Why in God’s name do I need Instapaper? Or Pocket? Or Readability?
Because your time is precious. Ever watched a squirrel? Something distracts them for a second, they freeze, then go right back to chewing that nut or running up a tree. Why? Because winter’s coming and if they don’t store enough nuts, they die. They have important work to do. And so do you.
If you’re easily distracted from your work by incoming emails, you already know that you can adjust your automatic notifications to say, once an hour. (Seriously, if something’s really urgent, you’ll get a phone call.)
Dealing with FOMO
Fine. But what about the times when you decide to “just quickly check Facebook/Twitter/Quora/LinkedIn/etc” and the next thing you know, an hour has gone by, because you clicked a link to an article/video/blog post that you felt you had to read then and there. Because otherwise you might miss it. Clearly, you have developed major FOMO: Fear Of Missing Out. (Not your fault, blame the amazing internet.) And then you walk around feeling guilty for having wasted precious time instead of Getting Things Done like you planned. Fret not, there is a simple solution.
Instapaper, Pocket and Readability to the Rescue
Instapaper, Pocket (previously known as Read It Later) and Readability let you save your articles and videos in the cloud. For free. On multiple devices (and yes, your articles are all synced via the cloud so you can pick up right where you left off as you switch gadgets). So you can catch up on your reading when you really do have time to kill. Like when you’re waiting in some long line. Commuting to work. Or at the dog park.
Yeah, but how does it save you time?
- No ads. Both apps default to an ad-free display. Hallelujah. No ads = faster scanning because it’s easier to stay focused. (Note: Google just
boughtinvested in Pocket so GoogleAds may soon appear.) - Offline viewing. Your articles can be read even when you’re offline (like stuck underground in the subway) or in wifi-hostile territory. When you sync your phone, new articles are automatically added (like podcast updates).
- You stay focused. Every time you see something online that you’d like to read/watch, but you know you don’t have the time for right then and there, just click the button in your browser or app. Voilà, instant archive of interesting stuff for when you’re bored. And your FOMO will evaporate. And you’ll get stuff done.
So which is better? Instapaper? Pocket? Or Readability?
They’re almost identical. But since Google owns is invested in Pocket, I foresee ads popping up soon at some point in the future, not to mention tracking of personal interests. If you value your privacy, go with Instapaper or Readability. It takes 3 simple steps:
- Add the Instapaper add-on to your browser or the Pocket add-on button or the Readability add-on.
- Download the app for your mobile(s) and add them to your device(s).
- Save an article and then try viewing it on your mobile to get a feel for how it works.
Be the squirrel
Be the squirrel. Read it later.
6 Comments
Luisa
December 23, 2013I can’t live without Instapaper. Most in-depth articles I’ve read since 2011 that I remembered, discussed and referred to I’ve done so thanks to this wonderful little app.
In the browser if I need to read something immediately but don’t want to save the article, I like to use Readability to strip away everything and leave me with text only but Instapaper is like the ancient manila envelope where I kept timeless articles that had an impact and I never wanted to throw away. 🙂
Alan
March 28, 2014Nice overview. The one thing you don’t mention is cost. Instapaper isn’t free, the others are. I mainly use Pocket, and it has no ads.
DVious
June 23, 2014Any clue as to how to use Readability with Flipboard? I am unable to sign-in – my Galaxy just quickly flashes up, ‘Authenticating’.
To be fair, I got the same response from Pocket – then I saw the Google ‘ownership’ (and I figure that they actually, ONLY do evil – nice search, tho!), so I deleted it.
Belinda Darcey
June 23, 2014Sorry, I don’t use FlipBoard :/ Re-Google and Pocket, yes I had similar reservations. In its favor, I find Pocket the easiest to use.
DVious
June 24, 2014Thanks for replying!
I went with Readability, and ended up sending them sweary e-mails about the crappy nature of the product. Their automated reply showed me how to sign up to Readability, FFS!
Readability = infuriating!
For example, as far as I can tell, the only way to read offline is to:
1) Use the browser to copy an article to the Reader list (I can forget about android because the app isn’t even aware that I’ve added anything to the list, from yesterday till today);
2) Open each document, otherwise I have no document; and then
3) Publish the document as an epub.
That’s a pretty crappy service!
Update – The crappy android app finally became self-aware, this morning! It acknowledges that I used my browser to add documents to the reader. What’s more, unlike the browser, android seems to have offline reading available too. I just turned off wifi and tried it, although a couple of Cracked documents just displayed links, and not the actual document I wanted to read.
I may have to continue to bite through the rest of my tongue, plan my offline reading a day in advance, and put up with it.
Personally, I would go a little out of my way, to stay out of Google’s bed – it’s full of cameras!
Paul C
August 27, 2014I use pocket and instapaper. I wanted to like readability but one flaw it has is that it does not save any pages straight away. For example, you save a page and then decide to read it 5 mins later in readability . The problem is that it does not show up for at least an hour. The other two are instant. I emailed readability and they said they were aware and that they were working on it so maybe by now it works but in the meant time I’ve grown to like both instapaper and pocket.