More experience with Wallabag

Having installed Wallabag at the end of July (blog post here) I've now had a few weeks to get used to it and explore its features. I've not done an update of the software in that time (the last release, version 2.6.13, was on 4th June 2025) so I cannot comment on that side of things.

Pocket Import issues

This may be a problem during the import process (my server ran out of RAM / the request ran for too long), but after importing from Pocket I have a number of articles that say "wallabag can't retrieve contents for this article. Please troubleshoot this issue". Fortunately if you search Wallabag for "can't retrieve" you'll get a list of these articles so you can decide what to do with them.

As Wallabag maintains details of the original URL, simply re-adding that URL to Wallabag will retrieve the page (assuming it's still publicly available). Sadly this doesn't save the page, instead saying "Entry already saved on <date>" and showing you the Wallabag version but it does not update the failed copy. Instead it appears you have delete the failed copy and then re-add it. You may have to choose "re-fetch content" from the article's left menu - this behaviour seems to be inconsistent in my testing.

Comparing Pocket and Wallabag

With Pocket, I'd sometimes find that images in articles would be missing. Wallabag seems to be better in that regard and if the original article contained images then these, so far, have been present in the Wallabag copy. Given some articles really rely on images, that's a definite improvement.

On the Kobo, there's an official Pocket integration (which presumably will be removed in a firmware update) that works really well. Sadly there's no official Wallabag integration for the Kobo, but the open source community has a solution to that problem. I've not installed the Wallabag application on my Kobo yet, but it appears that ePubs are downloaded from your Wallabag web application and added to the Kobo as books to read. Compared to the Pocket integration, where articles were held separately, that feels clunky to me. There's also a pop up message asking you to connect, in the same way that connecting a USB cable between the Kobo and a computer does. For the moment I'm not going to install Wallabag on my Kobo.

Wallabagger browser extension

Adding articles to Wallabag is easy by using the Wallabagger browser extension. Available for Firefox and Chromium-based browsers (Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, etc.), the extension is configured manually. There's some technical steps to go through, but if you're self-hosting that certainly won't phase you.

I wrote more about the browser extension in my original post about Wallabag.

Tagging rules

I really like these. You access tagging rules from your config section (accessed via the user menu at the top right of the web app), and, as the name implies, these automatically apply tags based on pages meeting certain rules. There's no "rule builder", so you have to craft the rule by hand. Fortunately the page explains what properties are available, and how to combine them using terms like AND / OR. For example:

domainName = "blog.jonsdocs.org.uk" AND readingTime < 3

would apply the desired tag to pages from blog.jonsdocs.org.uk that have an estimated reading time of less than three minutes. There's a matches parameter too, so you can search for particular terms in the title or content, for example:

title matches "wallabag"

When using the Wallabagger browser extension these tags apply pretty instantly and show in the pop up before you close it / navigate away:

Android app

Unfortunately the Android app does not currently support Multi Factor Authentication (MFA), meaning that if you want to use the app you have to remove MFA from your user's configuration. This isn't good for security, and is hopefully something the authors are working on. Given my password is unique, random, and long, I'll accept the risk for now.

The app has some pretty comprehensive sync options in its settings page, so it's worth tuning those to meet your requirements.

Reading in the app is acceptable, with different colour schemes (themes) to choose from and the ability to toggle serifed vs sans-serifed fonts. Colour schemes are dark, light, and solarised (pale yellow / creamy background), with light and dark having high contrast versions. If the app is running on an e-ink screen there's a colour scheme for that too.

On arriving at the bottom of an article you are presented a button to mark the article as read. Changes such as these sync with the hosted Wallabag instance on the next sync run.

App text to speech

If you prefer to listen to your articles, the Android app can read them to you. The text to speech is OK, but it's not necessarily natural sounding. Intonation isn't necessarily correct, with extra commas added (at least that's what it sounds like) at odd places.

It looks like the app uses speech synthesis services from Google, and while travelling with low bandwidth / poor connectivity these caused problems and articles couldn't be read aloud without significant delay. Interestingly the text-to-speech engine can dynamically translate the articles to other languages, and I had the app translating an English article into Welsh speech.

While the audio is playing the text does not scroll to keep track (although in one test it seemed that it did 🤷‍♀️). This means that if you prefer to listen and read at the same time you'll have to scroll yourself. Not a huge issue, because if you're reading the article you'd need to do that anyway.

Edge Wallabag app

While browsing my Wallabag instance in Microsoft Edge on Windows I was offered to "install the app". This "app" was provided by my hosted Wallabag instance, and after telling it to install Wallabag would open in its own "focused" window. You can also start the app from the start menu or pin the app to the taskbar.

Configuration of this app was done automatically, and checking task manager shows it's really an "app" run by Edge (which makes sense). As it's essentially just the web app, there's not much more to say about it.

iOS (Apple) Wallabag app

I've not used the iPhone app much, but a quick look shows that it's not as feature-rich as the Android version. There are fewer settings (I couldn't see a way to change the theme for example). Images correctly show in articles, and tags show too. When viewing an article you can change the font size.

It's worth noting the iOS app is developed by a different team to the Android app, and offers more features by subscription. Additional features include services that are backed by AI (OpenAI specifically) - "generate synthesis, advanced synthesis, suggest tags from your entries". I'm unlikely to want these features, but there is the option to send a £0.99 tip to the developer too.

Overall

In general I'm pleased with Wallabag and can see it being a useful tool. I definitely need to be more disciplined in reading saved articles, rather than doom-scrolling and adding new ones! Self-hosting has meant I've been able to add a separate user for my work related articles too, meaning I can keep a separation between my home and work lives.

There's definitely some niggles (e.g. lack of MFA support in the Android app), but hopefully those are fixed soon.

Banner image: Cropped comparison of Pocket (on Android and Kobo) and Wallabag on Android.