After the later-to-launch application Pocket was closed in August, numerous alternative products began to emerge. However, the newcomer Laytr has gone even further; it offers more than just the function of saving content to be read later. Users can save any content on web pages for future viewing, including articles, recipes, screenshots, videos, PDF, bookmarks, or tabs.
This app also automatically organizes these different types of files and allows users to organize them into what it calls a collection named “cases”. It can also remind you of a saved item on a date of your choice, for example, to help you remember local events, or to remind you to go to places you want to visit on certain days. (It might even be used to motivate yourself to finish reading a list!)
An interesting feature of this app is that all the content you save is converted into a private archive that can only be accessed on your own device. This means you don’t need to create an account to use it, and the developers cannot see any of the content you save. However, you can still access this content on multiple devices, including iPhone, iPad, and Mac, as the content is synchronized through iCloud.
The idea for Laytr came from independent developer Mostafa Talaat from the Ontario region, and it was released in the name of their company Waitery Inc. Talaat told TechCrunch that after hearing about the closure of Pocket, they were inspired to decide to develop their own read-aloud application. Out of privacy concerns, they chose to develop an application that does not rely on a server.
Talaat explained, "The content you save is a good reflection of who you are, and I don't want to hold onto that information. Everything remains on your device and in your own iCloud. When you save something, Laytr will ask you when you would like to see it again and remind you on that day. It will also import your previous Pocket export files, so no one has to start from scratch."
Since this app emphasizes privacy, it does not perform certain functions, including creating personalized information streams, or using AI to summarize or automatically tag items.
This app is available for a free trial, but you can only save up to 30 projects. For full functionality, the Premium plan costs $1.99 per month, $14.99 per year, or you can pay $39.99 once to get a lifetime license. (The lifetime license is on sale for $24.99 until the end of December.) Talaat indicates that this app will focus on adding support for more languages in the future.
If your subscription expires, the content you have saved will not be lost – you will just not be able to add new content until you subscribe again, or reduce the number of files to less than 30 under the free plan. You can also leave Laytr at any time, as the entire archive can be exported as a ZIP file, in which each item, note, tag, date, and collection (“case”) is provided in readable Markdown and HTML formats.
