Everything You Need To Know About … Instapaper
Still, finding news is one thing; finding time to read it—without being distracted by ads, related links or a weak Internet connection—is quite another. Instapaper offers a solution of sorts: allowing you to save articles from your Web-surfing to read later on your desktop or mobile device.
To use Instapaper, the first step is to sign up for a free account through the company’s website. The tool operates on a “freemium” basis, meaning you can take advantage of the basic program at no cost. From there, you may save an unlimited number of articles, videos and other pages, all of which can sync seamlessly across the Web and any iOS or Android mobile devices. After saving content, use Instapaper’s folders to organize articles and other media by type or subject for easy viewing.
To save articles from a desktop computer, you can either add an extension to your preferred browser or save the Instapaper “bookmarklet” in your bookmarks. For example, if you use Chrome, go to the Instapaper website—www.instapaper.com/save—and click a button to add the extension; an “I” icon will appear at the end of your address bar. For the bookmarklet, simply drag the “Save to Instapaper” image from the “save” page up to your bookmarks bar. After setting these up, clicking on either will automatically store your current tab on your unread queue in your Instapaper account. To confirm that the page has been saved, a bar will appear near the top of your screen during the saving process.
If you want to read something as soon as you open it, but prefer an uncluttered screen, add the “Instapaper Text” option; as with “Save to Instapaper,” you may drag the “Instapaper Text” image to your bookmarks bar from the website. Clicking on that button will convert all compatible Web pages into an easy-to-read format from within your chosen browser.
You may also download the Instapaper applications (apps) to your smartphone or tablet; Instapaper is compatible with a wide variety of devices: iPhones and iPads, Android phones and tablets, the Google Nexus and Samsung Galaxy, Nook devices and Kindle eReaders. If you have a smartphone or tablet, you can save content to Instapaper from other apps as well, by using the “share” option—the Instapaper icon will appear alongside the email and message options after you tap “share” on your mobile device. Within the Instapaper app, use the settings page to change the font, text size, color, background, margins and line spacing to suit your preferences. This may come in handy if you sometimes struggle with long passages of cramped text or want to change screen contrast for reading in low-light situations.
After storing content, you can use the highlight option to draw attention to important or memorable passages within a file. To do this, select the text you wish to mark up and press the “Highlight” option. Instapaper subscribers get unlimited highlights, but free users are restricted to five per month.
The “Today” extension on your device’s notifications screen shows only content stored that day. In order to search the full text of your saved media, including archived stories, to find a particular article or passage, you would need to subscribe at the cost of $3 per month or $30 a year.
If you would rather listen to your saved articles, and have an iOS or Android smartphone or tablet, use the premium app to set up the text-to-speech function on your mobile device. This allows you to listen to articles on your commute or while on your way to a client’s offices. Simply access the text-to-speech function from the app’s “share” sheet—and, just as when you listen to music or another recording, you may rewind, pause and fast-forward the playback from your device’s lock screen.