Instapaper - Save & read articles

Instapaper offers a straightforward solution for saving and storing articles for reading anywhere, anytime, even without an internet connection, all while ensuring they are well-formatted.

With Instapaper for Android, users can enjoy a mobile and tablet-optimized text view that facilitates a clean and organized reading experience. It allows you to read offline in various situations such as on airplanes, subways, or on devices with only Wi-Fi access away from the internet.

KEY FEATURES:

- It saves the majority of web pages in text format, removing the full-sized layout to better suit tablet and phone screens.

- The reading environment is designed to be distraction-free, allowing you to concentrate solely on the material.

- Everything you save is accessible **OFFLINE**, enabling you to read whenever you like, even when your device is not connected to the internet.

ADDITIONAL FEATURES:

- Interface tailored for tablets

- Customizable fonts, text sizes, line spacing, and margins

- Dark mode and brightness adjustment for reading at night

- Organize your unread items by popularity, date, article length, or randomize the order

- Create folders for better organization

- Share content through web browsers and any compatible sharing applications

- Enable rotation lock

- Download up to 500 articles on your mobile device or tablet, with unlimited storage available on the Instapaper platform

- Folders for better sorting

- Access dictionary definitions and Wikipedia entries

- Features like tilt scrolling and page-flipping

- Preview links using the built-in browser without having to exit the app

- In-app purchase option for search functionality

FAQS

What does Instapaper do?

Instapaper turns web content – articles, stories, posts, videos, and even long emails – into a great reading experience.

Over the course of your day, you'll encounter things you want to save for later. With Instapaper, you simply push a button in your browser, or choose “send to Instapaper” in a linked mobile app. Instapaper then saves it for you, and makes it available in a beautiful, uncluttered, reading-optimized format on your mobile phone, your tablet, your Kindle, or your browser.

I can't get something to work, what should I try first?

Make sure cookies are enabled in your browser.

Make sure Javascript is enabled in your browser.

If you're using Android or iOS, make sure you're using the same Instapaper username between your computer, the application, and your mobile browser.

Switch to Safari, Chrome, or Firefox. There are plenty of other reasons to do this, too. If you're not sure how or why you should do this, ask your nearest computer geek, we assure you they'll have an opinion on the matter.

Will you add [some cool feature]?

Quite possibly! Please let us know what you'd like. We read every idea or suggestion. We make changes to Instapaper very carefully, but we aim to be constantly improving.

Are there storage limits?

There's no limit to how many articles you can store, and your archive of read items is kept indefinitely (unless you delete from it).

Does Instapaper make money?

Yes. We are a small team and our goal is to build a long-term sustainable product and business, without venture capital. In order to do so, it's essential that the product generates enough revenue to cover its cost. If you'd like to support Instapaper, the best way to do so is to purchase Instapaper Premium.

Instapaper Premium users receive:

Full-text search

Unlimited highlighting

Third-party API access

Better Kindle functionality

Ads removed from website

I'm trying to create an account but it says my email is already taken.

Usually this is because you created another account with your email address sometime in the misty, distant past. Try logging in with the credentials you might have previously used.

If you want to get rid of the old account, you can rename or delete the old one from Settings when you're logged into it.

My device is telling me my password is incorrect but I can login with those credentials on web.

If you can login on web, chances are it's your device time that's incorrect. Please go to your device's date/time settings and make sure they're accurate. Setting your time to be set automatically is always the safe bet in this case.

How do I install the Instapaper bookmarklet on mobile Safari?

With the introduction of the system share sheet in iOS 8, mobile bookmarklets are no longer required. To save on mobile Safari, and any other compatible apps/browsers, please add Instapaper to the system share sheet. This can be done by opening the share sheet (box with arrow icon), scrolling all the way to the right of the top row, choosing "More," and enabling Instapaper. Instapaper will then be an option on the share sheet.

I save pages, but they don't appear in the app.

Please ensure that you're using the same account name on both the web browser (where you're saving articles) and the iPhone app (where you're reading them). Your account name is displayed:

On the website: In the lower left, inside the nav bar.

In the iOS app: In the Settings screen, under Account.

In the Android app: In the Settings screen, under Your Account.

Why do I have to sign in every time I click the Instapaper bookmarklet?

First and foremost, please make sure you're not in Private/Incognito browsing mode.

If browsing mode is not private, please enable third-party cookies for: www.instapaper.com

If the issue persists, please reinstall your bookmarklet/extension from www.instapaper.com/save

When I click the Instapaper bookmarklet, nothing happens, or it hangs after "(Saving...)". (Most commonly occurs with Firefox.)

Please make sure that you do not have any add-ons or settings that would interfere with Javascript's operation. This includes the Firefox NoScript add-on and some types of ad-blocking software.

Why can't it save pages from [some site]?

There are many reasons why certain pages aren't accessible offline or in Text view. The most common:

The page requires a login. The Instapaper server must fetch a copy of the page without knowing your username, password, or session details. Pages such as Gmail messages or travel itineraries generally can't be reached without logging in, so Instapaper cannot access them for offline saving.

It does not allow this type of access. Some sites block access to web crawlers, which will block or restrict Instapaper from saving them.

We're always working to improve page compatibility, but the web is vast, complex, and always changing — so we can never guarantee perfect or complete compatibility with every site.

We encourage you to submit sites you're having saving issues with to Support so we can look into the saving behavior for you.

Are PDF files supported?

Instapaper currently does not support PDF files.

Blog

Summaries, Custom Article Actions, Obsidian Integration, and More

Today we’re launching Instapaper 8.6 for iOS and macOS, which includes Summaries to quickly get a snapshot of an article, Custom Article Actions to customize the toolbar in the article view, and many more new features that you’ve been asking for.

We’re also launching our official Obsidian Plugin, which syncs all of your highlights and notes to Obsidian.

Summaries

Summaries provide both an overview of the current article, and a list of Summary Highlights which showcase the most important sentences in the article.

You can access Summaries by tapping the “…” menu then tapping Summarize. We wanted to make Summaries accessible from wherever you are in the article, so you can also swipe from the right edge of the article to open the summary.

Tapping any of the Summary Highlights will take you to that place in the article, and you can easily highlight or create a note by tapping the summary highlight. There is also a toggle that enables you to show all Summary Highlights in context while you’re reading the article.

Summaries are limited to 5 per month for free users. With Instapaper Premium you’ll get unlimited Summaries, and Instapaper will automatically sync Summary Highlights to your device. If you have the “Show in article” toggle enabled, Instapaper will automatically show the Summary Highlights in the article without needing to fetch the summary first.

Summaries are available in Instapaper 8.6 on iOS, macOS, and on the Instapaper website. Android support coming soon!

If you’re interested in the technical details, we also published a post about how Instapaper Summaries are generated.

Custom Article Actions

In the article view, you can now customize the toolbar actions by long pressing an icon, and replacing it with a customized action. We’ve received a lot of requests from people who frequently use text-to-speech or view their notes, and want an easy way to do that from the toolbar. So if you’re using Instapaper for heavy research, your toolbar might look something like this:

Custom Article Actions are available today on iOS and macOS.

Obsidian Plugin

We’re excited to share our official Obsidian Plugin, which is the only plugin that can sync all of your highlights and notes to Obsidian.

You can enable the plugin by searching for Instapaper in Obsidian Plugins. After installing, navigate to Settings > Instapaper (under Community Plugins), log in with your Instapaper credentials, and your Notes will start syncing.

Additional Features & Improvements

In addition to the above, we’re launching a number of additional features and improvements in Instapaper 8.6:

Oldest article sync is now available. If you’d like to sync your articles oldest first, you can navigate to Instapaper Settings > Advanced > Home (Under Syncing) > Oldest First.

Support for iOS default system browser when opening links. You can switch to the iOS default browser by navigating to Instapaper Settings > Browser > System.

If you prefer Dark Mode slightly less dark, True Black can now be disabled in Instapaper Settings > Advanced > True Black.

Toggle to enable or disable scrolling under the status bar available in Settings > Advanced > Full Screen.

Option to remove “via Instapaper” attribution when sharing articles is available with Instapaper Premium in Settings > Advanced > Sharing.

Improved display of code blocks in reader view.

Increased largest font sizes for better accessibility.

As always, if you have any feature requests, questions, or concerns please feel free to reach out at support@help.instapaper.com.

Comments

Even with advance setting (10 archive and 10 liked articles), it still download ALL articles on both of my android devices (Android M and O), eating 1GB of storage. Also no "re-download" on long press (sometimes articles downloaded are incomplete and cut off arbitrarily) and "send to kindle" like on iOS. And with background update set to per hour, it often won't update until I force-close and re-open it, and then swipe down for refresh.

Allows editing of the URL and summary, but unfortunately not the web page content. It sometimes gets the content completely wrong, so the ability to edit the content would be an extremely useful feature. Still trying to find an app that actually meets my needs.

I love the app and use it regularly as I love the text and photos only view. Recently after the last update, the articles stopped downloading as expected when shared through the Android share sheet, and often don't show up in the "Home" section of the app. Furthermore, forcing a refresh doesn't resolve the issue. Though articles will show up eventually, it seems random (either in a couple minutes, a few hours, or even a couple days). Force stopping and reopening also doesn't fix the issue.

Easy to use. Articles get saved both to app site for offline viewing (only as long as you don't logout in which case they are deleted) and to your account on its website. So far, spacing between paragraphs (stanzas) in only one of my saved articles was ignored. Vocalized reading of some apostraphe'd words failed to read correctly even though most other such words in same article were read correctly. Customizing features. Weekly newsletter articles reflect "left" non-diverse political viewpoint.

Bad and buggy user interface. Some of the UI elements and interactions are just very buggy. For example, when in an article, if you select a word, the contextual menu that appears at the top that includes copy, edit, dictionary buttons do not appear. Also each time you close and reopen article, the position of last place moves up. How do you plan on selling premium when the buggy app updated more than one year ago and no one is attending to it?