Wonder Tools — organize your newsletters 💌
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Wonder Tools — organize your newsletters 💌
Easy ways to streamline your subscriptions 📥
In case you’re drowning in newsletters, I’m sharing tips to help you cope. Personal note: I’m unplugging from newsletters & tech this week on a family road trip, so in advance of traveling, I updated the recommendations below from past posts.
5 quick ways to streamline your newsletters
Search for “unsubscribe” in your inbox to find newsletters to cull.
Use Gmail settings to sift newsletters out of your primary inbox.
… or adjust Gmail filters to organize your reading by category.
Try Superhuman for reading Gmail - it has a news tab. [Read more]
Shortwave, an app for reading Gmail, has smart bundles for newsletters.
Another approach: use a dedicated app for reading newsletters, much like the one the you use for subscribing and listening to podcasts.
Here’s my take on the best apps for reading newsletters outside of your inbox.
Readwise Reader | Best for saving everything in one place: newsletters, online articles & YouTube videos.
Reader makes it easy to subscribe to newsletters, blogs or any other RSS feeds. Instead of cluttering up your inbox with tons of email subscriptions, as I’ve done for far too long, you can move those into Reader. It’s also great for saving newsletter highlights. [Read more or watch my interview with Reader’s founder].
Newsletterss | Best for starting from scratch.
Newsletterss — yes, that’s RSS at the end — is a simple newsletter reader. When you join for free you’re given an email address you can use to sign up for newsletters you want to read in the app. Works for iOS and Android. Free for basic usage or $2/month to subscribe to an unlimited number of newsletters.
Meco | Best for pulling newsletters out of Gmail
Meco pulls newsletters you already subscribe to out of your inbox & into its app. To start, give Meco access to scan your Gmail. It identifies your subscriptions. You can then choose which to shift out of your inbox and into Meco's app.
Meco lets you create groups of newsletters (i.e. work-related, food-related). Or get a helpful view of newsletters sent within the past day or week. iOS only. (Try Stoop Inbox, below, for Android).
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Stoop Inbox | Best for a clean, podcast-like reader.
Why not read newsletters in an app, just as we listen to 🎧 podcasts? Stoop aims for a clean newsletter-reading experience in its app. It’s free on iOS and Android, with optional paid premium features.
Substack Reader | Best for reading Substacks.
If you subscribe to a lot of Substack newsletters — like this one—you might find it useful to read them in Substack’s own free app, or its web-based reader. I use the app to scan through recent posts and pick out whatever I feel like reading. Tip: add RSS feeds to bring in other blogs or non-Substack newsletters.
Kill the Newsletter | Useful if you rely on an RSS reader.
This service converts newsletters into an atom feed, so you can read them in a blog reader or another tool you use to read Web subscriptions, like Feedly.
Mailbrew | Best for grouping newsletters into a curated custom email you receive as frequently as you want.
Mailbrew lets you design a custom newsletter for your own reading or to share with others. Pick your favorite newsletters and add RSS feeds, Twitter accounts, YouTube channels or whatever else you want to follow. Receive your custom newsletter at whatever frequency you want. [Read more]
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Wonder Tools — organize your newsletters 💌
I'm grateful for your recommendation of Readwise Reader (https://wondertools.substack.com/p/reader). It has been a sanity saver.
Thanks for this! I just started playing with Omnivore, an open source RSS and Read it later app in parallel with the readwise reader. First impressions are that readwise has a nicer interface but omnivore is free....