You know, during your daily surfing trips you come across some interesting web pages, but you don’t have time to read those articles immediately. There is plenty of choice among the apps that save websites. This way you organize all the interesting reading material, so that you can enjoy it offline later, even on the train or bus.
There are several ways to save pages for later. Some people keep this info in apps like Microsoft OneNote, Google Keep, or Simplenote, but those are real note-taking apps. We’re talking about apps specifically designed to hoard web reading without unnecessary extras.
Due to their layout and structure, the read-it-later apps save a lot of time. With one click you save what you really need, without the ads. Moreover, these apps follow the trend of displaying magazine style layout. We show the most important apps.
Instapaper: emphasis on text
Bee instagram paper it’s all about simplicity. The emphasis is not on the images or layout, but on the text. Install the app on all platforms you actively use and log in on all devices with the same account. With the combination of the app and the browser plug-in, you can put together your own newspaper, as it were, which you can read offline later.
The easiest way to save articles to the computer is through the extension for Chrome, Safari or Firefox. You can also use a bookmarklet on any browser. That’s a button that turns any compatible web page into an Instapaper article. In the browser of your mobile device you can save directly via the button Parts of the operating system. With Instapaper it is possible to highlight text or add notes. The markers are, of course, synced across all your devices.
Instapaper: ease of reading
Make yourself comfortable and adjust the text to your preference. Tap it aa icon to control the font, text size, color, margins, and line spacing. The home screen is for collecting articles that you have yet to go through. You can delete or archive articles that you have read. You organize the content of Instapaper in a folder structure. You can add as many folders as you want, but the app doesn’t support subfolders.
The app has several ways to share content with friends. You can share the links directly to Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Evernote, Pinboard, and many other apps. And it is possible to share link or full article via email. The Speed-read button which quickly shows word after word of the article. This feature forces you to read attentively and quickly at the same time. Fortunately, you can adjust the speed, because personally we don’t think this is the most soothing way to enjoy an article.
The basic version is free. If you take out a subscription (2.99 euros per month or 29.99 euros on an annual basis) you can search articles that you have placed in the archive based on their content. In addition, Instapaper Premium supports text-to-speech.
Pocket: Mozilla Family Tie
Pocket does the same thing as Instapaper. Both have iOS, Android, and web app along with browser extensions to quickly save content. Pocket also has a standalone Mac app, something Instapaper doesn’t have. And it’s even possible to read Pocket content on a Kobo e-reader. If you have an Amazon Kindle e-reader, you can intermediate step send the items to this device daily, weekly, or on a custom schedule.
Pocket is part of the Mozilla family and, by the way, is now built into the Firefox browser as a content platform. In addition, all Pocket accounts must be migrated to a Firefox account by June 30, 2022. If you are used to logging in with an email address and a password, you are required to log in with a membership of the fiery fox from that date. That’s a security issue, because it allows you to use two-factor authentication and account recovery keys.
Such an account is free and does not affect the browser you use to capture Pocket content. So you can continue to use your preferred browser. New users who sign up for Pocket will be prompted to create a new Firefox Account. Existing users must migrate their account at no cost.
Pocket: tags
Pocket organizes the saved content into three categories: articles†Videos and Pictures†Another important difference with Instapaper is that Pocket relies on tagging for its organization. You can add tags of your choice to an article, which you will find later in the tab tags†The system of tagging makes it possible to link the same article to different topics and that makes the organization level more versatile than the folder structure of Instapaper.
Pocket has the function To discover to follow friends or interesting people. Also in this app it is possible to adjust the aesthetics. You can choose different fonts and font sizes, adjust the line spacing, select a different background, but the options are limited unless you pay for Premium.
Pocket also allows you to highlight text, but unlimited highlighting is only available for the Premium plans. The text-to-speech feature is free. This allows you to have the articles read aloud by a computer voice. For Pocket you pay 44.99 euros per year or 4.99 euros per month.
Safari: Reading List
The default browser on all Apple devices anyway comes with a built-in reading list that syncs its content between all your devices that use the same iCloud account. This is a robust tool with no advanced features and no need to install extensions or other software. In Safari, tap the plus button in the address bar to add an item to the list. On the iPad and iPhone you use the option Add to reading list in the menu Parts†You can optionally save the articles to read them offline.
Keep the Ctrl key pressed while clicking the page overview in the sidebar and choose Save offline†You can also swipe left from the page overview and then Save offline clicks†And in the view reader it is possible to adjust the colors and fonts. There is a search function to find content in old articles, but the reading list is always displayed chronologically. There is no other way to organize these.
Mailist: weekly newsletter
By hoarding a lot of articles, online books and even videos, such a read-it-later app sometimes degenerates into a forgotten pit. Precisely for that reason mailist a different approach. Here too, you first mark the content in the browser by means of an extension. Mailist collects the links and sends you regular emails containing the links you have added to your account. You choose how many articles are included in the newsletter and you determine on which days of the week you want to receive the newsletter.
Mailist is also a budget-friendly solution. The Pro version used to cost 3.99 euros per month, now all functions are free. A disadvantage of Mailist is that you cannot read the web pages offline, on the other hand, this tool automatically removes the broken links.
Once you open the link, that page will be marked as ‘read’ and will no longer appear in future newsletters. Such a read link will remain stored in your account, so that you can still refer to it in the future. Each weekly newsletter is accessible in the browser. That means you can easily share it with a community so that your newsletter can be a source of inspiration for friends.
E-mailThis: sober layout
Also EmailThis is a free service that lets you quickly send online articles to the inbox of your email account. An advantage is that this service removes all advertisements and eye-catching layout, so that you receive the article soberly formatted with only the text and the images in your inbox.
Login is not necessary. When you add E-mailThis bookmarklet or extension to your browser, you can use the service. The first time, of course, you still have to add your e-mail address and confirm this. Then when you come across an article that you want to forward, click on the E-mailThis icon or use the key combination Ctrl+Shift+Uâ€
Unlike Mailist, you will not receive a newsletter or overview with links, but you will receive the individual article stripped of all frills. You have to make sure that the emails from the E-mailThis Bot do not end up in spam. EmailThis also works on mobile devices and there are extensions for Chrome and Firefox. Other browsers can install the bookmarklet.
There is no built-in option to sort the articles after you read them. If you want to do this anyway, you’ll need to use the email client’s built-in organizational capabilities. The advantage of this and the previous solution is that you can keep track of web pages without having to check another app.
Evernote: with Web Clipper
evernote is basically a note-taking app to keep track of to-do lists, ideas and proposals. Still, the app also has an interesting way of compiling reading lists. In combination with the browser extension Web Clipper, Evernote is also a great read-it-later service. With the click of a button you can ‘clip’ a text selection, an article, a page, a bookmark and even a screenshot. Then add a tag and choose a folder where the clipping will be saved.
Everything is synchronized so that, for example, you can clip articles with the desktop that you can read later on the phone or tablet. One drawback: what you clip is not optimized for reading. There is a free version and a Personal edition that costs 6.99 euros per month, but you can try them for seven days. The basic version allows you to sync up to 60MB of content per month with up to two devices and 25MB maximum note size.
PaperSpan: personal
The last read-it-later app we put in the list is Paper Span†This app comes in iOS, android and web version and it also works in conjunction with a browser extension or a bookmarklet. PaperSpan removes the distracting elements and you can automatically download articles to your phone. The basic version is free and you can use the Premium edition for 9.99 euros per year. For that money you enjoy advanced search options and then the app keeps track of your statistics.
PaperSpan tracks when you read the most and what your favorite topics are. In the Premium version it is possible to create a playlist of articles so that you can listen to one after the other without interruption. In that subscription, PaperSpan also supports the feature to send the reading list to the Kindle. A painful downside of this product is that the developer is behind with updates. As a result, important functions, such as the reading function that we refused to do, falter on both the smartphone and the tablet.
â€