How to export Matter highlights and library and move to Barside

Matter is a beautiful reading app, and it lets you take your data with you. Its export gives you your library and your history, and Barside imports them into its Reading inbox on your computer, with your highlights attached. This guide covers both steps and what to expect.

Before you start

Barside is a free desktop app for Windows, Linux and Mac, and you can get it on the download page. Its Reading inbox saves articles, keeps readable copies on your computer, and has highlights, newsletters by email, Reader Mode and read aloud. Your notes, tasks and recordings live in the same app, so a highlight can become a note in one step.

Matter is built for phones and tablets as well as computers. Barside is a desktop app with no phone app, so the move suits people who read mainly at their computer. Keep your Matter account until you have opened a few imported articles and checked their highlights.

Step 1: Export from Matter

Matter's privacy page gives the path: "visit Settings → Account → Export Data to obtain a machine-readable copy". Matter describes the result in its "Own your data" update: "with a tap, you can export a CSV of your history and a zip of your library".

1. Open Matter and go to Settings.
2. Choose Account.
3. Choose Export Data and save the files.

You can also export the highlights and notes of a single article from that article, which gives a Markdown file. Barside reads those too.

Step 2: Import into Barside

1. Open Settings & backups → Notes from other apps → Import next to Import notes, or type import in the search bar.
2. Find Matter and choose Choose files.
3. Pick the ZIP, or the Markdown highlight files.
4. Barside shows Ready to import with the number of reading items and highlights.
5. Choose Import. Articles go to Reading, not to your notes list.

Articles you already saved in Barside are skipped, so a second import does not double them.

What comes along

When an item has only its link, open it and choose Get article text to download the article.

If something looks wrong

• Barside does not recognize the file. Pick the ZIP of your library or a Markdown highlight file, not the email or a single image. The ZIP does not need to be unzipped.
• An article shows only its title and link. Open it and choose Get article text. If the website is gone, the highlights still keep the passages you marked.
• You exported highlights one article at a time. Pick all the Markdown files at once; Barside groups the highlights by article, in reading order where the files allow it.
• The preview takes a moment. A library ZIP with many saved pages takes a little while to read. Nothing is added until you choose Import.
• Fewer items than in Matter. Articles you had already saved in Barside are skipped, so they are not doubled.

Make your highlights useful

Highlights are most useful when you come back to them:

• One list of all highlights in Reading shows everything you marked, across articles.
• Turn a highlight into a note and link it to your project notes with [[.
• Summarize in layers: the progressive summarization method shows how to bold the best of your highlights over time.
• Ask questions across your reading with Library AI, which cites the articles it used, with the AI account you connect.

Reading in Barside

Save new articles from your browser, read them in Reader Mode with your theme, or listen with read aloud. Newsletters can arrive by email at your own Barside address and land in Reading. The Matter alternative guide compares both apps, and the best read-it-later apps list shows more options. Moving from Readwise Reader too? See the Readwise Reader guide.