OneNote Clipper is a quick way to save a web page so you can read it later. It can replace Pocket, the lovely clipping service that’s about to leave us.
Pocket, the ‘read it later’ service, is ending on July 8, 2025. Pocket is/was a ‘ready it later’ service to tag a web page for later reading offline. Mark a page using the Pocket extension in most browsers then later read that page in the Pocket app. I often used Pocket to save longer articles to read on a flight or elsewhere when I have the time.
One replacement is OneNote and it’s Clipper feature which has been around for a few years. Here’s how it works and how I have it setup.
Add the OneNote Clipper extension
OneNote Clipper is only available for Edge or Chrome browsers.
Install the extension, login to your Microsoft account and select a OneDrive notebook and section to save clips to. See below for more on this.
When you see a web page you’d like to read later, choose the OneNote Clipper icon on the browser bar.
There are four choices, the most commonly used is Article.
- Full Page – saves the whole page including header, footer ads etc. It’s complete but harder to read.
- Region – select part of the page to save as an image.
- Article – strips a lot of the web page extras, leaving the main page content. See above for an example. Clipper does a pretty good job of separating the content to read but doesn’t always get it right. This is the closest equivalent to what Pocket could do.
- Bookmark – save the web link only.
After OneNote has synchronized (a part of OneNote that needs improvement) the clipped article will appear wherever the OneNote app is installed. Select the page to read on whatever device you have.
Tip: before getting on a plane or other slow/offline location, force OneNote to fully sync.
Setup suggestion
Clipper defaults to the Quick Notes notebook and section. That mixes any clippings in with other notes.
I suggest creating a new section called ‘Clippings’ (or whatever) and then setup Clipper to save into that separate section. The Clippings section can be in any notebook, not just Quick Notes.
Clippings are OneNote pages, just like any other. You can copy, move, share or annotate as usual.
