What is Matter used for?

Matter is a commercial reading app for iPhone, iPad and web that gathers newsletters, feeds and saved articles with highlights and text-to-speech. It is a good fit for readers moving newsletters out of their inbox and former Pocket users looking for a read-later app.

Is Matter open source?

No. Matter is proprietary (closed-source) software and can't be self-hosted. Open-source alternatives to Matter include Zotero, mdSilo and Memex.

What are some alternatives to Matter?

Matter competes with Readwise, Instapaper and Raindrop.io. For open-source options, see Enlisted's ranked list of open-source Matter alternatives.

Matter: features, pricing and alternatives

About Matter

Matter is a commercial reading app that gathers newsletters, feeds and saved articles in one interface. It runs on iPhone, iPad and the web, and the vendor presents it as a modern read-later app and a client for reading on the open web.

Users can save articles, threads and PDFs through a browser extension, route newsletters into Matter by connecting Gmail or using a dedicated Matter email address, and follow writers and feeds. YouTube videos and podcast episodes can be saved and turned into time-synced transcripts. Text-to-speech playback converts newsletters, blogs and articles into an audio playlist.

Highlighting is designed to be low-friction, and a quoteshot feature turns highlighted passages into shareable images. The site has a welcome page for readers moving over from Pocket. Matter is hosted, and the pages reviewed did not list prices.

Key features

Newsletters delivered into the app
Read-later saving of articles, threads and PDFs
Following writers and feeds
Transcripts of saved videos and podcasts
Text-to-speech audio playback
Highlights and quoteshots
Browser extension for saving

Good fit for

→Readers moving newsletters out of their inbox
→Former Pocket users looking for a read-later app

Tags: read-later; newsletters; rss; highlights; text-to-speech; ios; reading-app

Matter: questions and answers

What is Matter used for?: Matter is a commercial reading app for iPhone, iPad and web that gathers newsletters, feeds and saved articles with highlights and text-to-speech. It is a good fit for readers moving newsletters out of their inbox and former Pocket users looking for a read-later app.
Is Matter free?: Yes. Matter has a free plan.
Is Matter open source?: No. Matter is proprietary (closed-source) software and can't be self-hosted. Open-source alternatives to Matter include Zotero, mdSilo and Memex.
What are some alternatives to Matter?: Matter competes with Readwise, Instapaper and Raindrop.io. For open-source options, see Enlisted's ranked list of open-source Matter alternatives.