Too many interesting articles, and not enough hours a day – that’s the problem many of us have struggled with for as long as we’ve been online. You find something you want to read, but you don’t have time to do it Already, and you know you won’t remember where to hunt it again later. In the late 2000s, as the iPhone was becoming popular, post-reading apps solved this problem in an efficient way: You come across an article, you add it to the app, and it’s a distraction- Downloads the free version. Webpage for later offline reading.
Fifteen years later, this little app ecosystem is still relevant and thriving. In fact, many new players are trying to revolutionize the art of re-reading. Here are the best read-it-later apps to try.
When you think of reading this later, you think of Pocket. Pocket was the first app on the scene, and it’s still a popular choice. Pocket is now owned by Mozilla, and is integrated directly into the Firefox browser. (You’ll also find apps for all popular platforms.)
Pocket Automation integrates with the service, and because it’s so widely used, their Explore page is full of interesting reads. You can view any story in Pocket using a web extension or a share sheet. The app offers tag features, highlight tools, and more.
Pocket is free to use, but you can upgrade to the premium plan for an ad-free experience. You also get features like full-text search, unlimited highlighting, and a permanent archive of all saved content.
Instapaper is another app that Pocket came with and is still going strong. Over the years, Instapaper has changed ownership several times, but this hasn’t affected the core product. What sets Instapaper apart is its user experience – it’s like reading a beautiful newspaper. Plus, if you pay for the premium plan, you can highlight and take notes as well.
Instapaper has also barely changed over the past decade, but that’s not a bad thing. It’s still a beautiful, minimal read-it-later app that’s free to use with a browser extension and mobile app. The free app is more than enough for most users, but the $US2.99 ($4)-per-month plan gives you full-text search, unlimited note-taking, speed reading, and text-to-speech playlists.
Safari Reading List
If you’re completely on the Apple ecosystem, and you use Safari as your default browser, you can get along just fine using the Reading List feature in the Safari browser. It works great on Mac, iPhone and iPad, and is beautiful to read. You can use the Add to Reading List feature from the share sheet from practically everywhere. Reading List feature is available inside Safari browser.
By default, Safari doesn’t download articles offline, but you can change this in Settings.
Matter is an interesting app trying to revolutionize reading. The company is trying to do for the social media age what Pocket did for the smartphone age. Matter is a beautifully designed app that starts out with a read later feature, but then builds a lot of social features on top of it. You can follow authors and email newsletters, plus there’s a full recommended feed that shows you articles that might interest you.
The app is still in the early stages of development and is only available for iPhone (there is a web extension that lets you save articles from anywhere). But if you are fond of reading it later, then you should give it a try.
Raindrop is an all-in-one tool for saving anything from the internet. This is where you can save your notes, recipes, articles, websites – anything, really. Everything is searchable via text, filters and tags. And you can organize using collections.
Raindrop does media preview quite well, and the three-pane layout is easy to use. The app is available for all platforms, including desktop (which sets Raindrop apart on this list). Plus, you get a full-text search in the premium plan, and there’s automation support for IFTTT and Zapier.
If you think tools like Pocket and Instapaper are a little too simple for you, try setting up your own bookmarking system in Raindrop.
GoodLinks is a free app for Mac, iPhone and iPad. This is opposed to web services like Pocket and Instapaper where you are at the mercy of companies you don’t know about.
Instead, GoodLinks is a paid app that you can use forever (no subscriptions here). And it syncs using Apple’s iCloud service. You can choose to disable the sync service if you only want to use it on one device.
What we love about GoodLinks is how it feels at home on our iPhones and Macs. It uses Apple’s new design language, and it works really well on all devices. Articles are downloaded automatically, and they can be sorted using tags.
Notion is a complex note-taking app. But it’s exactly what you want – and one of the things can be quite a stellar (and free) read-it-later tool for its Web Clipper extension.
Check out the idea video on how you can build a dynamic read-it-later system using their Web Clipper. The video goes into creating a dynamic, seven-column table, but you can easily skip that part.
It’s as easy as creating a new workspace and table and then customizing it. You can then use Notation Web Clipper to add pages to any workspace.
It’s not for everyonebut if you’re already using Notion for note-taking or data management, using it as a read-later app isn’t that far-fetched.
Email This is an out-of-left-field option it offers a browser extension and a bookmarklet that lets you email any web article to yourself. You still get to save and read articles, instead of just in your email app.
