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Read Later brings offline Instapaper and ReadItLater reading to the Mac

30.03.2012
I'm a huge fan of the for saving Web articles for later reading, sans ads and messy formatting and layout. It's great when you don't have time to read a longer article immediately, or when you want to save an article you found on your iPhone so you can later read it on your Mac or iPad's larger screen. is a similar popular service. Both are also useful for archiving interesting articles for later browsing or sharing.

But for both services, the best experience for your saved articles has been found in iOS apps--specifically, when using the official or app on an iPad. When sitting at your Mac, you've been limited to reading saved articles via the or website in your browser. Though each site lets you browse and view the reformatted versions of your saved articles, the experience just isn't as nice as with native app. In addition, neither site offers as many features as its app, with the biggest omissions being the capability to download articles for offline viewing and to search the text of saved articles.

Fortunately, both services offer an application-programming interface (API) that lets other developers create apps that work with the services. (You can get more information about and .) Which means it was only a matter of time before we'd see Mac apps that aim to make the desktop reading experience more similar to that of the aforementioned iOS apps. () is one of the first, and it works with both Instapaper and Read It Later.

When you first launch Read Later, it prompts you to sign in to an existing Read It Later account; you can also create an account right from this window. To use an Instapaper account, click the Login [sic] With Instapaper link. (Note that to use Read Later--or any other third-party app--with your Instapaper account, you need a , which costs a reasonable $1 per month.)

Once you've logged in to an account, Read Later downloads the full text of the articles you've saved to that service, as well as any folders (for Instapaper) or tags (for Read It later). Read Later can download up to 500 articles per folder for Instapaper accounts, and up to 1000 articles for Read It Later. (If you log in to both Instapaper ReadItLater from within Read Later, the folder/tag list on the left displays each account separately.)

Click a folder or tag, or your main read-later queue, and you see a list of the saved articles it contains. Click an article, and it's displayed--sans ads and messy layout, for easier reading--in the pane to the right. A full-screen mode lets you read without distractions, and you can even toggle the visibility of the folder and article lists, leaving nothing but the selected article.