Too Busy To Read It Now? Save It For Later with Instapaper

As a writer, I do my best to stay current by reading every website on the Internet. Yes, I set my goals high. But thanks to my existing social life and personal endeavors, I am not always at home with my computer and Internet connection readily available to me. Believe it.

That is why I am an avid user of Instapaper, which the website describes perfectly as “a simple tool to save web pages for reading later.” And that is exactly what it does! If you come across an article online, but don’t have the time to read it at that exact moment, you can use the bookmark “Read Later” to save it for later. The truly great feature is that once you sync your account online, all of the content is available offline to read on your Android, iOS devices and even your laptop.

It is incredibly easy to set up and use. Just navigate to the Official Instapaper website and sign up for a free account. After signing up, you are given a “Read Later” bookmarklet that you can click and drag into your bookmarks bar.

Then whenever you want to save a particularly juicy article for later, you just click “Read Later” and a small notification pops up to tell you that it was “Saved!”. It even provides helpful screenshots of the process, borrowed by yours truly.

There is also the option of emailing site links and too long email messages to a user-specific email address that will then automatically add them to your Instapaper account so you can read them later.

Smartphone Apps

If you are an iOS user, then lucky you, because Instapaper has an official app for you called “Instapaper”. The official app gives you access to your Instapaper account in a very straight-forward and useful way. It has options for font sizes and types as well as color options. You can favorite articles and look at the top articles in the Instapaper community. Unfortunately, it is $4.99. But trust me, it’s worth it.

For Android users, there is an equally useful and free app called “iPaper” that is essentially the same as the Instapaper app for iOS. It showcases a streamlined list of all articles saved to your Instapaper account, which is essentially all you need it to do.

Windows Phone 7 users can pick up the free “InstaFetch” for all your Instapaper needs. The app does the same thing as the others, giving you a portal to your Instapaper account from your smartphone.

As far as I know, there is unfortunately no app for WebOS users.