Pocket, Instapaper apps save articles and videos for later

These three handy apps save videos or stories for you to watch or read later, when you’re not so preoccupied.

READ LATER APPS

The internet is turning me into Dory, the memory-challenged fish from Finding Nemo. Put a web browser in front of me and I suddenly can’t remember what I was doing 10 seconds before. A thousand-word story on working out! This cat video is funnier than yesterday’s cat video!

Sure, the cure for my internet distraction disorder requires my own willpower. But I’ve found assistance on the internet itself: apps that help you save articles and videos for when you can concentrate, be it on your commute home or lounging by the pool.

Some apps — Facebook, Apple’s Safari browser, Microsoft’s Edge browser coming soon to Windows 10 — have “save for later” or “reading list” tools. But none of those are as good as Pocket, Instapaper and Readability.

Their mission is to help you grab the good stuff before it vanishes into the black hole of the internet and then provide a distraction-free zone for reading or watching it.

Though these apps basically work the same way, they aren’t equally good at providing relief from IDD. You sign up for an account, then on your computer’s web browser you install a bookmarklet (a bookmark-bar button) or browser extension. When you see an article, website or video you want to dedicate more time to, click the button and the piece is saved to your account. You can access your collection later through the phone or tablet app or the service’s website.

If you’re on a computer that doesn’t have your bookmarklets, you can send links to an email address associated with your account. When the service receives the email, it ingests that link into your account.

Things are different on mobile devices. For iPhones, iPads and Android phones and tablets, you must install apps from the Apple App Store or Google Play store, respectively. Once signed in, you can save pages in your phone’s web browser by tapping the share button, then selecting your save-for-later service.

Facebook’s iOS and Android apps don’t allow directly saving to any of the services. To send something from your phone’s Facebook app newsfeed, email the link to your account or copy the link and switch to your save-for-later app. It will ask if you’d like to save the copied link. Of course, Facebook would prefer you use its own saving feature. (In your newsfeed, tap the arrow on the top right of an article post.) You’ll see saved items under Favourites, on the left side of your home screen. Twitter is far friendlier. Twitter’s Android, iOS and even web apps integrate with each of the read-it-later apps. But trying to read or watch a video in a stream of social media is like trying to have a meaningful conversation at a loud happy hour.

These save-for-later apps excel at stripping away the distractions around the text or video you want to focus on. They create a digital reading experience closest to what you’d get in a real book.

Of all of the apps, I liked Pocket’s presentation the best. Its interface is more modern than the others, and I could easily swipe through pages. Unlike Instapaper, which sometimes struggled to pull in images, Pocket displayed photos as they appeared in the original article. And on rare occasions when I didn’t like how Pocket formatted an article or missed a video, I could easily access the web view.

Pocket’s Android app lets you take reading material on the road with a read-aloud feature, and it’s surprisingly good, too.

Instapaper isn’t as visual or colourful as Pocket but it’s full of features. Its apps have a Speak button (though the voice sounds robotic compared with Pocket’s). Its speed reading and in-article highlighting are useful but limited unless you pay $US3 a month — or $US30 ($38.90) a year — for the service.

What about that third popular save-for-later service? Readability wasn’t bad, but it didn’t impress me like the other two. Still, even Instapaper and Pocket could improve, especially when it comes to video.

As I wait for a perfect reading app … Oh look, a puppy! Wait, what was I saying? Oh yeah: I now have Pocket’s bookmarklet and app handy when IDD strikes.