Pocket is shutting down, which left Kobo devices without their best feature—the ability to sync your online reading list to your dedicated reading device. Not anymore: a new integration for Instapaper brings back the ability to read saved articles.
I couldn’t be happier with this development. I used the Pocket integration constantly. I love reading longform internet articles on my Kobo, away from glowing screens and notifications.
And the Instapaper integration works exactly the way the Pocket integration did, just with a different backend. To get started you’ll need to sign up for Instapaper, assuming you haven’t already. You might also want to migrate your reading list. After that, you just need to update your Kobo, head to the More section of the device, and tap My articles (you’ll note that the Pocket icon has been replaced with an Instapaper one). You’ll be talked through logging into Instapaper, then your reading list will download.
Credit: Justin Pot
The reading list is just a simple list of articles; you can filter to your current list, your liked articles, or your complete archive. Tap any article to start reading.
Credit: Justin Pot
You can archive or delete articles and they’ll also be deleted in Instapaper.
What do you think so far?
Like I said: The Instapaper integration works exactly how the Pocket integration feature did. If you did most of your Pocket reading on Kobo, I’m not sure that you’ll even notice the difference after setting things up.
There is room for improvement, though. It would be nice if I could highlight things on my Kobo and review those highlights in Instapaper—I also wished for that feature back in the Pocket days. But the main feature—the ability to read your articles and do basic organizational tasks—works well.
The Kobo update including the Instapaper integration is available for “all supported eReaders,” according to Kobo, meaning if you still get software updates for your device you should get this feature. My personal e-reader is a Kobo Touch, which came out in 2011, and it got the update. I wish more companies added new features to 14-year-old devices.
