I like using the Notion Web Clipper. As I’m readin’ my feeds, I’ll often save articles with it so they go into my special Notion database for articles I want to spend more time with later.
While it’s my preferred way of saving articles, there are some things I don’t like about it.
- It’s constantly forgetting which workspace/database I want to save things to. I only use one! Ever! Remember it!
- You have to be online for it to work
But what if I’m not online? My feed reader works offline to some degree, showing me things from the last time it pulled down articles. Not to mention network access is always sporadic, especially on mobile devices. My WiFi doesn’t reach super well to the toilet at work, for example. 💩. What if I want to save an article from there?
It’s possible to build experience, both as web apps and native apps, where you can perform actions offline and have them sync when back online. On iOS, I believe, apps have access to syncing via a users iCloud. I’m sure it’s a bunch of work, but I like that offering! Anytime I’ve used an app that uses that, it seems to work very well, and it doesn’t care if I’m online or offline.
One app I think of is Bear and how it just syncs by default (as a Pro feature).
So I could tuck URLs to those articles into a Bear note if I’m in a place I can’t use the Notion Web Clipper. But actually, I use Things. Things also has syncing (I’m not 100% sure if it’s iCloud based or what).
AND, Things has a nice little sharing option in the native sharing panel of iOS. So if I can’t Notion Web Clipper, I just kick the article into Things temporarily. Then back when I would be dealing with articles anyway, my stuff has synced by then, I pluck the articles out of Things from my laptop and use Web Clipper from there.
I (obviously?!) prefer the ability to use apps entirely offline and let it sync later when it can. That would be awesome if Notion could do that eventually. I get it though, building things is hard and everything is a tradeoff.
If you ever peek a boo in r/Notion, A LOT of people are asking for offline. I could use notion to take not in a glimpse of a convention or a webinar regardless of the connectivity, brain-dumping flawlessly without a heck because of the connectivity (I’m looking at you, Confluence). A nice feature could also be to “make available” offline some Notion page (and sub-pages) and sync them later.
I don’t have an iPhone (yet) but Things look useful as well.