YouTube videos and podcast episodes, with transcripts synced to the audio. It also follows writers and feeds. Barside's Reading saves web pages and newsletters.
• Paywalls. Matter says it saves full articles from paywalled sites you subscribe to, such as Bloomberg, NYT and WSJ. Barside downloads pages without your browser's cookies, so an article behind a sign-in stays a link. For a page you need to keep exactly as it looks, save the webpage into a note instead.
• Kindle, quote images and integrations. Matter Premium sends articles to Kindle. Matter also makes Quoteshots (shareable quote images for X), syncs highlights to Notion, Obsidian, Roam, Readwise and other apps, and offers an API and a command-line tool with Matter Pro.

If most of your reading happens on a phone, or you listen more than you read, stay with Matter.

How to move from Matter to Barside

Barside has a Matter importer. It reads your export on your computer and uploads nothing. Imports and your data explains what happens to the files.

1. Export from Matter. In Matter, go to Settings → Account → Export Data. Matter emails you a download link for a ZIP, Archive.zip, with a CSV of your reading history and your saved pages.
2. Install Barside from the download page and open it.
3. Open Settings, find Import notes and choose Import.
4. Next to Matter, choose Choose files and pick the ZIP. If you also have your Matter highlights as Markdown files, pick them in the same step (hold Ctrl to pick several).
5. Barside shows Ready to import, with the number of reading items and a list of things to know, such as rows without a web address. Under Import into, pick a new workspace or an existing one.
6. Choose Import. When Barside says your reading is here, choose Open Reading.

What comes along:

• Articles with their text. Matter's ZIP keeps each saved page next to the history file, and Barside reads it, so most articles arrive ready to read.
• Your queue and your archive. Items still in your Matter queue go to the Inbox. The rest go to the Archive.
• Titles, authors, publishers, tags and favorites.
• Highlights and their notes from the Markdown files, joined to the matching article when you import them together. They appear under a Highlights heading in each item and in the Highlights list.

Articles already in Reading are skipped, so you can import a newer export later without duplicates. One import takes up to 20,000 articles. If an item arrives as a link only, open it and choose Get article text. The guide to importing your notes covers every other importer.

Move your newsletter subscriptions

Your Matter export brings your saved articles, not your newsletter subscriptions. Give them a new address:

1. In Barside, sign in (free), open Settings → Reading, choose Get my address, then Copy.
2. If Matter collected newsletters from your Gmail, forward them to Barside instead. Settings → Reading guides you: add the address in Gmail's forwarding settings, confirm it with the Confirm forwarding button that arrives in Reading, then make a Gmail filter for each newsletter with Forward it to and Skip the Inbox. One filter with substack.com in From covers every Substack newsletter.
3. If you subscribed with your Matter email address, change each subscription to your Barside address, or sign up again with it.

New issues land in the Newsletters list, even while your computer is off: they wait on Barside's server for up to 30 days until Barside collects them.

Who should switch, and who should stay

Barside is a good fit if you:

• read on a Windows or Linux computer, or on a Mac with Barside for Mac, and want a desktop app, not a browser tab;
• want your articles, newsletters and highlights stored on your own drive;
• want reading, notes, tasks and meetings in one app, with one search bar over all of it;
• would rather use your own AI account than another subscription;
• want a free read-later app with no account for your own library.

Stay with Matter if you:

• read mostly on an iPhone or iPad;
• listen to articles for long stretches, on walks or in the car;
• save podcasts, YouTube videos, PDFs or articles from paywalled sites you subscribe to;
• follow feeds and writers, or send articles to Kindle.

You can also use both. Keep Matter on your phone, and bring an export into Barside now and then when you want your highlights next to your notes. Barside skips what it already has.

Other alternatives worth a look

• Readwise Reader. Saves articles, PDFs, EPUBs, newsletters, RSS feeds and YouTube videos, with the Ghostreader AI and apps for the web, iOS and Android, plus Mac and Windows apps that are still in alpha. It comes with a Readwise subscription: US$9.99 a month billed annually, or US$12.99 monthly, as of September 2026. See the Readwise Reader alternative.
• Instapaper. Saves web pages to read later, on the web, iOS and Android. Its free plan saves as much as you like; Premium is US$5.99 a month or US$59.99 a year, as of September 2026, and adds full-text search, a permanent archive, a PDF reader and more.
• wallabag. Free, open-source software you can host on your own server, or use as the hosted wallabag.it for 11 € a year or 4 € for 3 months, as of September 2026. It imports from Pocket, Omnivore, Instapaper and Pinboard.
• Pocket. Mozilla shut Pocket down in July 2025. If you still have your export, the Pocket alternative guide shows how to bring it in.

For the full field, compare the best read-it-later apps.

Works well with Reading