How to Keep a Private Reading List and Share Selectively

Keep a place for unfinished thinking

You might save an article because you agree with it, because you doubt it, or because you have not decided what you think. The save itself does not distinguish those motives. Treating every save as an endorsement can make a reading list less useful as a place to investigate questions.

Begin with the purpose of the collection. A private list could hold background reading for a career change, a difficult book you want to revisit, or two arguments you want to compare. You do not need to explain every item to friends before you have read it. Add a private note that captures your actual question instead.

Understand the three choices on each item

ReadRex separates progress, shelf visibility, and recommendation. Progress says whether something is Up next or Finished. Visibility says whether approved friends can see the shelf item. Recommendation says that you have chosen to endorse it to those friends. The privacy page describes what the service stores and shares.

This separation matters in ordinary situations. You can finish an article while keeping it private. You can let friends see a book you are currently reading without endorsing it. You can also recommend something before marking it Finished, if you are clear about what you have read and why it is useful.

Choose a default you will remember

New ReadRex saves start as Only me and Up next. Reading & feed preferences offers a Friends default for people who prefer sharing new shelf items with approved connections. That is a deliberate change to future saves; it is not a reason to assume that older items changed with it.

If you save a mixture of personal research and everyday recommendations, keeping Only me as the default gives each share a clear decision point. If you choose Friends instead, pause before saving something you would rather investigate privately. The right default is the one whose consequences you understand when you capture a link quickly.

Re-saving an existing link with untouched defaults preserves its existing progress and privacy. Check the item itself when you need certainty about a duplicate; a new-save default is not a command to reset an older entry.

Use private notes for yourself and comments for readers

A note such as “Compare the evidence with the other article before discussing” belongs to your own reading process. A recommendation comment such as “The diagram in the middle explains the tradeoff clearly” is written for someone else. Keep those two audiences distinct, even if the underlying URL is identical.

ReadRex keeps private notes and tags out of friend views. When you explicitly recommend a link, your recommendation comment can accompany it. A Friends-visible item can also reveal shelf information such as status and rating. Choose Only me when the item itself, rather than just your notes, should stay out of friends’ shelves.

Share the result of your reading, not the whole investigation

Consider an illustrative project: you save five articles about moving to a new city. Four help you compare possibilities privately. One is a good walking guide that a friend would enjoy regardless of your plans. You can recommend that guide without making the rest of your research visible.

After sharing, read your comment as the recipient would. Does it explain why the link is worth opening without revealing private background? Have you included someone else’s personal story unnecessarily? A short, specific recommendation can be more helpful than a detailed account of how the link reached you.

Distinguish private sharing controls from absolute secrecy

Only me controls visibility within ReadRex; it is not a promise of anonymous browsing or end-to-end encrypted storage. ReadRex stores account and library information to provide the service, and opening the original link takes you to a publisher with its own policies. Review the privacy details if those distinctions affect what you save.

Choosing Only me also withdraws an existing recommendation. It cannot undo what someone already saw or remembered. Downloaded material on another reader’s device may remain until that device syncs. For a highly sensitive research project, decide what information you are comfortable putting into any hosted service before building the collection.

Periodically review a few visible items rather than treating privacy as a one-time setup. Keep the items that still make sense to share, change the rest, and export your library when you need your own copy. A useful private reading list leaves room for both curiosity and deliberate conversation.

Common questions

Sources & further reading

• ReadRex: privacy and sharing controls
• ReadRex: how sharing works