One of my greatest frustrations with read-later apps is how hard most make it to get your data out on your terms. Few allow you to export links using Shortcuts or some other system, and even fewer offer to do the same with highlights – until now. With version 2.0, GoodLinks adds highlighting and note-taking combined with excellent Shortcuts support, giving users full access and flexibility to incorporate saved URLs, highlights, and notes into their workflows however they want.
Thanks to Obsidian’s deep catalog of plugins from third-party developers, it’s been possible to import highlights from read-later apps like Readwise Reader and Amazon’s Kindle app for some time. Those are good solutions when I’m working in Obsidian, but both I and our readers use lots of different apps. That’s why I was so glad to see GoodLinks (available for the iPhone, iPad, and Mac) get this major 2.0 revision that transforms it from a place to save links and articles to a more well-rounded research tool, thanks to highlighting and notes.
GoodLinks offers six highlighter colors.
MacStories readers should be familiar with GoodLinks because we’ve covered it many times in the past. It’s an app that I’ve come back to time and again because it’s native on all of Apple’s platforms and I appreciate its clean design and support for the latest OS features.
Now, with the addition of highlighting and note-taking, developer Ngoc Luu has eliminated one of GoodLinks’ biggest shortcomings. The app’s saving, organizing, and reading experiences have always been excellent, but until the release of version 2.0, the inability to highlight text and take notes meant it didn’t work well as a research tool.
Highlighting and note-taking options are available in the edit menu on iOS and iPadOS.
Like the other aspects of GoodLinks, highlighting a saved article in version 2.0 is a thoroughly native experience. On iOS and iPadOS, select text, and ‘Highlight’ and ‘Add Note’ appear in the popover edit menu. Tap ‘Highlight’, and the selected text is overlaid with your default highlighting color, which you can choose in the app’s settings. Tap again and you can ‘Copy,’ ‘Add Note,’ ‘Delete’, ‘Share’, or switch to any of the six highlighting color options. The ‘Share’ button offers plain text or Markdown-formatted text as options and then shares the results via the share sheet. The app also has a wonderfully nerdy setting for tweaking how exported highlights and notes are formatted. On the Mac, the same features and options are available by selecting text and right-clicking on it.
Highlights and associated notes are housed in a panel that appears from the right side of the screen on the iPhone and iPad with a swipe from the device’s edge when reading an article. Alternatively, you can access highlights and notes by tapping on the pen icon in GoodLinks’ floating toolbar. On the Mac, there’s a dedicated panel button in the app’s toolbar.
Color-coded tick marks in the margin make it easy to navigate your highlights.
One touch I love is that on every platform, GoodLinks displays small colored tick marks to show where your highlights are located. The color corresponds to the color you use during highlighting, and tapping on one jumps you to the spot in the article where the highlight is located.
I’ve been using GoodLinks on macOS Sonoma and Sequoia 15.0, iPadOS 17 and 18.1, and iOS 18.1, and highlights and notes have synced well between devices with a few exceptions that seem to be limited to iOS and iPadOS 18.1. The instances where a highlight didn’t sync as quickly as on other OSes were uncommon and limited to the latest developer betas, so it’s not something that I’ve found to be a problem or concerning, but it’s still worth mentioning in case you’re on those bleeding-edge builds.
Extensive Shortcuts support sets GoodLinks apart from all other read-later apps.
GoodLinks surpasses other read-later apps in ease and flexibility of exporting highlights and notes simply by making them available via the share sheet. However, the app goes much further than that with deep Shortcuts support. That’s nothing new to GoodLinks, but I’m glad to see it continue with version 2.0. New Shortcuts actions include the following:
Open Highlight
Find Highlight
Edit Highlight
Delete Highlight
It’s worth noting that Find Highlight offers filters with multiple parameters, sorting, and limiting the number of results returned, and Edit Highlight adds a note to a highlight. Combined with GoodLinks’ other actions for working with links and tags, the flexibility offered is better than any other read-later app I’ve used.
GoodLinks’ new Highlights widget.
GoodLinks also has a new widget available in small, medium, and large sizes that draws from your most recent highlights or those associated with a specific tag.
Version 2.0 of GoodLinks comes with a new business model, too. The app was previously a one-time purchase but has switched to a subscription plan similar to apps like Due. The base app costs $9.99, with GoodLinks Premium adding $4.99. If you pay $4.99 for GoodLinks Premium, you’ll get updates for one year, and even if you cancel your subscription, you’ll retain all of the features released in that year. Also, if you purchased GoodLinks in the 12 months prior to version 2.0’s release, you’ll get the highlighting and note-taking features for no additional fee.
GoodLinks is a great example of the argument for native apps over web apps. There are very good read-later and link-saving apps that have gone the web app route, and it has some advantages. However, if you primarily use Apple devices and care about automation and the latest OS features, GoodLinks is the better choice.
GoodLinks is available on the App Store for $9.99.
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