Hacker News Reader

Comment by thomasqbrady | Hacker News Reader

I'm super intrigued by this, and feel like I'm 99% overlap in a Venn diagram with the target user, BUT… when the browser plugin immediately requested the ability to see everything I did on every site I ever visited (and the first one it asked me about was my employer's wiki with trade secrets galore), I clicked "deny" and moved on.

Might still be worth a shot on personal devices, but with the say Safari syncs history across devices via iCloud, I'm not so sure…

Is it still demonstrably better than other reading apps (Reeder, Instapaper, etc.) without the plugin?

View on HN

Hey! Totally understand this concern with the browser extension. I mentioned this in another comment, but there was no way to build the full functionality without these permissions, though we do hope to make a lighter version of the extension in the future for more privacy-conscious folks.

However, completely understand the request, and we do value privacy/security super highly. All extension data stays local on your device unless you actively press the extension button to save a page/content. You'd have to read our source code and network requests to confirm this right now, of course.

Another commenter also mentioned, we do indeed have a super light bookmarklet that can serve this purpose in the mean time as well

``` javascript:(function()%7Bopen('https://readwise.io/save?title='+encodeURIComponent(document...)() ```

Hope that helps!

I use the bookmarklet they offer for saving for this reason. I wish addons had a finer grain permission system.

Where is the bookmarklet? I'm not using the browser extension for privacy purposes as well, but can't find the bookmarklet

Cant find it for the life of me. Here is the code.

    javascript:(function()%7Bopen('https://readwise.io/save?title='+encodeURIComponent(document.title)+'&url='+encodeURIComponent(location.href))%7D)()

I suppose this means that things that need a login to read won't be saved whereas with the extension it would be?

They should be using the "activeTab" permission available in both Manifest v2 and v3 https://developer.chrome.com/docs/extensions/mv3/manifest/ac...

@tristanho - will you consider this?

Unfortunately, there was no way to make the _full_ extension work with only activeTab, as we have some functionality that is incompatible (one such example: if you open up a page you've previously saved and highlighted in Reader, we show your highlights overlaid on it seamlessly).

That being said, we do want to make another version of the extension that works for more privacy conscious folks, and will defs use activeTab for that! Just requires a little more engineering effort.

I totally understand the request though, privacy is super important. All extension data stays local on your device unless you actively press the extension button to save a page/content. You'd have to read our source code and network requests to confirm this right now, of course.

Oh damn :/ that indeed sounds like a blocker for me. I was looking forward to try that app.

EDIT: looks like there’s a bookmarklet. I think that’ll do the trick.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com