Read-later apps are a handy way to bookmark digital content you want to come back to. These apps can save articles, Twitter feeds, and even entire websites so you can revisit them.
This can be useful when you don’t immediately have time to browse, but you will have a moment later to catch up on the news, for example during your commute. As a bonus, they let you access content when you don’t have an internet connection. We highlight five proven read-after apps that we highly recommend, presented in alphabetical order.
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All of these apps have a free tier, so you can find a read-later solution that offers the right layout and has the features you need before you decide to go premium.
Credit: Screenshot / Apple
Instapaper is a hugely popular app that offers a much-loved way to save and store articles to read later. The formatting of Instapaper is one of its great assets. The app saves webpage content in a format optimized for iOS, making it easier to read, especially on a small screen.
To add to this ease of reading, you can customize the way your content appears on screen, with different fonts to choose from, different color themes, and various spacing options. It’s also simple to organize your Instapaper content, with folders to sort your saved posts into categories and the ability to sort posts by popularity, date, and post length.
Instapaper works offline, offers the ability to highlight text and add up to five notes per month, and gives you text-to-speech functionality so you can listen to your recorded content, giving your eyes a break.
Instapaper’s free plan is a robust option that will suit most average users. However, if you want to take it a step further, you can opt for an Instapaper Premium subscription for $2.99 per month or $29.99 per year. Premium gives you full-text search of articles you’ve saved, unlimited highlights and notes, a text-to-speech playlist to listen to multiple articles, and unlimited use of the speed-read feature.
Instapaper is available for iPhone on the Apple App Store.
Credit: Screenshot / Apple
Matter is an iOS and Mac “reader” app that its creators call a “powerful reading tool for active and demanding readers”. Matter lets you save articles, Twitter feeds, and PDFs to your Matter “queue” to view later, even if you’re offline. You can also listen to your recorded content with a human-sounding voice.
In Matter, you can also subscribe to individual authors wherever they publish. Material currently says he offers “over 10,000 top journalists, bloggers and authors” you can subscribe to and get their new content in your feed.
Matter is also designed so you can get all your newsletter subscriptions – free and paid – delivered right to the app. You can do this by either connecting your Gmail account or, when signing up for a new subscription, using your unique Matter email address to receive content directly in the app.
Matter offers frictionless highlighting by long-pressing and swiping your finger across your screen. The app can also generate what Matter calls “Quoteshots”, text snippets optimized for sharing on Twitter.
Matter also offers discovery options. The application has a dedicated tab for “Staff Choices”. Every day, Matter selects between five and 10 Twitter recommendations that you can choose to browse.
Matter is available for iPhone on the Apple App Store.
Credit: Screenshot / Apple
NewsPal is an absolutely fabulous “offline browser” tool that has a free tier but is well worth the $0.99 per month, or $7.99 annual fee, that the full premium offering currently costs. Premium removes the 200MB download limit, giving you more capacity for more content.
NewsPal was created after the developer was “sick and tired” of being forced to play games while stuck on the subway. This offline reader will ensure you have something to read wherever you are with its ability to download entire websites to your device and then instantly load an ad-free version for you to browse.
NewsPal offers the useful ability to set download schedulers. This means you can set NewsPal to automatically download the latest version of your favorite websites overnight, and then be able to browse new content during your morning commute, even without any cell coverage.
The app uses an AI-powered auto-update feature, which learns your NewsPal usage pattern and will adjust the refresh time of your content respectively.
NewsPal is available for iPhone in the Apple App Store.
Credit: Screenshot / Apple
PaperSpan gives you the ability to save articles to read or listen to whenever it’s convenient for you, even when you don’t have an internet connection. PaperSpan offers a clean, “no noise”, ad-free layout that’s easy to read on phones and tablets, with the option to choose a dark or light theme, change the font, and adjust the brightness.
PaperSpan’s organizing feature is powerful – the app automatically categorizes content so you can select your next read based on your mood. You can search for content by only seeing unread articles, and you can also filter content by reading time, so if you only have five minutes to spare, you can tailor your next read or listen accordingly. of this period. You can also organize your articles into folders.
The free tools in the PaperSpan app include the ability to highlight text, create notes, and send unique articles to your Kindle device. PaperSpan offers interesting analyses; how many articles you have read, how much you need to read and insight into your reading habits by creating a word cloud.
If you’re interested in your reading stats, you can consider PaperSpan Premium for $8.99 per year. This offers additional insight into your reading routine by showing you your reading rate, daily peak reading time, categories you read, and your most popular sites. It also brings advanced search, playlist creation for audio, and the ability to send multiple articles to your Kindle.
PaperSpan is available for iPhone in the Apple App Store and for Android in the Google Play Store.
Credit: Pocket
We are fans of Pocket’s “Save. Read. Grow”. mantra. In the words of the developers, Pocket was designed to capture the content that comes your way throughout the day, allowing you to manage your own space filled with only the topics that interest you. You can use Pocket to save stories, articles, news, sports, and videos from anywhere online to access them later, even if you’re offline.
Pocket is another option that offers a clean, clutter-free layout that can be customized to your preference. It offers a dark theme, as well as a sepia theme specifically designed to “reduce visual stimulation” before sleeping. Pocket has a “listen” feature that turns text into a hands-free, eyeless audio experience. Pocket also provides estimated reading times.
Pocket’s discovery options are high quality and a great way to find new content. Pocket offers “Best of the Web” content that has been discovered by Pocket users and approved by Pocket curators.
As with all these read-later apps, Pocket, which celebrates its 10th anniversary this year, is free to download and use. If you want to upgrade to the premium, ad-free version, for $4.99 per month or $49.99 per year, you can enjoy a permanent library of your backups, even if they disappear from the web, see suggested tags , perform full-text searches, be able to do unlimited highlights (the free version limits you to three per article), and have access to premium fonts.
Pocket is available for iPhone in the Apple App Store and for Android in the Google Play Store.
