When comparing OneTab vs Pocket, the Slant community recommends Pocket for most people. In the question“What are the best Chrome add-ons?” Pocket is ranked 2nd while OneTab is ranked 4th. The most important reason people chose Pocket is:
Pocket is available on iOS, Android, Kobo eReader and on the web.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Overall very useful
It takes all of your tabs (choose between all/all-except-current/current/all-to-right/all-to-left) and turns them into links in a special OneTab tab where you can further manage your tabs by dividing them into groups, removing duplicates and securing them so that they can't be removed unless unsecured.
Pro You can organize links by dragging and dropping them
You can drag and drop links/tabs to reorder them by relevance, or to move them from one list to another.
Pro Non-invasive
The OneTab dashboard only appears the first time you open your browser after quitting, although you can also make it appear through the extension button in the extensions bar. This is less invasive behavior than the Chrome extensions that appear every time you open a new browser tab.
Pro Provides just enough information
OneTab provides just the right amount of meta-info about the tabs you've saved. It groups them by session, and tells you how many tabs are in each session, as well as the date the session was created. Every saved tab includes the bookmarked favicon and page title.
Pro Management & sharing of saved sessions
OneTab makes it very easy to restore, delete, share, lock, rename, and favorite your saved tab sessions. OneTab also makes it easy to share, export and import URLs into your OneTab dashboard as a whole.
Pro Available on the web and mobile devices
Pocket is available on iOS, Android, Kobo eReader and on the web.
Pro Allows reading saved content in offline mode
Instead of only saving the link, the content is saved for offline use.
Pro Well-finished GUI and UX
Pro The Pocket plugin for Google Chrome is very stable
Pro Allows tagging bookmarks
Bookmarks can be tagged for search accuracy later on.
Pro Included in Firefox
Pocket is now integrated into the Firefox web browser, and you can login using your firefox/mozilla login, instead of having to create a separate account. This login method can even be used natively on their website, regardless what browser is being used.
Pro Integrates with over 500 apps
A key advantage of Pocket is that it is integrated in over 500 apps as a way to save the link, including Twitter, Flipboard, Pulse and Zite.
Pro Works well across Google Chrome on macOS and iOS
Pro Highlighting available on iOS
Pro Ability to filter by content type
Cons
Con Can get messy
The OneTab tab has everything in a list format with just simple headings describing what you have in this or that list. It isn't comfortable to manage it when you have quite a lot of tabs in there.
Con Slightly confusing UX
It's easy to forget that clicking on the OneTab button in the extensions bar doesn't show you options – it saves your current session by closing all your tabs in the given browser window. That might be slightly annoying if you were trying to access the OneTab dashboard or view OneTab options instead of trying to save your current session in OneTab, but this is only a minor inconvenience given how easy it is to restore your session.
Con Clicking on a tab/link to re-open it automatically deletes it from a session
This is not so much a con as much as it is a heads up for those who use OneTab as a form of transient digital bookmarking (like me!). When you click on a tab/link in any given OneTab session, that will cause it to disappear from the list of tabs in that section. It would be nice if there was an interim period or separate place where the link is still visible/accessible. That or it would be nice to have a version history of past closed tabs/links and sessions.
Con Data loss
When you run ccleaner or CleanMyMac, all OneTab data may vanish.
Con Only the paid version allows to search by tag
Con Correct and open export of bookmarks and tags are not possible
This means that Pocket is (currently) a total lock-in.
This is very sad, unfortunate and creates a no go decision for any seasoned user.
Too many bookmarking and tagging companies have stopped or have gone bankrupt these last years (e.g. Kippt, Spingpad, Delicious (to some extent), etc...). So, if you are going to invest a lot of your personal time and energy in curating your Internet findings (i.e. your bookmarks and tags), it is essential that a total, fair and open export (including all tags) functionality is provided. Personally tested the export "feature" and the resulting .html file that Pocket generates currently included only the URLs themselves, i.e. no save dates nor any of your personally curated tags, nor any other useful meta-data.
This is deplorable, because otherwise, Pocket is a very polished and well-functioning piece of multi-platform and multi-device software/app/web service, with a very easy and well-designed and implemented user interface...
Please fix this, Pocket !
These days of open and inter-operable web services, users are only attracted by valuable functionality, clean UX design and no lockins.
Con Search function in Pro version does not follow the proper date sequence
Although the pro version lets us search by tags, the search results unfortunately does not follow the time sequence of the saving of articles. Search results may show some old articles first, then a bunch of new articles, and then again old articles. It's so random and frustating.
I have been using Pocket pro for quite a long time primarily because it lets me have the permanent copy of a news (this feature is really useful in journalism). However, when I search tag wise for the old references, the absence of time-sequencing the search results really frustates me.
Con Can't rename the title of links
If the page title isn't correct/good for a link, there is no way for you to fix it.
Con Not really a bookmark tool but a tool to save webpages for later reading
A real bookmark tool has editable fields like title, url, folder, tags, notes. This saves webpages.
Con Deleted or edited tags do not go away from tag suggestions
For example, imagine you accidentally created a tag "US" instead of "USA," and saved some articles under "US." The unfortunate part is even if you edit the tag and rename it "USA" , the previous tag name will always appear in the suggested tags: so when saving an article, if you type US in the tag box, you will see two suggestions "US" and "USA."
Con Chrome addon doesn't let you open your library without saving current page first
Con Can't import Firefox bookmark tags
When importing bookmarks from Firefox, Pocket doesn't include the tags.