Pocket export file: how to open it and what to do next

Updated

A Pocket export is a list of the links you saved, not a copy of the articles. The 2025 export arrived as a .zip file holding a CSV spreadsheet of titles, addresses, dates, tags, and read status; older exports were a single HTML file. To use it, open it in a free viewer, re-save the articles you still want, and import the rest into your browser as bookmarks. If you never exported, Pocket can't give you your data now: Mozilla closed exports on 12 November 2025.

What's inside a Pocket export

Mozilla's own help article was blunt about the limits: "Your export file will include links (URLs) of your saved items. The export does not extract the text of saved links" (Mozilla). It covered "all your saves, archives and favorites".

The 2025 export: a .zip with CSV files

From late 2024, Pocket emailed a download link to a .zip file containing one or more CSV files. Large libraries were split into several files of up to 10,000 saves each (Karakeep issue #570). Each row is one save:

Column What it holds
title The article title, as Pocket recorded it
url The web address of the article
time_added When you saved it, as a Unix timestamp (seconds since 1 January 1970), such as 1728576752
tags Your tags, separated by a vertical bar, such as recipes|weekend
status Whether the item was still unread or had been archived

Some exports also include a cursor column. You don't need it.

Highlights: a separate file, if you made any

If you highlighted articles in Pocket, the .zip also holds a folder called annotations with a JSON file of your highlights (Android Authority). JSON is plain text, so any text editor can open it, but it is not meant for reading by eye.

The older export: one HTML file

Before the CSV format, Pocket's export was "an HTML file of all your saves, archives, and favorites" (Mozilla, May 2025). It opens in any browser as a long page of links.

Open it in the Pocket export viewer

The quickest way to look through the file is the free Pocket export viewer. It runs entirely in your browser: the file is never uploaded, and you don't need an account.

  1. Go to the Pocket export viewer.
  2. Add your file. The viewer accepts the .zip, a CSV taken out of it, or the older HTML export.
  3. Browse, search, and filter your saves to find the ones worth keeping.
  4. Download the list as a bookmarks.html file if you want it in your browser.

You can also open a CSV in any spreadsheet app. The time_added column will show as a large number; in Google Sheets, =EPOCHTODATE(C2) turns it into a date, and in Excel, =C2/86400+DATE(1970,1,1) does the same once you format the cell as a date.

Decide what is worth keeping

A Pocket list can hold years of saves, and some of those pages will already be gone. When the Pew Research Center checked pages that existed in 2013, 38% could no longer be reached a decade later (Pew Research Center, 2024). So it helps to sort the list into three piles:

  • Read soon. Save these somewhere that keeps the text (next section).
  • Keep for reference. Import these into your browser bookmarks.
  • Let go. Anything you no longer recognise, and anything whose site no longer answers.

To find the dead ones, download the bookmarks.html file from the viewer and run it through the bookmark dead-link checker. It checks whether each site still responds, links to archived copies in the Wayback Machine, and gives you a clean file back. It can't tell when a site answers with a "page not found" page, so treat its results as a first pass.

Re-save the articles you still want to read

Reading Rewind can't import a Pocket export, but it can save each article again with one click.

  1. Create a free account and install the extension for Chrome, or the Firefox beta.
  2. In the viewer, open an article you want to read.
  3. Click the Reading Rewind button in your toolbar. The page goes to the top of Read Later, and you can add a tag as you save.

In the background, the server extracts the article and stores its text with your save, so it stays readable even if the page later changes or disappears. Images are not stored; they load from the original site. This only works for pages that are still online, which is another reason to start with the articles you care about most.

Import the links into your browser bookmarks

Both Chrome and Firefox can import the bookmarks.html file from the viewer. The import adds to your existing bookmarks rather than replacing them.

Chrome:

  1. Open the Bookmark manager (chrome://bookmarks).
  2. Click the three-dot menu at the top right and choose Import bookmarks.
  3. Select your bookmarks.html file.

Chrome's Help also documents a second route: More → Bookmarks and lists → Import bookmarks and settings → Choose file (Google).

Firefox:

  1. Open the menu, click Bookmarks, then Manage bookmarks to open the Library window.
  2. Click Import and Backup and choose Import Bookmarks from HTML…
  3. Select your file and click Open.

Firefox adds the imported bookmarks to the Bookmarks Menu folder and warns that this "may result in duplicate bookmarks" (Mozilla). If you import more than once, the duplicate bookmark remover can merge files and drop repeats before you import.

Can Reading Rewind import a Pocket export?

No. There is no Pocket import, and none is promised. Reading Rewind can import the bookmarks.html file from the viewer, but it is not a Pocket import. The links arrive in Bookmarks as their own source, named after the file, not in Read Later, and your Pocket tags don't come along. Open one there and Reading Rewind tries once to make a reader copy, if the page is still online. To put an article on your reading list with its text, re-save it as above.

If a direct import matters to you, some other apps say they accept the file: Readwise Reader "accepts your Pocket export file", and wallabag imports Pocket CSV exports. The Pocket alternative page covers what else carries over to Reading Rewind and what doesn't.

If you missed the export deadline

Then the data is gone. Mozilla's support page says: "As of November 12, 2025, user data export has been disabled, and all user data has been queued for permanent deletion" (Mozilla).

Two places are still worth a look:

  • Your downloads folder and email. If you requested an export and downloaded it, the .zip may still be on your computer. The emailed link only worked for 48 hours, so an old link won't download anything now.
  • The Wayback Machine. If you remember particular articles, search for their titles, or paste their addresses into the Wayback Machine to look for an archived copy.

Frequently asked questions

Does the Pocket export include my highlights?

The 2025 .zip export includes an annotations folder with a JSON file if you made highlights. The CSV of saves does not include them.

Does the Pocket export include the article text?

No. Mozilla's help article says the export "does not extract the text of saved links." It is a list of addresses, so each article is only as available as the page it points to.

Can I still request a Pocket export?

No. Export closed on 12 November 2025, and the Pocket API was switched off the same day.

Is my file uploaded when I use the Pocket export viewer?

No. The viewer reads the file in your browser, and nothing is sent to a server.

What does "archive" mean in the status column?

It marks items you had moved to Pocket's archive, usually because you had read them. Items marked unread were still in your list. Both are good candidates for review; an archived article you remember well may be worth keeping as a bookmark.