Eight Best Reading Apps to Help You Understand Your Backlog
If you find yourself coming across interesting articles that you can’t sit down and read right away , the Read Later app is a great solution. The ecosystem of these types of apps is thriving, offering many ways to read articles and social media posts later at your own pace. Here are some of the best options to try.
When most people think of reading apps later, they think of Pocket . Pocket has been going strong for over a decade now, and it’s still a popular choice for most of us. Pocket is now owned by Mozilla and in addition to standalone applications, it is also directly integrated into the Firefox browser.
Pocket is free to use, but you can upgrade to a Premium plan for an ad-free experience. You also get features like full-text search, unlimited highlighting, and permanent archiving of all saved content.
Instagram paper
Instapaper has been arguing with Pocket for some time now. It is more minimal compared to its competitor and you may prefer its simpler interface. And if you just want to cut down on your article backlog, check out the Quick Read feature, which displays each word in quick succession, although I feel this greatly reduces the enjoyment of reading.
The free app is more than enough for most users, but for $6 a month you’ll get an ad-free experience, full-text search, unlimited note-taking, speed reading, and text-to-speech playlists.
Matter
Matter has a simple idea: save articles, PDFs, social media posts, and more with a browser extension, then read them later on your iPhone, iPad, Kindle, or back in your browser. The interface is sleek, and saving links for later reading is a one-click process.
To get more out of your reading, Matter also offers highlighters and notes. You can organize your saved articles using tags, and then click Play to play the audio. But the enhanced app is not free. It offers a seven-day free trial, after which an annual subscription (there is also a monthly option) costs $79.99.
Rain drop
Raindrop is a universal tool for saving any data from the Internet that works on different platforms, including desktop computers. Here you can save your notes, recipes, articles, websites – whatever. Everything is searchable using text, filters and tags. Raindrop also does a decent job of media previewing, and the three-pane layout is easy to use and nice to look at. Additionally, you get full text search with the premium plan, and there is automatic support for IFTTT and Zapier.
If you feel like tools like Pocket and Instapaper are too basic for you, try customizing your bookmarking system in Raindrop with its generous free tier before opting for the annual Pro plan .
Alfred
Alfread is a beautifully designed iOS app with a “read later” option. It integrates with popular services like Instapaper, Pocket, and Readwise, allowing you to import existing saved articles. You can also start fresh and create your reading list right in Alfread.
If you don’t read much anymore, Alfread can motivate you to read more with ideas like reading goals and reminders to keep you on track. It also automatically archives unread articles after a specified period (default is a month) and helps categorize saved content using tags for better organization.
Alfread has a free tier. The subscription plan unlocks all features for $4.99 per month.
Screen tearing
This nifty browser extension is a different kind of read-later app. Once you save various articles to read later, Screenbreak will create a physical booklet of all your articles, like a mini-magazine, and can mail it to you or have it available for you to print at home.
Screenbreak is a paid app with severalpricing tiers , but it has a free plan that allows you to digitize your saved articles into an organized PDF file.
Chrome Reading List
Chrome’s built-in reading list is a useful tool for managing articles you want to read later, especially if you’re already using Chrome and don’t want to bother with additional extensions and apps.
To save an article this way, go to a web page in Chrome and look at the top right corner of the window. Select the three-dot menu, then Bookmarks & Lists > Reading List > Add Tab to Reading List . To read it, select “Show Reading List” from the same menu. Alternatively, you can add the webpage to your reading list by right-clicking the tab and selecting Add Tab to Reading List .
Of course, Chrome’s Reading List is a bit more basic compared to the dedicated apps on this list, but you can download pages to read them offline, open the clutter-free reading option in the right-click context menu, and save all your articles synchronized between devices.
Safari Reading List
If you’re fully involved in the Apple ecosystem and use Safari as your default browser, you can get by just fine using the Reading List feature in Safari. It works great on Mac, iPhone and iPad and is a pleasure to read. You can use the Add to Reading List feature on the Share sheet almost anywhere. The Reading List feature is available in the Safari browser.
Safari doesn’t load articles offline by default, but you can change this by going into iOS settings.