How to Import Your Pocket Bookmarks Into Animus

Mozilla shut down Pocket in July 2025 and gave users a window to export their saved content. If you made it out with your library intact, this guide will walk you through importing it into Animus and making it actually searchable.

If you didn't export before the shutdown — you can still get started fresh. Jump to the starting fresh section.

Before You Begin

To import your Pocket library into Animus, you'll need:

1. Your Pocket export file (HTML or CSV format)
2. An Animus account on the Pro plan (bulk import is a Pro feature)
3. About 10 minutes

The 14-day Pro trial is free, no credit card required — so you can import and evaluate before committing to a paid plan.

Step 1: Find Your Pocket Export File

Pocket sent users their export in one of two formats:

• HTML file (ril_export.html) — the standard Pocket export
• CSV file — available if you requested a data export via the Pocket settings

If you requested your data through Pocket's GDPR/data export tool, you may have received a zip file containing multiple files. The bookmark list is typically in data.json or a CSV within that archive.

Don't have your export? Unfortunately, Pocket's servers are no longer accessible. If you didn't export your data before the shutdown, those bookmarks are gone. The best move now is to rebuild your library going forward.

Step 2: Create Your Animus Account

1. Go to animus.so
2. Click "Try Free for 14 Days"
3. Create your account (no credit card needed)
4. You'll start on a 14-day Pro trial — bulk import is included

Step 3: Import Your Bookmarks

1. In the Animus web app, go to Settings → Import
2. Select "Import from Pocket"
3. Upload your export file (.html, .csv, or the .json from your data archive)
4. Animus will parse your saved items and queue them for processing

Depending on the size of your library, processing may take a few minutes to a few hours. Animus doesn't just import the URLs — it visits each link, extracts the full content, and indexes it for search.

Note: Some of your saved URLs may return 404 errors — websites get deleted or restructured over time. Animus will flag these so you know which items couldn't be processed.

Step 4: What Happens During Processing

This is where Animus does something Pocket never could.

For each URL in your import:

• Articles: Full text is extracted and indexed for semantic search
• YouTube videos: Transcribed and timestamped
• Twitter/X threads: Parsed into structured key points
• Instagram and social posts: OCR applied to extract text from images and carousels

Links that no longer resolve (dead links) are flagged. Links to paywalled content may have limited extraction depending on the publication.

After processing, your entire Pocket library is searchable via natural language — not just by title or tag, but by what the content actually said.

Step 5: Organize with Collections

Animus will suggest collections based on the topics it detects across your imported content. You can accept these suggestions, create your own, or use a combination.

On the Pro plan, you have unlimited collections. Most users find a natural structure emerges from their content — by topic (marketing, investing, productivity), by project (content for a specific campaign), or by format (YouTube, threads, articles).

Starting Fresh (No Export File) {#starting-fresh}

If you didn't export your Pocket data before the shutdown, you're not as far behind as it feels. Your saved links are gone — but the content they pointed to still mostly exists on the internet.

A few ways to rebuild:

1. Start from your browser history Your browser's history file likely contains many of the URLs you previously saved to Pocket. Exporting Chrome history and batch-adding to Animus can recover a significant portion of your library.

2. Re-save what you actually care about Rather than chasing everything you lost, curate as you go. Install the Chrome extension and save things intentionally from now on. Three months of focused saving will likely be more valuable than thousands of old saves you never used.

3. Import from other sources If you also used Instapaper, Raindrop, or browser bookmarks, those can be imported as well. The same process applies.

FAQ

How long does the import take? Processing time depends on your library size. A library of 500 items typically processes within 2–3 hours. Larger libraries (2,000+) may take overnight. You'll be notified when it's complete.

Are my old Pocket tags preserved? Yes. Tags from your Pocket export are imported and used to suggest initial collection assignments in Animus.

What if some links are broken? Animus flags unresolvable links in your import summary. For articles that were saved as full text in Pocket's export format, Animus can use that cached content even if the original URL is gone.

Do I need to stay on Pro? The Pro trial gives you 14 days to import and evaluate. After that, bulk import is a Pro feature. If you downgrade to Free or Starter, your imported content stays accessible — you just can't run new bulk imports.

What's the AI credit for? AI credits are used when you ask Animus natural language questions across your library. Importing content uses minimal credits — the credit usage is primarily in the querying.

Import Your Library

Your Pocket library represents years of intentional content curation. The links are gone, but the content mostly isn't. Animus can recover what's still live and make it more useful than Pocket ever did.

Start your free 14-day Pro trial → — import is included.

Import support is available at support@animus.so if you run into issues with your export file format.