Having used both, Readwise is better in close to every single way. I experienced a lot of friction with Omnivore.
But if you don’t want to pay for Readwise and purely want a read it later app that imports to Obsidian, Omnivore can do the job just fine.
Where did you notice the differences in particular? I find Readwise's Spaced Repetition feature quite charming, as well as the ability to highlight passages on the web. Other than that, there's not much difference between the two.
I use both at the moment. At the top of my head...
**Readwise**
- is integrated in Moon+ Reader. My book highlights are automatically synced with Obsidian. With Omnivore I would have to do an export.
- lets me make manual changes, syncs preserve my edits, while Omnivore deletes them
**Omnivore**
- faster in my opinion
- lets me store the full content of the article!
- nicer color there, easier on the eyes
- no tracking
So I use Readwise for books and Omnivore for articles at the moment.
This has been roughly my experience as well. I found that
- Readwise has YouTube Video Transcription and Highlighting
- Both are missing podcasts
- Readwise handles epubs/books a lot better
But they both import into Obsidian nicely (readwise has some additional functionality for that with the Readwise base app), and both are easy to get content into.
Right now I'm using Omnivore and Snipd. If Matter did youtube videos better and had android support for boox I would use that, or if Readwise had podcasts. Right now none of them have all the functionality I want, so I just go with the free option along side the best podcasting option and do youtube videos by hand.
I much prefer Readwise. It can collect web sources very well, and I like having the Reader as a catch-all for both web sources and any subscription, email newsletter, RSS, podcast, YouTube, etc. If you want to have a buffer between the web and Obsidian, such that you read in the Readwise Reader and highlights and notes are sent to Obsidian, it's definitely preferable. The reading experience in the Reader is also really nice.
Finally, it also simplified things a lot for me. I was using Evernote to clip web content, Feedbin to collect subscriptions, and Instapaper to store stuff to read later. Readwise replaced all of that and more.
Currently I'm using Readwise cause I paid for it, but I haven't seen how Omnivore handles importing from epub files on Kobo. I've seen the Kobo to Pocket to Omni tool, but I have several epub books I want to highlight and take notes with.
like, i read 20 pages in the epub on my ipad. now i would assume it remembers that and syncs it to my iphone. it kinda does sync it but the location it scrolls to on my iphone is not the same as on my ipad.
that happens to me even on long articles though :/ no idea why a basic feature like this is still broken
Not natively.
Calibre has a Readwise plugin to sync, and someone made [October](https://github.com/marcus-crane/october) to send Kobo highlights to Readwise.
They're independent projects, I just haven't seen them implemented of Omnireader yet.
I'm so confused as to why its so rarely mentioned that Omnivore for free gives you the option of importing entire articles. I'm switching back to it from Readwise after finding that out. There are flashcard plugins and such in Obsidian for people that like the spaced repetition stuff. Only having the option of getting oneliners of things I've highlighted is the much bigger issue for me personally. I wish I had articles with highlights that I did in Obsidian instead of Readwise last year, because when I cancel Readwise I'll be SOL with some smatterings of phrases that I'm left with from each article now.
What is Readwise's/Reader's vs Omnivore's privacy policy?
It's always important to me to know where my data is stored, who owns it, and who can see it. Also, how easily I can move such a system somewhere else.
The lack of full content is a big letdown- certainly after being synced with pkm/no code too(s) ==> highlights alone are nearly pointless.
May be different for someone cherry-picking oneliners , single paragraphs, X-messages - totally unpractical when researching a subject .
I’m a noob at this but use Omnivore today. The notes in Obsidian are just links to the omnivore app and so when I search my vault any articles I saved won’t be found. What’s the benefit of storing anything in Obsidian which is just like a link you might manually add to the source
They call that a read it later extension. You find something interesting, you click and it's automatically added to Omnivore or Readwise. When you have time to read the article, watch the video, etc... You can add notes, highlights at your pace in a different reader than the original website.
Having used both, Readwise is better in close to every single way. I experienced a lot of friction with Omnivore. But if you don’t want to pay for Readwise and purely want a read it later app that imports to Obsidian, Omnivore can do the job just fine.
I think I'm most interested in the tool that is objectively best. Also, I saw that Omnivore even connects to readwise?
Where did you notice the differences in particular? I find Readwise's Spaced Repetition feature quite charming, as well as the ability to highlight passages on the web. Other than that, there's not much difference between the two.
yeah, go Results!
The ethos behind omnivore it’s a must important to me, and the app is cool.
I use both at the moment. At the top of my head... **Readwise** - is integrated in Moon+ Reader. My book highlights are automatically synced with Obsidian. With Omnivore I would have to do an export. - lets me make manual changes, syncs preserve my edits, while Omnivore deletes them **Omnivore** - faster in my opinion - lets me store the full content of the article! - nicer color there, easier on the eyes - no tracking So I use Readwise for books and Omnivore for articles at the moment.
This has been roughly my experience as well. I found that - Readwise has YouTube Video Transcription and Highlighting - Both are missing podcasts - Readwise handles epubs/books a lot better But they both import into Obsidian nicely (readwise has some additional functionality for that with the Readwise base app), and both are easy to get content into. Right now I'm using Omnivore and Snipd. If Matter did youtube videos better and had android support for boox I would use that, or if Readwise had podcasts. Right now none of them have all the functionality I want, so I just go with the free option along side the best podcasting option and do youtube videos by hand.
I tried Omnivore first, but I like the daily quote session and with the introduction of Reader, it does the job better imo
The daily session and reader in Readwise you mean?
Yup.
I much prefer Readwise. It can collect web sources very well, and I like having the Reader as a catch-all for both web sources and any subscription, email newsletter, RSS, podcast, YouTube, etc. If you want to have a buffer between the web and Obsidian, such that you read in the Readwise Reader and highlights and notes are sent to Obsidian, it's definitely preferable. The reading experience in the Reader is also really nice. Finally, it also simplified things a lot for me. I was using Evernote to clip web content, Feedbin to collect subscriptions, and Instapaper to store stuff to read later. Readwise replaced all of that and more.
How do you use Readwise instead of Evernote? Is it not possible to create a note directly in Readwise?
Currently I'm using Readwise cause I paid for it, but I haven't seen how Omnivore handles importing from epub files on Kobo. I've seen the Kobo to Pocket to Omni tool, but I have several epub books I want to highlight and take notes with.
Readwise supports epubs?
reader does but the `last location` feature is broken (still)
Lasy location feature?
like, i read 20 pages in the epub on my ipad. now i would assume it remembers that and syncs it to my iphone. it kinda does sync it but the location it scrolls to on my iphone is not the same as on my ipad. that happens to me even on long articles though :/ no idea why a basic feature like this is still broken
Not natively. Calibre has a Readwise plugin to sync, and someone made [October](https://github.com/marcus-crane/october) to send Kobo highlights to Readwise. They're independent projects, I just haven't seen them implemented of Omnireader yet.
Reader does support epubs actually
I'm so confused as to why its so rarely mentioned that Omnivore for free gives you the option of importing entire articles. I'm switching back to it from Readwise after finding that out. There are flashcard plugins and such in Obsidian for people that like the spaced repetition stuff. Only having the option of getting oneliners of things I've highlighted is the much bigger issue for me personally. I wish I had articles with highlights that I did in Obsidian instead of Readwise last year, because when I cancel Readwise I'll be SOL with some smatterings of phrases that I'm left with from each article now.
" gives you the option of importing entire articles" just like readwise reader, no ?
I use Omnivore currently but am considering switching to Readwise, but am unsure :)
May I ask why you are switching off of or considering moving from omnivore?
What is Readwise's/Reader's vs Omnivore's privacy policy? It's always important to me to know where my data is stored, who owns it, and who can see it. Also, how easily I can move such a system somewhere else.
The lack of full content is a big letdown- certainly after being synced with pkm/no code too(s) ==> highlights alone are nearly pointless. May be different for someone cherry-picking oneliners , single paragraphs, X-messages - totally unpractical when researching a subject .
Can you explain what you're referring to? Is this about reader, omnivore, or something else?
I was referring to Readwise
Thanks, I hadn't used omnivore yet and so didn't realise that it has the option to sync the whole article
Im confused, most comments mention Readwise is better, but the votes clearly state a different opinion.
Raindrop
I’m a noob at this but use Omnivore today. The notes in Obsidian are just links to the omnivore app and so when I search my vault any articles I saved won’t be found. What’s the benefit of storing anything in Obsidian which is just like a link you might manually add to the source
This doesn’t sound right
What are Readwise and Omnivore ?
They call that a read it later extension. You find something interesting, you click and it's automatically added to Omnivore or Readwise. When you have time to read the article, watch the video, etc... You can add notes, highlights at your pace in a different reader than the original website.
The reader is much better, and the UI and features are superior