Save anything online to read later
What you need: Instapaper; PC, Android, IOS or Kindle Time required: 30 minutes
Instapaper is one of the best free services for saving online content to read later (offline or online). It recently made all its Premium features free – previously these cost $30 (£24) a year. These include ad-free browsing and text searches – both of which its nearest rival Pocket ( www.getpocket.com) still charges for. We’ll show you how to use all these features, so you can save anything of interest you find online to read later on any device (PC, phone, tablet and Kindle). STEP1
Go to www.instapaper.com on your PC. If you have an Instapaper account, click Sign In 1 and log into your account. If you don’t, click the ‘Create an Account’ button 2 . The fastest way to save content to read later is to use the Instapaper browser extension. We’ll show you how to add this to Chrome, Firefox and Internet Explorer (IE). STEP2 To install the Chrome extension, go to www.snipca.com/22585, click ‘Add to Chrome’, then ‘Add extension’. In Firefox, go to www.snipca.com/22586, click ‘Add to Firefox’ 1 , then Install 2 . In IE, go to www.snipca.com/22587. At the bottom of the page, you’ll see the Instapaper Text bookmarklet. Click and drag this to your Bookmarks Bar. Now whenever you’re reading an article you want to save, click the extension and it will be saved to your Instapaper account (you’ll need to log into Instapaper the first time you do this). STEP3 Next, install the Instapaper app for Android ( www. snipca.com/22588) or for IOS ( www.snipca.com/22589) and log into your account. If you already have an account, swipe down to refresh your list of saved articles. To save content using Chrome on Android, tap the three dots at the top, Share, then ‘Add to Instapaper’. In Safari on IOS, tap the share icon 1 , swipe the top section to the right, tap More, scroll down, tap the Instapaper slider 2 , tap Done 3 , then tap the Instapaper icon (in future, simply tap this icon).
STEP4
To send articles to your Kindle ebook reader, log into your Instapaper account on your PC, click your account dropdown menu at the top right, click Settings, then scroll down to the Kindle section 1 . Type your Kindle email address in the field provided 2 , then press Enter. You can set it to send all unread articles to your Kindle, and set a delivery frequency and time 3 . Click Save Kindle Preferences 4 . You can also install a browser extension 5 that sends articles directly to your Kindle. To share Instapaper articles from Android and IOS to your Kindle, open the article, tap the share icon, then tap the new ‘Send to Kindle/kindle’ icon.
STEP5
Select an article saved to your PC, Android or IOS device. At the top, you’ll see a number of icons. The articles you save will take up storage space, so after reading it, delete it or click the Archive icon 1 . The Like icon 2 lets you bookmark favourite reads. You can access both the Archive and Like sections in the top left of the main reading list. Click the Aa icon 3 for options to change your article’s brightness, font type, font size 4 and reading view theme 5 .
STEP6
Previously, whenever you searched for something (using the search bar at the top), Instapaper would only look for that term in the article titles in your main list. It now also searches the text within your articles and archived list. The Notes feature is a good way to save favourite passages of text, and now you can save as many ‘notes’ as you want (previously this was restricted to five per month). To create a note, highlight text in the article you’re reading 1 , click the note icon, enter a suitable heading 2 , then click Save 3 . Notes appear in the top left section, with Archives and Likes.
STEP 7
Two more Premium features that are now free are ‘Speed reading’ and ‘text-to-speech’ (mobile only). To speed read, select an article, tap the Share icon, then tap the Speed option 1 . You’ll now see the article one word at a time (try the demo at www.snipca.com/22592). Adjust the speed at which the text appears using the slider at the bottom. On a mobile device, you can have the article read to you (even with the screen switched off). Tap the Share icon, then tap Speak 2 . Tap 1x at the top right to change the narration speed (options are .5x, 1x, 1.5x and 2x). We found the speech robotic, but understandable. ●