There are quite a few apps for reading content later, offline or not. Here are eight options worth trying.
There are too many interesting articles on the web and too little time in the day. Then we often find ourselves wanting to read something without having the time to do so immediately. How then to save this content so that it is easy to find or read later? In the late 2000s, when the iPhone became popular, “read later”apps solved this problem: once you find interesting content, just add it to the app and the latter will download the content in question to be able to read it later, even offline. mode.
Fifteen years later, this small app ecosystem is still relevant. And there are many players in the market today trying to revolutionize this need. Here are eight of the best apps of their kind to try.
When we think of this kind of app, we almost immediately think of Pocket. Pocket has been around for over a decade but is still the most popular choice. Popular is now a property of Mozilla, and the solution is also integrated directly into Firefox (with dedicated apps for major platforms).
Pocket integrates with automation services and due to its popularity, there is a lot of interesting reading on the Explore page. Features include tags, highlighting, and more.
Pocket is free, but you can upgrade to Premium to get rid of the ads. You’ll also get access to full-text search, unlimited highlighting, and permanent archiving of recorded content.
Instapaper has changed ownership several times over the years, but this hasn’t changed the essence of the product. What makes Instapaper stand out is its user experience, which is like reading a great newspaper. And with the premium plan, you can also highlight and take notes.
Instapaper hasn’t changed much in a very long time. And that’s not bad. It’s still a nice app, minimalistic, free, full featured, with browser extensions and mobile apps. The free version is sufficient for most users, but the $2.99/month plan adds full-text search, unlimited notes, quick reading, and text-to-speech playlists.
Safari Reading List
If you’re in the Apple ecosystem and use Safari as your primary browser, you can definitely use Safari’s Reading List feature. It works well on Mac, iPhone and iPad and the visual rendering is very successful. You can use the “Add to Reading List”feature from the “Share”option from almost anywhere. The Reading List feature is available in Safari.
Safari doesn’t load articles by default, but you can change this behavior in the settings.
matter
Matter is an interesting app that is 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 beautiful app that starts with a read function for later but adds a lot of social features. You can follow authors and news via email, and there’s a featured news feed that suggests articles you might be interested in.
The app is still very young and is currently only available for iPhones with a web extension that allows you to save articles from anywhere.
Rain drop
Raindrop is an all-in-one backup tool for anything online. You can save notes, recipes, articles, websites, and more. And you can find everything with full text search, filters and tags. You can also organize it all into collections.
Raindrop also offers previews and the three-column organization is very easy to use. The application is available on all platforms, including desktop. Full text search is included in the premium offer, and the app is compatible with automation services such as IFTTT and Zapier.
If you find Pocket and Instapaper a bit simple for you, try Raindrop.
good links
GoodLinks is an independent app for Mac, iPhone and iPad. This is the exact opposite of a web service like Pocket or Instapaper, which leaves you at the mercy of companies you don’t know anything about.
GoodLinks is a paid application without a subscription. It syncs through Apple’s iCloud service. You can disable this sync if you only use it on one device.
The app integrates perfectly on iPhone and Mac. It uses Apple design codes and works great on all devices. Articles are loaded automatically and can be organized using tags.
concept
Notion is a sophisticated note-taking app. But that’s exactly what we want, and in particular an offline reading tool thanks to the web clip extension.
The configuration is not simple, but not very complicated either, there is no shortage of tutorials on the net. You must create a new workspace and table and then customize them. You can then use the Notion web clipper to add the page to any workspace.
Notion isn’t for everyone, but if you’re already using it to take notes or manage some of your data, you can easily use it for your content to read later.
Send by email
Email This is an option you don’t necessarily think of. It offers a browser extension and a bookmarklet that allows you to email any web article. This way you will be able to read your articles directly in your favorite email app.