Upnext is an application to read later. No, it’s a bookmarks app. No, it’s a matter of content healing, social media. Even Jeroen Seghers, one of the co-founders of the service, strives to explain it. “In the longer term,” he says, “I like to think about what we’re building as a knowledge browser.” But even he admits that doesn’t mean much to anyone right now. Finally, Upnext decided on “A Reader with Superpowers,” which is close enough.
Either way, this is what Upnext is all about: it’s a place to save and interact with content from all over the internet. It manages blog posts and posts like Pocket or Instapaper, but it also serves as a dump for all those YouTube videos you want to watch later, the podcast episodes you’ll listen to, the tweet threads you don’t have time to scroll through. . however, all those PDFs that surround your desktop and more.
What I like most about the app is that instead of storing all of this stuff in a reverse timeline, it acts as a kind of Google TV interface for web content, a tool that grabs all your links. and try to get back to the right one. thing at the right time. The Upnext home screen shows you some categories, a set of selected daily selections of the things you’ve saved, and then some of the things you’ve added most recently. There’s also a review page asking you to swipe your finger with Tinder through your list to keep it clean – swipe right to keep it, swipe left to archive it.
The app has been in beta for over a year and I’ve been testing it over and over for most of that time. It is now publicly launched on the iPhone, iPad and the web; Android will finally arrive, Seghers says, but not soon. The app costs $ 10 a month or $ 69 a year, which is very high for this type of app (Pocket and Instapaper have very good free levels), but Seghers believes Upnext can create something worthwhile the price for internet content superconsumers. He also did not rule out finally offering a cheaper or free version, but said starting expensive “will give us a clear signal of what the most demanding users want.”
Upnext works with iPhone and iPad, but now there is no Android. Image: Upnext / David Pierce
I used it primarily as a simple replacement for Pocket (or Matter, another new app to read later that I enjoyed) as an easy-to-read tool. It does a good job of ingesting most text articles, with images and other media as well, and makes it fairly easy to highlight text and take notes. If you take notes in a video or podcast, it automatically marks the timestamps so that they are easy to find later. (Upnext still doesn’t have an easy way to sync all your notes with your favorite note-taking app, unless you also pay for Readwise, but I’m told it will arrive soon.) The app doesn’t have as many customization options as some others. apps, I’d love a way to widen the margins a bit on the iPad, in particular with Seghers saying it will come, but it’s still a pretty enjoyable reading experience.
Ultimately, though, Upnext’s plan is to do a lot more with your content than give it a nicer font. When you save something to the app using the Upnext browser extension or the iOS sharing sheet, Upnext tries to figure out what it is and sorts it automatically. It works, right? Upnext is great for understanding the difference between a long read and a short article and always puts YouTube links in the right place. But if you save an article with a video embedded at the top, you’ll think you wanted the article. If you find a podcast episode on your website instead of a podcast player, it will save it as a short read, not a long listen.
You also can’t manually categorize your content, which is annoying. (I still have a lot of podcasts in my short read folder.) Instead, Upnext wants you to make playlists. I love this feature, personally – I now have a list of podcast episodes, articles, and videos on topics I’m trying to learn more about, and I can immerse myself in them whenever I have time. (In that sense, Upnext is almost like a supercharged bookmark service.) You can also share playlists with other people, including your own notes on various content, and Seghers says Upnext has long-term dreams of providing many features. social in the application.
Upnext tries to manage threads, podcasts, articles, videos and more. It’s a tricky thing to get right. Image: Below
Top of the list of priorities: Better understand the content people put on Upnext. The app already saves your progress on all types of content, so you can resume anything where you left off. But Seghers says the team is devoting a lot of time to improving the automated categorization system, which would also help Upnext recommend content to users. “You can tell us, like,‘ I want to read, I want to listen, or I want to look, ’” he says. “So if you can also tell us,‘ This is the topic I want to get a little ahead of ’or‘ That’s what I’m in the mood for ’, because our morning vs. afternoon and weekday vs. weekend, everything it’s very different. ”He’s also excited to turn Upnext into a powerful search engine for all the things you want, but he acknowledges that it’s also hard work.
The dream of an app like this, really, is to spend your days leaving the things that interest you, and the app smartly returns them to you at the right time. It is not a task or inbox, rather like your selected internet version. Then that’s not it, but that’s very close to what Seghers says he’s trying to build. “You can throw any link at it,” he says, “and it’s something that is continually learned.”
Apps like Upnext (and Pocket, Instapaper, Matter and the rest) have always been for a specific type of heavy content consumer. I am this type of consumer and so far I have really enjoyed using Upnext. It’s not a perfect system, and it’s probably still not worth $ 10 a month for most people, but I’ve spent years looking for a good “I’ll get to this later” app, and surprisingly, Upnext is about to do so. well.