What the Tech: App of the day

CHARLOTTE- Millions of people are facing a change to their daily routines as the popular read-later app, Pocket, announces it is shutting down this summer. Since it launched in 2008, Pocket has been the go-to application for saving online content for later reading, and at last count, 2 million people used the app every month.

Mozilla, the company behind Firefox, announced it will shut down Pocket in July and will no longer work. For anyone who’s never used a ‘read-it-later’ app, I strongly suggest you give it a try. They’re great for saving articles, blog posts, and YouTube videos. But what app can you try once Pocket pulls the plug?

The smartphone app “Instapaper” is an easy replacement. It works similarly to Pocket. When you run across something you want to save for later, just tap the share button on your smartphone and choose Instapaper. There are also extensions for the major browsers to make it easy to save items when browsing on a computer.

Anything you’ve saved appears in your Instapaper feed with the latest articles listed at the top. It also removes clutter by stripping away sidebars and ads, so all you have are the articles.
If you don’t have the time to read an article yourself, Instapaper will read it to you aloud. Instapaper syncs your feed across all devices, including web browsers, iPhone, Android, and
Kindle. You’ll find Instapaper apps in all of the app stores.

Best of all, it is free for unlimited saves. There’s a premium subscription if you want other feature,s but the free version is fine for everyone. I’ve used Pocket for over 15 years and have saved over 100 articles to read later (you can delete them when you’re finished), and it’s been an app I use almost every day.

Pocket users don’t have to worry about losing their saved content when the app stops working this summer. You can export those links to your Instapaper account. But Pocket users shouldn’t wait long. It will go away in July, and Mozilla says users have until October to export the content. I hate it when a favorite app goes away or changes dramatically, and I will miss Pocket. But
Instapaper might be just as good, if not better.