Matter: 1% Smarter Every Day 4+

Game changer

I’m not typically one to leave app reviews, or to pay $60/year for an app. But here I am doing both because Matter is *that* good. I was a loyal Instapaper user for several years, but less than a week of playing with the free version was enough to convince me to switch (which, I’ll note, they make incredibly easy even with Instapaper’s API limitations). The article reading functionality is good - certainly on par with other apps, and things like the natural TTS are big improvements. They’re also clearly actively working on their parser, and the couple of times I’ve reported a content issue they’ve quickly not only fixed it but let me know they had done so.

Where Matter is really a game changer is the unified subscription inbox. I’ve thought for ages that surely someone could come up with one place for all newsletters coming from email, RSS, or anywhere else. And here… they did it. Once I got it set up, it’s amazing to no longer have newsletters languishing in my inbox for days at a time, especially for long form ones that I may read a few days after they come out. Now they’re all sitting there, ready and waiting for me to get to them.

It’s a newer app so there are still some rough edges to be polished, but it’s already a fantastic app that I’m excited to see continue to improve.

Developer Response ,

Hey there, wow! Thanks for such a wonderful review. We're honored to have you onboard with us and have lots of exciting things we're working hard on getting out!

Best of the Best

Unlimited highlights. An excellent tagging system. Beautiful, clean UI. Importing email subscriptions. No ads. Great save-for-later feature for Safari and Chrome. A great web app. Text to Speech with a natural voice. It doesn't get better than this, and certainly not for free.

I would happily pay for these features, as I think Matter does them better than comparable Pro versions of reader apps, but I also hope that as the app grows, the folks at Matter to keep a good many of them free.

Also, the two times I've put in a suggestion or bug in the web app, I've gotten a speedy response : )
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A few small notes and quirks:

Some articles don't transfer completely, or transfer with the text of pop up windows, or only transfer the pop up content. That might be user error on my part, and it doesn't happen often enough to be annoying.

You can't click links in a highlight, so you have to remember to open or save the link before you highlight.

The ability to start TTS from a specific part in the article is a great feature in the mobile app that I hope comes to the web app.

The ability to use shortcut keys to delete, archive, favorite, tag, etc. is a great feature in the web app that I hope comes to the mobile app.

More consistent treatment of photos (sometimes imported, sometimes not, sometimes caption transferred as body text, sometimes not) would be nice, especially for TTS purposes, but not a dealbreaker.

Developer Response ,

Hey there, this is incredible feedback, thank you! We're going to work hard to continue to build an even better reader. Our team will definitely be discussing these notes and quirks soon!

the best reading app bar none

i’ve been using Matter since it was in beta, having come across it by happenstance.

this is my most used app. it sits next to imessage and phone on my home screen. the joy of taking badly formatted or archived articles and importing them into matter is immeasurable. the beauty of listening to a favorite piece with — yes, the most human-like text to speech i’ve encountered — is sublime. the ability to highlight, make notes, share excerpts is delightful.

what is really remarkable about Matter, though, is the fundamental ethos of how it exists. everything about the design of the app is meant to emphasize — not Matter, but what you opened it for — the text. every feature, every feed, every tool — it does not leave a distinctive watermark all over it. it instead says: here — this is what you wanted to read. here is what matters.