Instapaper Reviews

by Cirsp

With the new IOS 13 on an iPhone XR, TTS crashes constantly now. It doesn’t matter if I’m in light mode or dark mode, it won’t make it through one article until it crashes. I’m still on a hunt for a replacement app for this app considering how many bugs have yet to be addressed and now these new series of bugs that have cropped up. I even went ahead and paid for the premium part of Instapaper and have regretted it since issues and complaints seem to go unanswered. Please post if you are using a similar app that isn’t plagued with bugs that also has TTS!

Old Review:
I’m really disappointed in Instapaper. This was my go to app for saving and reading articles for later, surpassing Pocket. Now I’ve switched to Pocket bc of the constant bugs that still plague Instapaper that go unanswered AND most importantly the sudden change of our once free services to having to go to their website and pay for the services. I do not just want to give my credit card out without any option for secure payment, and features like text to speech multiple articles while driving are now paid. Change Instapaper back to what it was before, otherwise you would lose another customer to your competitors.

by Unsoho

I’ve used this app for years. I bought the first paid version and have subscribed in the past. Now, the developer who I used to highly respect sold Instapaper to new people who yanked out the features that I’ve already paid for multiple times and is asking for even more money for them.

Besides bugs that made me switch to Pocket for a year or two, like articles from certain websites (websites that I’ve previously reported using the Report feature when articles in this app are “missing text” literally 100x) with text not being captured, now you can’t even search your folders. So had to delete all of them and plop everything from recipes to politics into the main page.

It’s particularly insulting as it’s known that the more you’ve used this app, the more difficult it will be to switch to another app, since you’ve saved many articles, and organized with folders or keywords, but can’t even find now without paying for it. Our loyalty equals the articles we saved being held hostage for ransom.

It’s so infuriating that those of us who have already paid for Instapaper are now being asked to pay more, again. What’s to say that it won’t go belly up after all of this or even that Instapaper will be sold yet again to even more shady characters holding functionalities hostage for even more money?

I’m so grossed out at the whole situation.

by Rollo999

You decided to wait many months to introduce a paywall for what was free. The worst though is that you didn’t bother warning users in advance. Not only that, but you don’t have a pay in app in Instapaper Store, misleading people to download then go to your website and pay there. Why does this feel wrong? Obviously, those considerations didn’t matter to you, just fins a strategy that pits people’s back against the paywall and make it more difficult to end a subscription. I’m not stupid, I see what you’re doing. Yes, you have the right to make changes, but you do not have the right to not announce in advance your intentions to users. And I don’t care if you disagree, because in the end, you will lose when you act this way. Good luck with your hold hostage business model. I’m out.

by Carpedivum

I have used this app since it first came out, when one man originally developed it. Instapaper has been an absolute staple for me. I used to rate it five stars. So why only two now??? Because there is one feature that all the other competitors recognize that this app doesn’t account for. Permanency! The others are about same price but they have the option to store the article content, not just a link. Storing a link means you loose articles over time as links break. So if you’re using this as a library of knowledge to reference, no bueno. If you’re just using this as an actual ‘read later’ and you’re pretty much ditching the content later... okay no prob for you. But I’m willing to bet the majority of users are in the first category.

by 25 Points

Instapaper is 5 stars, but the un-usability of the notes section really turns me off. I had the intention to use this app to not only read articles, but to takes notes and actively learn, and the highlights and notes section really attracted me.

However, if you make 4 different highlights and 3 comments on a fairly long article like the New York Times, it makes a separate note for each of them, making 7 separate notes. This is intensely frustrating. If you had the option of seeing all the notes via a drop down list in one single “master note” instead of making 7 separate notes, that alone would be enough to warrant a 5-star.

If this is changed, I’ll change this review to 5-stars!

by Joehutsko

Update after developer review: they’re aware of issues and working on fixes and improvements, so that ups it to 3 stars; happy to go 4 stars once the spacing issue is fixed with upper and lower borders on iPhone X in iBooks pagination mode, then 5 stars once they dim out the Home indicator. Thank you for listening, this app folks. 🙌🏼📖📰👀

Update for 7.5.2 on Jan 23, 2018, which purportedly hides Home indicator when you’re in full screen mode, however, I just tried it, in full screen mode, after closing all apps and restarting, and the home indicator is still there no matter what I try. See below comments with hopes those will get fixed as well as they’re still sane after 7.5.2.

Previous: I’ve been a huge fan of Instantpaper for many many years, I love it, but one thing that’s always bugged me, is that there is no full justified text feature to make the margins on either side balance out like you can with Kindle, Nook, iBooks, etc. Also, the pagination feature to use iBooks like page turns on an iPhone 10 just doesn’t work properly, there’s a huge gap at the bottom of every page, while the top part of the screen and the text is way too close to the upper edge, I just need a simple fix, and maybe that will get fixed along with the lack of full justification, that would be so nice, that I would give it five stars again.

by Shadoboxer

Instapaper would’ve been perfect for me, except it won’t import any information on a Wikipedia page that’s inside a table. And there isn’t a placeholder where the table would be, so there’s no way to know that you’re missing something.

It also doesn’t show you the table of contents for Wikipedia articles. I don’t need them to be clickable links; it would just be nice to see the TOC so that you can see the layout of the article, so if you’re only wanting to read a particular section, you can find it without slowly scrolling through the whole article and reading every heading.

Most of what I was wanting Instapaper for was Wikipedia, so these issues kind of make Instapaper a no go for me. If these issues were fixed, Instapaper would be super useful.

by GrandTerr

Has many useful features.

- but you should know better how to manage notes. All the notes on one page? And they are all sorted by time added? That is a mess. Hope you fix it, my suggestion 1) is to create a tab inside an article view for notes; 2) create pages of notes for each article, though it's a worse solution.
Basically I decided to switch from pocket because of notes-highlight feature. I found your app, and it is better than pocket in many ways: design, page reading(the animation is lit), notes obviously.

Also it would be even more amazing if a user would be able to highlight text with a simple swipe, as in iBooks.

Thank you for you work, hope you'll figure out how to profit from this app. Personally I would pay for using Instapaper even without any additional features, just to pay what I'm using.

by ..Ken..

This is a great app to save online articles for reading later. With the ability to markup the text Instapaper is useful. However, now that I have a number of articles saved which I would like to be able to reference in the future with no current way to store the articles in any meaningful way, it would be a nice improvement if they added some sort of catalog system whether it was key words or even the ability to create folders, but ideally both. Overall it is worth a permanent spot on your iPhone/iPad home screen.

by White Icicle

I love this app and use it everyday, but the change in saving is super annoying. They changed it from a bar at the top to a full page screen, which makes it hard to put the saved article into a folder one-handed (which I usually am). Also while reading, when you exit Instapaper then go backup it, the placement of the article always changes. So developers you should fix that and change back the saving process to a small bar on the top of the screen instead of full screen.

by Metal14

If you're like me that scours through the internet and sees an interesting headline on an article, and ends up forgetting what the name of it was or is too lazy to bother typing it up: then Instapaper is for you! Listen Instapaper is so awesome that all I have to do is go on that said article, bookmark it through the this app extension that's preinstalled, go on Instapaper , and read your article that ALSO been pdf formatted for you. Instapaper is like a library of articles that you only care about that you saved which makes this Soooo convenient. Thanks to the redditors for the recommendation as well the developers!

by MikeK1065

I’ve used this app for years and it is absolutely indispensable for me. I subscribe to a few email newsletters that have lots of links to articles in them. Reading the newsletter and then each of the articles I want to read in a sitting is not easy. With this app I have the emails come to an address that goes TO this app and then I pull up Instapaper . I can read the newsletter and click “save” on the links I’m interested in and those get added to my reading list. Then I can set the newsletter aside and read the articles as time allows.

It also posts images of text I highlight to Twitter along with a link so I can easily share articles.

If I had any criticism it would be the pagination feature has never worked reliably for me, I often wind up with articles ending (i.e. last page) well before the actual end. Then I switch back to scrolling mode.

This is an awesome app. Indispensable.

by OneCornerstone

Ok, I’m a sucker for great typography and minimalism. I’m also an educator and appreciate readability and literature. this app is an omnibus of good reading experiences! It’s so easy to save articles for reading, to annotate, and to interact with what you read. It also has some cool uses...
1. Studying. I am taking seminary college classes and I save online articles (which are often hard to read on their sites) into this app in a specific folder for that class. Now I can read the text more easily and annotate no prob!
2. Bookmarking and curation. I’m also a writer and am on the lookout for great pieces to reference, share on social media, or inform my writing. this app is one lightweight curation machine (better than Wakelet) because it focuses on text.

Feedback to improve:
Folder nesting. Would love to be able to organize my seminary classes by folder within one main folder to save screen space.

Multiple highlighter colors.

The typography tools are spot on!! Keep it up.

by TheTruthCurator

I love Instapaper. It allows me to pull web pages from the internet and save them in pdf form as well as emails, notes, background checks, videos, case law, online news articles, archive documents, etc. It’s the most user friendly app of this kind, it’s sortable, searchable, has speed reading, and speech options for reading options, clips web ads, and costs less than lunch at a fast food restaurant. It syncs to all your devices and includes cloud storage for your articles. It’s as easy as hitting the share button on your phone or iPad. Instapaper simplifies your life.
I highly recommend.

by Thecrumandonly

I’ve had Instapaper for years but just realized how to make the best use of it. I used to load it up with articles for a long flight and read all the way to Shanghai. But now... it’ll read the articles to you so you can enjoy a long Atlantic or New Yorker piece while doing carpentry or driving. Also, the speed read feature is so simple but life changing: read an article @ 360 WPM. The words flash on the screen at a rate that forces you to concentrate; if you miss something, just scroll back and reread it. It’s like slowing down to take in the sights on a bike ride. Summed up: several elegant and clever ways to devour information. Should be required for students.

by Allyzabel

I read some articles to compare pocket vs. this app --> and still (for now) use both.
After learning about both I found the most accurate description is thus: pocket is colorful and visually satisfying, this app is a little less design and graphic focus but far outshines pocket for content focused reading and absolutely slay pockets note taking commenting and highlighting features. I prefer instapapers free version to what I would need premium for in other app. this app is far superior than Pocket in my opinion on most fronts. **only complaint is that articles with pictures don't always display images - or ever? Still exploring**

by RationalEMP

Instapaper is worth every penny. It helps me hold on to all kinds of links I may want to look at later (not just the intended longer word-based articles, for which it is completely awesome). The tools and bookmarklets allow me to save a link to stuff on the web seamlessly. I can get on with my day and bang through my RSS reader and use this app to filter out the useful stuff. Now there's no reason to waste half the day chasing down links my friends send me or show me on Facebook or Twitter. A couple clicks or taps and anything that seems interesting is in this app for later. There is so much this app integration on Instapaper store, it's ridiculous. Simple and easy and hard to explain the value until you've actually used it.

by Roeza

Wasn’t a fan of RSS until I found out about this app and how reader friendly it was. Ended up downloading Reeder 3 to manage all of my local RSS feeds, dividing feed categories by subjects. Then ended up going with this app over Pocket because again, how reader friendly and simple it’s interface is.

Now I use Reeder 3 like a spider web to collect all articles “I might be interested in”, skim through the titles on Reeder 3 THEN dish them off and way into this app through the share button on my iPhone. After I’m done skimming on Reeder 3, I mark the folders I skimmed through to “all read” and keep the best of the articles saved on this app.

THE BEST PART
I get to manage the relevant selected articles on my this app into their own folders!! MAKING SKIMMED TOPICS EVEN MORE PRECISE ON MY this app. Along with all of the annotating features this app supports. The rest of the articles that don’t make it into folders in my this app are simply archived, keeping my home folder fresh and clean for the next cycle I go through Reeder 3.

this app truly is a game changer!!!

Only thing I believe can be really helpful is if you were able to completely manage folders’ settings on the this app iOS application. That would make Instapaper truly killer!!

Regardless, keep it up guys Instapaper is fire! 🔥

by Boo Safari

I’ll start by saying this is a 5 star app - I’ve chosen 4 just to get the developer’s attention so they read this.

I think it’d be nice in the column of custom folders if there was a visual distinction indicating whether or not any unread articles are in that folder at present. You could keep this feature reserved to just the default folder symbol: if there were no articles left in the folder, it’d look like it does now. If there were unread articles in the folder, the folder symbol could show a couple pieces of fake paper in the folder, or be “filled in” with color somehow. If people use other icons for each folder then they’d be out of luck. But I think it’d be really nice to know just at a glance if you’ve already cleared a folder of unread content. At least one of the folder icons should or could be “smart.”

by DO NOT USE 67899

This is my most favorite app of all time. I read a lot of articles from news sites and blogs. Short form, long form, tech, opinion, basically everything and anything. this app is a great place for me to keep all my favorite articles that I want to read now or later without all the ads and excess. Just the message and that’s it. You can even have this app speed read the articles for you if you’re into that sort of thing, insert notes anywhere into the article, highlight a word and get a definition and/or a Wikipedia snippet right there in the article, there’s dark/light themes, text for people who have dyslexia, change the font by slider to whatever size you want, you can even copy and paste the stripped text wherever you want. this app is an app that you will appreciate so much you’ll be asking where you can donate money to keep it alive forever. It’s the ultimate readers Swiss Army knife.

by Capncuddles420

it’s like this app can’t afford a decent programmer to keep its app up to date with iOS or even weed out the bugs that have plagued it for like ever. when i set the color to white on black (dark mode), this app automatically reverts back to black on white if i leave Instapaper , even for just a few seconds. the options for dark mode within Instapaper settings are “off” or “automatic by sunset”, neither of which is just, simply, “on”. the UI element that appears when you save a link to this app from safari (the white bar that comes across the top of the screen) is now visually broken on both iPad and iPhone, since this app didn’t bother to use the iOS 13 beta testing and development period to update Instapaper for the new systems and interfaces. if you want a service that aggregates and downloads your news articles for easy access and later retrieval, or if you want to get around the ny times paywall, this app is a good choice. it may be the best choice of this type of service out there for all i know. but the fact that it can’t even minimally keep up with the rate that mobile interfaces evolve shows that the company isn’t investing enough in its users. do you need to increase the subscription cost? id pay another dollar or two a month if it means you’ll be able to keep this app up to date and finally do something about the horde of minor but annoying bugs infesting your product. (also, you need to update your macOS safari extension)