Tool Comparisons
How to migrate from Matter to WebSnips — a practical guide for writers and content creators who use Matter as a read-later and research tool and want to move their saved content to a capture-focused alternative.
Matter built a strong following among writers and content creators for its reading experience and the quality of its highlight and note workflow. The reading mode is excellent, the newsletter integration is genuinely useful, and the AI-powered features it introduced made it one of the more ambitious read-later apps.
The challenge Matter has faced is financial sustainability — the company shut down in 2024, leaving users needing to migrate their saved content. This guide covers how to migrate from Matter to WebSnips, preserving what you can from your Matter archive and rebuilding your research organization in a maintained tool.
Matter did well (while active):
The core reason users are migrating: Matter shut down in 2024. Users need to export their content and move to an alternative before they lose access. This is less "I chose to leave" and more "the app is gone — what do I do with my archive?"
What you're looking for in an alternative: The question for former Matter users is which use case you want to maintain:
Matter's export was a CSV file of your saved articles.
From Matter (while it was active): Account Settings → Export → Download CSV
What the Matter export includes:
What the Matter export does NOT include:
The newsletter limitation: Matter's newsletter ingestion (email newsletters processed into read-later articles) is a common loss point. Newsletter articles don't have a URL to re-capture — the content only existed in Matter's processed form. For newsletter content, there's no clean migration path to WebSnips; you're migrating the web articles only.
If you already have your export: Work from the URL column. If you don't have an export and Matter is no longer accessible, web articles may be recoverable from browser history or bookmarks if you used Matter's browser extension.
Open your Matter CSV export. The URL column contains your saved web articles. Extract this column to a text file with one URL per line.
Filter as you extract:
Use WebSnips' import feature to import your URL list. WebSnips will re-capture the current content of each page — giving you the full page content, not just the article title.
What "re-capturing" means: You get the current version of each page. If an article has been updated since you saved it in Matter, you'll get the updated version. If the page has been deleted, the import will fail for that URL.
Create WebSnips collections before importing so you can organize content as it comes in. If you used Matter's tags or lists, create corresponding collections in WebSnips first.
Matter used lists (user-curated groupings) and tags for organization. WebSnips uses Collections.
One-to-one mapping: Each Matter list you actively used becomes a WebSnips collection. For Matter tags, decide which were genuinely meaningful organizing categories vs. ad-hoc labels — keep the categories, skip the noise.
Writers migrating from Matter to WebSnips often benefit from reorganizing around how they'll actually use the sources:
By project or piece:
By recurring topic:
This is often a better organization than the "everything-in-one-list" model that many read-later users default to.
| Feature | Matter | WebSnips |
|---|---|---|
| Reading mode | Excellent | Not a reading mode tool |
| Newsletter ingestion | Core feature | Not applicable |
| Highlight/note workflow | Strong | Not applicable |
| AI recommendations | Was a feature | Not applicable |
| Full-page content capture | Article text stored | Full-page capture |
| Research organization | Lists + tags | Collections |
| Active development | Shut down | Actively developed |
The honest comparison: Matter had features — reading mode, newsletter ingestion, AI recommendations — that WebSnips doesn't have. The migration to WebSnips is not a like-for-like replacement; it's a shift toward a different use case (web capture and research organization rather than reading experience).
For writers who relied on Matter's reading mode and highlight workflow, you'll need to find a separate reading experience tool (Readwise Reader or Instapaper) alongside WebSnips for research organization.
What about my Matter newsletters that don't have URLs? Newsletter content that Matter ingested via email doesn't have a web URL to re-capture. This content is lost if you don't have it elsewhere. Going forward, many newsletters have web versions — you can capture those in WebSnips.
I have hundreds of highlights in Matter. Can I migrate them? Matter's highlight export varies — some versions included highlights in the CSV, some didn't. If your export includes highlights, they're in the CSV but there's no automated way to import them into WebSnips. For your most important highlighted articles, copy key passages manually as notes in WebSnips.
Is there a reading mode alternative to pair with WebSnips? Yes — Readwise Reader, Instapaper, and Matter's former competitors all have reading modes. Many former Matter users pair WebSnips for research organization with one of these for the reading experience.
What if some of my saved articles are from paywalled sources? WebSnips captures what's publicly accessible. Paywalled content requires being logged in to the site at capture time. Articles you had full access to in Matter (via the processed view) may not re-capture in full if you're not currently a subscriber.
Migrating from Matter to WebSnips is more of a forced migration than a voluntary one — Matter's shutdown means you need to move your content somewhere. The web articles in your archive migrate cleanly via URL import; the newsletter content and highlights are the main losses.
WebSnips serves the research organization use case well — capturing the full-page content of each source and organizing it into collections you can search and reference over time. For the reading experience Matter provided, you'll pair it with another tool.
More WebSnips articles that pair well with this topic.
How to migrate from Evernote to WebSnips — a step-by-step guide for knowledge workers who are ready to leave Evernote and want to move their web clips, notes, and research without losing their organized history.
How to migrate from Instapaper to WebSnips — a practical guide for students and lifelong learners who use Instapaper to save articles for later and want to move to a research-focused capture tool.
How to migrate from Notion to WebSnips — a practical guide for PKM enthusiasts who use Notion as a research and web clipping hub and want to move their saved content to a tool built specifically for web capture.