Pocket Shut Down. Here's What That Taught Us About Bookmark Managers.

In July 2025, Mozilla shut down Pocket. To their credit, they gave users advance notice and a clear way to export their data. But most users didn't act in time — and even those who did walked away with an HTML file full of years of saved links and no obvious place to put them.

That dependency is the real lesson. Your bookmarks were always tied to Mozilla's decision to keep the service running, to notify you in time, and to keep the export working. This time they did everything right. Next time — with a different company — they might not.

That's the problem with every mainstream bookmark manager. This article explains why — and what to look for instead.

What made Pocket good

Pocket was genuinely useful. You could save any URL in two clicks, read it later across any device, and it synced automatically in the background. The browser extension was seamless. The mobile app was polished. At its peak it had 150 million users — Mozilla acquired it in 2017 for what looked like a long-term commitment.

Then in 2025 they shut it down. They gave users notice and an export option — but the service was gone regardless.

The problem isn't Pocket — it's the model

Every popular bookmark manager follows the same pattern:

• You create an account
• Your data lives on their servers
• You pay monthly, or they monetise you another way
• When the economics stop working, the service closes

This has happened to Pocket. It happened to Delicious. It happened to Diigo's free tier. It will happen again.

The issue isn't that these companies are bad — it's that your bookmarks are a liability on their balance sheet, not an asset. When the business model breaks, your data goes with it.

Squirrel vs Pocket — honest comparison

	Pocket	Squirrel
Account required	✗ Yes	✓ No
Data location	Mozilla's servers	Your browser only
Pricing	Free / $4.99/month	Free / $9 once
Works offline	Partial	✓ Fully
Survives company shutdown	✗ No	✓ Yes — data is yours
Auto-backup	✗ No	✓ Every 30 min (Premium)
Cross-device sync	✓ Automatic	Via Vault Backup (see below)
Export your data	Yes (before shutdown)	✓ Anytime

Cross-device sync — the honest answer

Pocket's automatic cross-device sync was seamless — save on your phone, find it on your laptop. Squirrel doesn't do that out of the box, because doing it would require a server. But it doesn't mean you're stuck on one device.

Option 1 — Vault Backup to a shared cloud drive (convenient, small privacy tradeoff)
Squirrel Premium includes Vault Backup, which writes your bookmarks to a file on your computer automatically. Point that folder to OneDrive, Google Drive, or Dropbox, and the file stays in sync across devices. On another device, open Squirrel and restore from that file.

It works well. The tradeoff worth naming honestly: your bookmark file now lives on a third-party cloud service. If that's a concern, use Option 2.

Option 2 — Syncthing (private, no cloud at all)
Syncthing syncs files directly between your devices — peer-to-peer, no intermediary server, no account, fully open source. Point Squirrel's Vault Backup to a Syncthing-watched folder and your bookmarks sync device-to-device automatically. Takes about 10 minutes to set up. Nothing leaves your devices.

Neither option is as frictionless as Pocket's automatic sync. But both give you cross-device access while keeping you in control of where your data goes — which Pocket, ultimately, did not.

What "local-first" means in practice

Squirrel stores everything in IndexedDB — a built-in browser database that runs natively on your device. No network request is ever made to store or retrieve your bookmarks. There's no backend, no database we run, no server that could go offline.

In practice that means three things:

• It works offline. No internet connection needed after the first load.
• It's fast. Every read and write hits a local database, not a network request.
• It can't be taken away. No company decision, acquisition, or shutdown can delete your bookmarks. They're in your browser until you choose to remove them.

Getting started

Go to squirrel.aditco.in. No sign-up. Paste a URL and save. That's it.

The free tier is unlimited — save as many bookmarks as you like. Premium ($9 once, no subscription) adds auto-backup every 30 minutes, 7-day backup history, and Vault Backup for cross-device access.

How to move your Pocket bookmarks to Squirrel

Pocket exports in the same HTML format that browsers use for bookmark exports. Squirrel's import reads this format directly — no conversion needed.

1. Export from Pocket — if you still have access, go to getpocket.com/export and download your bookmarks as an HTML file.
2. Open Squirrel — go to squirrel.aditco.in, no sign-up required.
3. Import the file — open the menu (☰), choose Import from Browser, and select your Pocket HTML export.
4. Done — your bookmarks appear as sections, one per Pocket folder. No limit on how many import.

The lesson from Pocket

Pocket shutting down wasn't a failure of the product — it was a structural outcome of the model. Free, cloud-synced, account-based tools are convenient until they aren't.

The bookmark managers that will still be around in ten years are the ones where the data belongs to the user, not the platform. Your reading list, your research, your saved links — they should be yours to keep.

Squirrel is one of them.