Importing your library
Coming from another read-later app? Bring your library with you. Open Settings → Library & privacy → Saved articles and choose Import saves, then pick the export file your app gave you.
What comes across
Section titled “What comes across”- Your saves, dated when you saved them in the other app.
- Your archive. Anything you’d archived there goes straight to your Archive here, so your Queue holds only what you still meant to read. You can change this before you import (see below).
- Tags, as tags (up to ten an article).
- Highlights and their notes, attached to their articles, wherever the export includes them.
- A collection on your Shelf holding everything you import, named for the app it came from, such as “Imported from Pocket”. A collection holds up to 2,000 articles, so a bigger library continues in “Imported from Pocket (2)”.
Choosing what comes in
Section titled “Choosing what comes in”Once Skyreader has read your file, it lists every article it found, all ticked. Untick any you’d rather leave behind, or untick All articles and tick just the few you want. An export from more than one app is listed app by app, each with its own tick box. Articles you’ve already saved in Skyreader are marked Already saved, and Untick the ones already saved leaves them all out.
Below the list, choose where the articles land in your Queue, the list of what to read next:
- As in Pocket (or whichever app): unread articles go to your Inbox and archived ones to your Archive, the way you left them. This is the default, and shows only when your export has both.
- Inbox: every new article lands unread, ready to read next.
- Archive, Shelf only (just Archive if you untick the Shelf box below): every new article goes straight to your Archive, so your Inbox stays as it was, and the articles wait in their Shelf collection until you go looking.
Also put them on your Shelf files what you import in the “Imported from …” collection. It’s on by default; untick it if you’d rather not have the collection. The articles are in your Library and searchable either way.
Articles already in your Library join the collection too (unless you untick the Shelf box). They keep their tags and archive state, and take the export’s highlights only if you haven’t highlighted them in Skyreader. Importing the same file twice adds nothing new, so if an import stops partway, run it again.
Imports don’t count toward the monthly limit on saving links.
The article text
Section titled “The article text”An export carries links, not articles. Skyreader fetches the text of your newest few unread articles right away, and the rest the first time you open each one. Highlights show up in the text once it’s there. A highlight whose passage has since changed on the page is still kept in your Highlights list.
Finding your export
Section titled “Finding your export”Choose the file as your app sent it: a zip is fine, and so are several files at once.
| App | What to choose |
|---|---|
The zip Pocket emailed you. It holds a CSV of your saves and, if you highlighted anything, a file of highlights. The older ril_export.html export works too, without highlights. | |
| Omnivore | The zip from Omnivore’s export. Its highlights come across with their notes. |
| Instapaper | The CSV (or HTML) export from Instapaper’s settings. Folders other than Unread and Archive become tags. Instapaper doesn’t include highlights in its export. |
| Readwise Reader | The CSV from Reader’s library export. Articles new to Skyreader from your Shortlist come across with a shortlist tag, so you can still find them in your Queue. To bring highlights, add the CSV from readwise.io/export alongside it; highlights are matched to articles by title. |
| Matter | The Archive.zip from Matter’s export. Articles you’d finished (out of your queue) go to your Archive. Highlights don’t come across from Matter yet. |
| Wallabag | The JSON export from All entries (an export from Unread holds only your unread articles). Annotations come across as highlights, with their notes. |
Pocket and Omnivore have shut down, so this works only with an export you saved before they did.
If your saves are backed by Semble or Margin
Section titled “If your saves are backed by Semble or Margin”When Semble or Margin backs your saves, your Library is that collection, so an import adds every new article to it too. That collection is public: anyone can see what’s in it. The import dialog says so before you start. Only the articles that import adds are copied in; the rest of your Library stays as it was. Articles already in the collection are skipped, without their tags or highlights from the export.
A large import takes a while to copy
Section titled “A large import takes a while to copy”Each article copied into the collection is a new record in your Atmosphere account, and the server that holds your account (your PDS) caps how many records any app can write in an hour and in a day. On Bluesky’s servers that’s several hundred articles an hour and a few thousand a day. Your posts count against the same cap.
So the copy runs in the background on Skyreader’s servers, at the pace your account allows. It stops before it uses up your allowance, which leaves room for you to keep posting, and carries on when the limit resets. A few thousand articles can take a day or more. You don’t need to keep Skyreader open: every article is in your Library here straight away, and Settings → Library & privacy → Saved articles shows how many are still to copy.
Changed your mind? Pause there stops the copy: what’s already copied stays in the collection, and the rest stay private to Skyreader. Resume picks it up again. If some of your saves never made it into the collection (a copy you paused, or one that stopped partway), the same place says how many and offers Copy them in.