Yesterday’s post was all about finding content to read. Today’s follow-up post is about ways to easily save that content to your smartphone or tablet so you can bring it with you and read offline. There two options that I currently use (although one has emerged as my favorite) and a third one that comes with a nice, additional feature. All 3 of the services discussed below are free and have apps that allow them to be used on Android, iPhone and Kindle Fire.
1. Pocket (formerly Read it Now) – My favorite app for saving articles to be read later. They have bookmarklets (little icons that you can add to your browser) to make saving easy. They brag that they are integrated into over 290 apps, although I only use 2. I have one on my browser for articles and posts I find while on my laptop. I have another one attached to Google Reader on my tablet. In both cases, all you need is one click to put the article in your own personal archive. I suspect their other app integrations are similarly simple. The real joy comes in the reading component. Using free apps available for iPad, iPhone, Android and Kindle Fire, your saved articles are automatically downloaded so you can read them anywhere. You will never be bored again!
2. Instapaper – This service is very similar to Pocket, except it designed primarily for an iPhone environment. I used to use Instapaper fairly exclusively in my Android device, using a third-party tool called EverPaper. I finally stopped using it when I had syncing issues. It worked well most of the time, but the second time I had some syncing issues (over ~8 months period, so it was not a frequent issue) I moved entirely on to Pocket. Bugs get fixed constantly, so they might have worked out the issues by now. For those using iPhones or iPads, there is a native app for reading downloaded articles. I have no personal experience with it, but I have heard good things from my friends who use it on their Apple devices.
There is a third option that has some nice distinguishing features. Readability not only allows you to store articles for reading offline, but it also cleans up the formatting to make the content easier to read both on your browser and your mobile device. It eliminates much of the visually distracting clutter, which at times can make a huge difference. Web designers could learn some great lessons from the Readability folks. Because I like Pocket so much for reading on my Nook, I primarily use Readability to clean up articles that I read on my laptop.
Everyone is different and will appreciate and be bugged by different features. Therefore, I recommend that you try all 3 and see which one suits you the best. Also, if you have any favorites that I haven’t mentioned here or your own experiences with offline reading apps, please share them, in the comments.