🐵 How I use Matter as read later app and how it improved my workflow
My favourite reader with its superpowers.
In its basic essence, Matter is a read-later app like Pocket or Instaper. A way for you to add articles to a list to read later, to tag for easy retrieval and highlight what you find interesting.
However, where Matter sets itself apart is by having more features for the modern reader and keeping the way we consume content in mind. Today we are faced with information overload with articles, newsletters, recommendations for friends and other peers,… so we need to have an as-optimized as possible workflow when it comes down to consuming content.
Matter is publically available now and I can say that it already has become my favourite read-later app. And it seems I’m not the only one seeing all the positive feedback on Twitter or Matter getting a $7 million investment.
To get Matter, go to https://hq.getmatter.app/
How I’m using Matter in my workflow today
1. Collect
I scan a lot of sources to find articles I’m interested in on Refind, Pocket, Google News, Hacker News,… Whenever I find something I would like to read or know I can use later, I use the browser or iOS plugin to save it to my queue.
2. Organize
Once articles are in the queue, I organize them by adding tags.
“Text” tags indicate the topic, while “emoji” tags are for status.
Ex. ✎ indicate articles I’m working on.
3. Consume
I go through my articles, either by reading or listening to them, depending on what fits most. Ex. I listen to articles when I’m running or doing some chores (cooking,…).
When I want to remember or use an article for later, I start adding highlights. Those I don’t need or find interesting will be deleted.
4. Highlight
Whatever I find something useful or want to remember, I highlight.
When I’m done with highlighting, I add the 🖍️ tag to make it easy to distinguish what is done (and can be used) and what is work in progress (✎).
5. Export
Once all highlights for an article are done and I want to use them in my newsletter, or for my Personal Knowledge Management (PKM), I export them.1
6. Archive
There is no need to keep articles in the queue once they are reviewed, so they are moves to the archive, or favourites if it’s one I want to keep aside.
How Matter improved my workflow
I did a lot of my reading through Refind and although it’s a really great app to find new articles, its UI and highlighting workflow (how to highlight and extract them) or not that straightforward to use. I also save articles in Pocket but as I don’t have a pro version, I can’t add highlights so I either have to add the article in Refind to read or create highlights manually.
Matter fixed this as being the central hub to collect all articles and providing an easy workflow to organize, highlight and export.
Final conclusion
Although Matter has only recently become available, I’m really impressed with its feature toolkit and how easy it is to use.
I also love that you can sign up for a newsletter with a unique matter mail address so you can receive these newsletters directly in your Matter inbox to read and highlight.
And that you can add highlights while listening to an article.
To make an audio highlight, simply squeeze both volume buttons at the same time. If you use AirPods, you can triple tap for the same result.
I know they are still working on the experience, but here are some improvements I’m hoping for to make using Matter even better:
Although you can add and read articles in the browser, most actions like organizing, export,… or done with the app, so hopefully, this experience can become available online via a web browser as well.
As I have a lot of articles in Pocket some sort of import or accessing directly would be very useful. This already is in the making as they told me.
I would like to be able to tag articles in the web browser when saving them which would improve my workflow of nothing having to do it afterwards. So something as Pocket has today.
I noticed you can Youtube videos to your list, however, you can’t add notes to them. I view quote some videos to expand my learning and by being able to add notes for videos, would allow me to do and have more in Matter.
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Any comment or feedback?
I know this can be done by linking it to Readwise, but I want to be in control of what goes into Readwise/my PKM.