Save Facebook Newsfeed Links To Pocket with Social Fixer

Do you ever see links to stories, videos, pictures, etc in your Facebook news feed and wish you could easily save them to view later? Now you can, with Social Fixer and Pocket!

Social Fixer is a free browser extension that removes annoyances from Facebook and adds great new features. New in version 6.6 is the ability to easily send posts to your Pocket reading list. Now you can scan your Facebook news feed and save interesting links for reading at a more convenient time!

What is Pocket?

Pocket (formerly known as Read It Later) is a service that stores content that you put in it, that you want to read later. It can plug right into your browser, or you can download their free app for your portable devices. Social Fixer adds a “Save” icon to each post to add stories to your Pocket list. Then you can look at your Pocket Queue at any time – even when you’re out and on your mobile device – and get access to the stories you saved earlier.

How Do I Save Posts?

When you hover over any post in your newsfeed, you’ll see a “Save” icon in the tray of icons added by Social Fixer:

Clicking it pops up a simple dialog directly from Pocket’s site, prompting you to add the link to your list. When you click “Save”, the story is added to your list.

You can then click “Close” and the popup goes away. Then if you fire up Pocket on your mobile phone, for example, you’ll see the story at the top of your queue:

Saving Facebook Posts Themselves

If you want to save a link back to the Facebook post itself rather than the content that it links to (maybe you want to check back later and see if there are any comments), you can do that too. By clicking on the “Save FB post instead” link in the lower right, you can change the saved link to the Facebook post itself. Then you need to click “Save” to add it to your list.

What Is It Good For?

It’s very convenient, once you start using it! I subscribe to a lot of “Pages” on Facebook, and there are always lots of links I want to read. But when I’m sitting at my computer, I never have time to actually look at them all. I used to bookmark them or keep a lot of open tabs of things I want to check back on. Now I use Pocket.

I save each article I want to read later. Then, I mainly read them on my iPhone later when I’m waiting in the car for my daughter to come out of sports practice, or even when I’m in a boring meeting. I always have a list of great articles to read, wherever I am!

FAQs

Before you ask, here are the answers:

Q: Can I integrate with another reader/queue service?
A: Not yet. Future updates will allow this.

Q: When I pop up the window, I see a login screen in a small scrollable window?
A: That’s because you’re not logged into Pocket. You need to first create an account, and be logged in your browser.

Q: Can you make it automatically close the popup when I click Save?
A: Not right now, for technical reasons. I’m working on tighter integration with Pocket to even make the dialog popup unnecessary.

What Next?

Do you have any other great ideas of how to enhance Facebook by adding great new features or integrating other functionality? Then join the Social Fixer community and help us improve your social experience!

– Matt Kruse, author of Social Fixer