A read-it-later app with highlights, newsletters and read aloud

A good read-it-later app with highlights does three things well: it saves an article in one step, gives you a calm place to read it later, and keeps what you marked where you can find it again. Reading in Barside does all three, for free, on your computer. Paste a link or save the page open in your browser, and Barside keeps a readable copy with its pictures. Newsletters arrive in the same inbox by email. Select a passage to highlight it, add a comment if you like, and choose Listen to hear the article read aloud.

Every item lives in your own library, so nothing loads from the web when you read, and your highlights are there for search and for your AI later. This guide covers saving, reading, highlighting, newsletters, moving from Pocket, Matter and others, and where your reading lives.

How Barside works as a read-it-later app with highlights

Open Reading in the sidebar. Everything you save lands in one place with five lists:

• Inbox: what you have not finished. Unread items have a dot, and the sidebar shows how many are unread.
• Newsletters: the newsletters in your inbox, on their own.
• Favorites: the items you starred.
• Archive: what you finished.
• Highlights: every passage you highlighted, from every item, with your comments.

Each item shows its source, its date, an estimated reading time and its tags. Search Reading looks through titles, sources, authors, tags and the full text, and the tag menu filters any list to one tag. When you open an item, Barside marks it read and remembers how far you scrolled, so you pick up where you stopped.

How to save articles to read later

1. Paste a link. In Reading, paste an address into the box at the top and choose Save.
2. Save the page you are on. Choose Save the page open in your browser. Barside reads the address from your browser, with no extension.
3. Save from any app. Press Alt+Shift+Space, type save or later, and choose Save to Reading. Add a link, or leave it empty to save the page open in your browser.
4. Ask the assistant. "Save the page open in my browser to Reading" works too, with the AI you connected. See the AI assistant.

When you save, your computer downloads the page once, without your browser's cookies, and Barside keeps the article itself in a clean layout, with up to 15 of its pictures. Scripts, forms and embedded frames are left out. Saving the same article twice adds nothing new: Barside says "Already in Reading.", even when the second link has tracking tags such as utm_ added.

Pages that need a sign-in, or only work with scripts, are saved as a link, so nothing you saved is lost. Open the item later and choose Get article text to try again.

A quiet reader

The reader shows the title, the source, the author when the page names one, the date, the reading time and your tags, then the article in calm typography. Its toolbar has:

• Archive when you are done, or Move back to Inbox.
• Add to Favorites, the star.
• Tags: type tags separated by commas, then Save tags.
• Listen, with a speed menu from 0.8× to 2×.
• Open the original page in your browser.
• Keep as a note, which moves the item out of Reading and into your notes.
• Delete, which asks for a second click.

Links inside an article open in your browser. The reader's toolbar wraps neatly in narrow and docked windows, so Reading can sit at the edge of your screen, next to your work.

Highlights and comments

Select any text in an article, and a small bar appears above it. Choose Highlight to mark the passage, or the comment button to type Your comment first. Click a highlight later to see Remove highlight.

The Highlights list collects every highlight across your library, each with its comment and the title it came from. Searching there finds words in the passages and in your comments, and clicking a highlight opens its article. Highlights you import from another app appear under a Highlights heading inside each item, and in the same list.

Highlights also feed the rest of Barside. AI apps you connect can list your Reading items with their highlights, and so can the assistant, so a question like "What have I highlighted about onboarding?" has an answer.

Newsletters in the same inbox

Newsletters come by email, to an address that belongs to you. Sign in to Barside (the free sign-in you also use for Spaces), open Settings → Reading, and under Your Barside email address choose Get my address. You get an address like k7p2xq9m4d@read.barside.space. Then:

• Subscribe with it on any newsletter's sign-up form, or
• Forward newsletters to it from Gmail, Outlook or any other email app.

Mail to your address waits on Barside's server until your computer downloads it, about every 5 minutes while Barside is open, or at once when you choose Check now. Then it is deleted from the server, and mail your computer never collects is deleted after 30 days. So newsletters keep arriving while your computer is off.

Barside cleans each newsletter as it arrives. Tracking pixels are removed and never loaded, "view in browser" lines at the top are dropped, and attachments are not kept. If you ever want a fresh address, New address replaces yours at once, and the old one stops receiving.

Forward newsletters from Gmail in three steps

Settings → Reading walks you through it:

1. Add your address in Gmail. Choose Open Gmail forwarding settings, click Add a forwarding address, paste your Barside address, then choose Next and Proceed. Leave forwarding of all mail off.
2. Confirm it. Gmail sends a confirmation email to your address. It arrives in Reading within a few minutes, with a Confirm forwarding button that opens Google's own confirmation page.
3. Forward each newsletter. In Gmail, open a newsletter, click ⋮ (More), then Filter messages like this and Create filter. Tick Forward it to with your Barside address, and tick Skip the Inbox to take it out of your inbox. Then click Create filter.

One filter with substack.com in From forwards every Substack newsletter at once. In Outlook or another email app, make a rule that forwards newsletters to your address. Barside never connects to your Google account: you choose what Gmail forwards, and you can stop at any time in Gmail.

Newsletters can also feed a scheduled agent. In Agents & approvals, set its Also reads to New newsletters in Reading, or start from the Social posts from newsletters preset, which drafts posts for LinkedIn, X and Threads each morning from what came in since its last run. It uses the AI you connect, and anything it proposes waits for your approval.

Listen: articles read aloud

Choose Listen, and Barside reads the article aloud with the voices built into your computer, one paragraph at a time. The paragraph being read is marked and scrolls into view, so you can follow along or look away. Pick a speed of 0.8×, 1×, 1.2×, 1.5×, 1.8× or 2×, and Barside remembers it. Pause, continue or stop from the same toolbar. Listening happens on your computer.

For a sidebar made for reading, and more on listening, see Reader Mode and read aloud.

Move your library from Pocket, Matter, Readwise and others

Mozilla shut Pocket down on July 8, 2025, and its exports closed on October 8, 2025. If you kept your export file, Barside can still bring it in. Settings → Import notes moves your reading into Reading with its highlights and tags, and skips articles you already have:

• Pocket: the export you downloaded before the shutdown, either the CSV (a ZIP with part_000000.csv) or ril_export.html.
• Matter: Settings → Account → Export Data. Matter emails you a ZIP. Markdown highlight files work too.
• Readwise: the highlights CSV from readwise.io/export. For Readwise Reader, your profile page → Export Library as CSV.
• Instapaper: instapaper.com → Settings → Export, as CSV or HTML.
• Raindrop.io: Settings → Backups → export a CSV file.
• Omnivore: the ZIP export with its articles and highlights.

You see a preview with the number of items and any warnings before anything is added, and the files are read on your computer. An imported item often has only its link and your highlights; open it and choose Get article text to download the article. See import your notes for every importer.

Part of your second brain

Reading items are notes that stay out of your notes list. Settings → Reading → Save new items in picks the workspace they are stored in. Because they are notes:

• The search bar finds them by any word, and AI search cites them as sources in Library answers.
• The assistant can list what you saved and save new pages for you.
• AI apps you connect through AI connections, like Claude Desktop or ChatGPT, can list them with their highlights, read-only, in the workspaces you share.
• Keep as a note turns an article into an ordinary note when you want to write around it, link it with [[ and see it on the note map.

For a reading-first layout, switch to Reader Mode. It keeps Reading, notes, bookmarks, On my desktop, the note map, Library, agents and the assistant, and opens on Reading. See app modes.

Who it suits

• Newsletter readers who want their subscriptions out of the email inbox and in one calm place.
• Researchers and students who collect sources, highlight quotes and find them again by searching.
• Writers who collect passages and ideas with their own comments.
• Product and marketing teams who follow other companies' blogs and newsletters.
• People moving from Pocket, Omnivore, Matter or Readwise who want their library, highlights included, on their own computer.

Privacy: what stays on your computer

Reading items and their highlights live in your library on your computer, like other notes, and they are included in your backups. When you save a page, your computer downloads it and its pictures once, without your browser's cookies. Listen uses the voices on your computer.

Newsletters to your Barside address pass through Resend, Barside's email provider, and wait on Barside's server only until your computer downloads them, at most 30 days. Resend keeps its own copy of received mail under its privacy policy. Read Reading and your data, how your Barside email address works and newsletters from Gmail.

Limits worth knowing

• Barside is a desktop app for Windows 10 and 11, Linux and Mac, and you save from your computer.
• Pages behind a sign-in or a paywall are saved as a link, because Barside downloads pages without your cookies.
• Each item keeps up to 15 pictures, of up to 5 MB each.
• Your Barside email address needs a Barside sign-in. It takes up to 300 emails a day and holds up to 2,000 waiting.
• Very large emails keep only their plain text, or are dropped, and attachments are not kept.

How it compares

If you are coming from a dedicated reading app, the Matter alternative, Pocket alternative and Readwise Reader alternative guides compare them with Barside feature by feature, and the best read-it-later apps ranks the options. To keep a page exactly as it looked, with its layout, use saved webpages instead.

Works well with