![]() If you lose internet, you can finish listening to an article, but you'll need to reconnect for each new article. Pocket can read articles aloud as long as you're at least connected to the internet when you start reading an article. The two differ more when it comes to text-to-speech. Both services also download all of your articles so you can read them without an internet connection, which is perfect for reading on the subway or a plane. The choice of fonts differs by platform, so, for example, you'll find more font choices on iOS than on Android. Instapaper has several fonts to choose from, even for free users. Pocket only offers a choice of one serif and one sans-serif font in the free version-paying customers can choose between more. ![]() You can choose between light, dark, and sepia color schemes, set custom brightness settings for reading mode, and pick from some font options. When it's time to read, Instapaper and Pocket offer similar basic reading features. If you want to be sure you read everything from a given source, you can watch an RSS feed for new items and automatically save them to Instapaper or Pocket: ![]() Having said that, Pocket's app directory looks pretty outdated: the page still prominently features Google Reader, which went the way of the dinosaurs in 2013.īoth Instapaper and Pocket are supported by Zapier, which means you can connect either of them to thousands of apps. That sounds like boring geek stuff, because it is, but the upside is that there are all kinds of applications that support Pocket. If you want actual, two-way syncing, Pocket offers that with Kobo devices (Kobo is Kindle's main competition in the eReader market). Neither Pocket nor Instapaper offers a two-way sync-saved articles are sent to your Kindle, where they're managed separately from your article library. Pocket doesn't directly offer this feature, but the third-party application Pocket2Kindle means you can have the same feature using that service. Instapaper offers a built-in integration for sending saved articles to Kindle devices. That means you can save articles from most places and read your saved articles on most devices. Pocket is built by Mozilla, the same team that builds the Firefox browser, and is actually built into Firefox, but you don't need to use Firefox in order to use Pocket. They also offer browser extensions for common browsers like Chrome and Safari. Each offers apps for Android, iOS, macOS, and the web for reading the articles you've saved. That's great, but the URLs are too long: 30 characters, compared with 13 for bit.ly.You can save items to Pocket directly from Slack.įor the most part, Instapaper and Pocket support similar platforms. Instapaper has built-in Twitter integration, to let you tweet articles from within Instapaper. I'm excited to use it on the iPad when that device comes out later this month, because I foresee Instapaper will be even better on the larger screen. And in the article list view, the headlines of articles you've partly read have a tiny icon next to them. It adds pagination to scroll up or down a full screen at a time by tapping the top or bottom of the screen. Instapaper 2.2, the new version, includes a built-in mini-browser for viewing articles in their original format on the Web. ![]() ![]() If I were one of our pioneer ancestors, I would have died of laziness in a day. Yes, I have an app to help me read without moving my eyes too much. I like to move the text a couple of lines at a time that way, with the line of text I'm currently reading centered on the screen. Or you can scroll the text up and down by tilting the iPhone, adjusting the position of text with a slight movement of your hand. You navigate the column by tapping and dragging up and down, as you would on the Mobile Safari browser. You can work around this by bookmarking the printer-friendly versions of articles, which is also the best way to download multi-page articles. Many sites don't format well, Instapaper fails to eliminate the navigation sidebars and other clutter from some sites (including Computerworld). Instapaper removes ads and attempts to remove navigation sidebars and other clutter from the Web site - not always successfully. Later, when I have time, I fire up the iPhone Instapaper app (free for a lite version, $5 for full functionality), which downloads all the articles I've bookmarked for later reading, and presents them reformatted for easy reading on the small screen, including scaled-down versions of graphics. ![]()
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