Name: Instapaper
Rating: 4 (71 reviews)

Updating

Instapaper

Instapaper Holdings, Inc.

Released: 2008-08-21

Free 0%

Version 7.7.1

Free 0%

Version 7.7.1

Released: 2008-08-21

#71 in Top Grossing iPad Apps > News

iPhone Screenshots

iPad Screenshots

Description

Instapaper is the simplest way to save and store articles for reading: offline, on-the-go, anytime, anywhere, perfectly formatted.

Instapaper for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch provides a mobile-optimized text view that makes reading Internet content a clean and uncluttered experience. Instapaper also enhances the standard reading experience with features like text-to-speech.

Instapaper has been inducted into the iPhone and iPad Hall of Fame, received Macworld Editor's Choice Award, and has also been featured in publications including Wired, TIME, Daring Fireball, and The Verge, among others.

Core Features:

- Strip away all clutter and save the content of web pages into iOS-optimized formatting.

- Read anywhere! No internet, no problem: access your articles on airplanes, subways, elevators, or Wi-Fi-only devices away from Internet connections.

- Save to Instapaper from other iOS applications with one tap.

Additional Features:

- Control every aspect of your reading experience with a variety of font, color themes, and spacing options.

- Find that great quote you want to remember and share? Instapaper makes it easy to highlight and add notes to text in any article.

- Have your Instapaper articles narrated to you with text-to-speech. Just turn up the volume on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch and relax!

- Sort your list of articles by popularity, date, and article length.

- Folders for easy organization.

Instapaper also offers an optional Instapaper Premium subscription for $2.99/month or $29.99/year. With Instapaper Premium you receive:

- Full-text search for articles in your account

- Unlimited highlights and notes.

- Text-to-speech Playlist to seamlessly listen to multiple articles.

- Unlimited use of the speed reading feature to help you get through articles up to 3x faster.

On sign up for Instapaper Premium, payment will be charged to your Apple ID account at the confirmation of purchase. The subscription automatically renews unless it is canceled at least 24 hours before the end of the current period. Your account will be charged for renewal within 24 hours prior to the end of the current period. You can manage and cancel your subscriptions by going to your App Store account settings after purchase.

What's New in Version 7.7.1

* Instapaper Premium now available as an in-app purchase.

* Fixed page scrolling with keyboard shortcuts when pagination is enabled.

* Other minor fixes and improvements.

Seller

Name

Instapaper Holdings, Inc.

URL

http://www.instapaper.com/iphone

Information

Developer

Instapaper Holdings, Inc.

Version

7.7.1

Size

56.2 MB

Game Center

VPP Device Licensing

Yes

Rating

Rated: 4+

Compatibility

iOS 10.0 or later

Devices

iPad mini 3 (Cellular), iPad Air, iPhone 7, iPhone 8, iPhone 6s, iPhone XS, iPhone XS Max, iPhone SE, iPhone X, iPhone 6s Plus, iPad Pro (11-inch), iPad (6th generation) Wi-Fi, iPad Pro (11-inch) Wi-Fi + Cellular, iPad Pro 12.9-inch (2nd generation), iPad Pro 12.9-inch (3rd generation) Wi-Fi + Cellular, iPad (5th Generation) Wi-Fi, iPad mini Retina, iPad Air (Cellular), iPad Air (3rd generation) Wi-Fi + Cellular, iPhone 6, iPad mini 4, iPad Air 2, iPad Air (3rd generation), iPhone 5s, iPad Pro (10.5-inch), iPhone XR, iPad Pro 12.9-inch (3rd generation), iPhone 7 Plus, iPhone 6 Plus, iPhone 8 Plus, iPad Air 2 (Cellular), iPad mini 3, iPad mini Retina (Cellular), iPad mini 4 (Cellular), iPad Pro, iPad Pro 12.9-inch (2nd generation) Wi-Fi + Cellular, iPad mini (5th Generation) Wi-Fi + Cellular, iPad Pro (10.5-inch) Wi-Fi + Cellular, iPhone 11 Pro Max, iPod touch (7th generation), iPad mini (5th Generation), iPad Pro (9.7-inch) (Cellular), iPod touch (6th Generation), iPad Pro (Cellular), iPad (6th generation) Wi-Fi + Cellular, iPad Pro (9.7-inch), iPhone 11 Pro, iPhone 11, iPad (5th Generation) Wi-Fi + Cellular, iPod touch SeventhGen, iPad mini (Wi-Fi)

Languages

English, Chinese, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Turkish

App Store: Customer Ratings

Ratings & Reviews

4.0 of 5 (71 Ratings)

App Store: Customer Reviews

2019-06-19

Rarely updated, space hog, not worth the price

If this was free, or even a one time charge, I’d be much more forgiving of this app. If you’re going to charge people monthly the app should be getting better all the time. This loads slow, takes up tons of space, and I can’t think of one advanced feature that I use. This needs to get better.

2019-06-12

Scrolling freezes

When I try to read an article scrolling constantly freezes I have to restart the app to get it to work for a few more minutes before it starts freezing again.

2019-06-10

needs in-article “find on page” function

i understand that searching all of one’s instapaper library for key words is a function that can reasonably be reserved for premium users. but when you have an article open, especially a long or reference article, it is really crippling not to be able to search for key words in order to jump quickly to known points in the text. please add the function. i could give it five stars if it just had that.

2019-05-28

Would leave pocket, but instapaper Needs messages integration

Instapaper is a better app than pocket and I would love to use it, but without the app available for integration in iOS messages it’s about to be another year of pocket premium for me.

2019-05-08

Excellent.....almost

The notes section needs an infinitely better organization system. It makes absolutely no sense right now to have every single highlight I make stored as a note. This app is how I effectively annotate everything I read and that note section is effectively unusable and not searchable and makes learning/highlighting useless for the most part. Fix this please!! Amazing 5/5 app otherwise honestly.

2019-04-19

My reliable reading tool

I’ve been reading almost everything in Instapaper for a decade. Offers enough typographic control that I can read comfortably. Responsive developers. Happy to pay for these features.

2019-04-18

Subscription price is absurd

I've paid full price for this app repeatedly in the past, and while I'm not adverse to subscriptions in general, the price for this is completely absurd given the other options out there.

2019-04-06

Adding Friend Feature Broken

Please, please fix this for me. It's been broken for months. I have two people, who are both in my contacts and that I am friends with on Facebook, that instapaper refuses to find after it searches either of those places for people to add. Helppppp.

2019-03-03

Solid app!

Instapaper is a great way to read articles, blogs - basically anything - online.

The app is clean and simple - hop on Safari and head to any blog/journal/news site, tap on the Share button, and select Instapaper. The content will then instantly download and show up within the app with adjustable font and sizing - ad-free.

Definitely a good choice if you do a lot of reading on your device.

2019-03-02

Premium question

can highlights be exported, as in the Kindle app? if so, i’m ready to upgrade.

2019-02-28

No longer able to download article after recent update

I used Instapaper to download longer articles (e.g. from fc2 blogs) for later reading and the app worked fine. After the recent update, it no longer works. I get “not available for downloading” almost every time I try to download an article.

Update: Now it works fine again!

2019-02-27

Little improvement

This so needs a lot of work but since adding highlights there has been little improvement.

Update: not sure why I am paying for a subscription when the only development I see seems to be to make it easier to purchase a subscription?

2019-02-27

Bait, and bait again

I will never forgive them for demanding an update fee after I purchased their app. Caveat emptor, suckers.

2019-02-26

The Best

Absolutely one of the best apps I’ve ever had. Does exactly what it purports to do and does it well. Good job!

2019-02-15

Very nice

Way more better and friendly than Pocket. The only thing lacking is truly ability to open source itself. In very rare cases import is not complete (pictures missing, etc).

Other then that, it's awesome.

2019-01-07

If only we could have the choice of background and font color

Hi Instapaper team,

Thank you for giving us such a great app. For an avid reader such as myself, it’s ideal except for one crucial feature, that is very much needed: the ability to read on grey background with black fonts.

You see, I read a lot on my phone, and I have tested every single app on the appstore. No kidding! Sadly, not a single read-it-later app offers the ability to customize background/font color, thus limiting us with the very poor choices of yellow background, or two other, even useless ones. Who ever reads with white fonts? The black font has been used for centuries for reading, and there’s nothing that will ever replace it in this lifetime.

Therefore, to achieve less fatigue for my eyes, I first have to select grey background-white font combo, then revert the color scheme in the settings on my iPhone X, and even then, it gives me light grey background and somewhat dark grey blackish font at best. Not great.

While it is true that FBReader and Bluefire Reader do allow for a custom background, and font colors, exporting web articles is a hassle, requiring exprting, formatting, etc.

If you implement this feature, it would make for a truly great reading experience. I’m surprised that there is not a single read - it - later app that offers it, while a wealth of dedicated free ebook reading apps already give users full control over reading experience but no ability to add website articles.

Think about it: what better feature could you possibly ever implement for a better reading experience in the reading app?

Giving it only 3 stars for now since in its current form, I don’t see much value as compared to Safari’s built-in reading mode. My primary goal is to read news and articles in clean, comfortable manner, not archive them, etc. I believe they are archived and searchable just fine on their respective websites.

2019-01-02

Very Simple Review.

This is a perfect application.

2019-01-01

Recent version freezes on images

The latest Instapaper has a major bug that causes the app to become totally unresponsive when some images display split across pagination breaks in iBook style display. Only solution is to force quit and hope the image displays differently the next time, but often it freezes again at exactly the same place.

2018-12-29

Love the Update

The addition of keyboard shortcuts is huge for me. Love this ability to navigate the app with the keyboard and hope to see more apps take this approach. This alone has encouraged me to switch from Pocket back to Instapaper.

2018-12-07

Almost there

As of version 7.7, almost everything about Instapaper has been modernized into an app I want to subscribe to and support for a very long time. There’s only one more issue for me, but it’s significant, and it’s been an issue as long as I can remember: On iPad, the text column width setting fixes the size of the *margins* instead of fixing the width of the text. So when you get it perfect in landscape mode, it’s way too narrow in portrait mode, and when it’s right in portrait mode, it’s too wide in landscape. In the iPad Pro era, it’s very common for me to read in either orientation, and having to adjust the settings every time is annoying. Once this is fixed, there will be nothing about Instapaper I don’t love unconditionally.

2018-12-07

Great reading experience

Instapaper has a new vision and a new team directing their future. I love the current set of features and the free app works great. I’m one to want to pay for services I use and Instapaper is adding features for paid users. Keep up the great work!

One improvement is that Safari is the default browser. I’d like to see Chrome as an option for Instapaper to view articles.

I’ve used the competition for years and Pocket is great, but Instapaper is the underdog and I hope folks join me in paying for the product in 2019.

2018-12-06

My Most Used App

I’ve used Instapaper 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 Instapaper I have the emails come to an address that goes TO INSTAPAPER and then I pull up the app. 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.

2018-11-27

Love love LOVE Instapaper

... and just bought a year of premium because in addition to being a wonderful tool for information/ content junkies like me, I want to support the new/original owners so they can prosper. and continue to provide such a great service.

2018-11-24

One Minor Adjustment

The Application Is Beautiful Like All Apple Software Programs But For The Purposes Of Notation A Per Article Isolation Of Notation Storage Would Be Most Intuitive Of An Adjustment And Would Advance Your Interface To Derive A Therapeutic Impact That Supports Cognitive Development.

2018-11-21

The wrong path for this app

Forcing users to go to a website to pay a subscription just to get highlights to work? That is unacceptable, especially to a user who has paid for this app time and again for years. Integrate with Apple’s payment system or discontinue this app. It is really disappointing to see it hit rock bottom like this. I hope the developers see the error of their ways and get back to the basics. If they are annoyed at Apple’s cut of the payment transaction, then raise prices. Don’t force people to run around to pay for basic features when we just want to read.

2018-11-21

Best app I’ve ever downloaded

If you’re into reading or expanding your knowledge, Instapaper is a must-have service. The team behind it is also a small, but amazing crew of dedicated folks.

2018-11-18

Still no iPad Pro Update

I’m disappointed that the app hasn’t yet been updated for iPad Pro. I want Instapaper to fill every pixel of the glorious screen, including hiding the menu bar. For now we have black bars and bleeding text along the bottom when in portrait orientation.

Also, on iPhone and iPad, there is too much space along the bottom to accommodate the unnecessary row of dots and the home button line indicator thingy. Fill the screen, please. Make it beautiful.

2018-11-15

Apple Pencil Highlight Support

The app works pretty well. I’ve been using it for years. Going back and forth between paid and not paid is a hassle, but whatever it’s cheap and only a few seconds of my time. But I wish I could highlight with the Apple Pencil. That’d be a killer feature for me. I find the highlighting process cumbersome and distracting from the reading.

2018-11-14

Wow an app that does nothing!

Just discovered this app because it came highly recommended for sending articles to Kindle. Found out that they just recently put that and all the rest of the app’s functionality behind a subscription paywall. If there was a one-time price for the app to function, I’d consider it but I’m not going to subscribe to every app I download just to try it out. This ain’t Adobe Creative Suite, it’s just a text formatter. Had this app for all of 10 minutes. Deleted.

2018-11-11

Switcharoo

Took away features :(

2018-11-09

Notifications

Notifications (badges) aren't working IOS 12.1 On my iPhone 8, iPhone SE & iPad.

2018-11-07

Essential app, but not perfect

There have been many issues over the years, so resolved. Now the problem is your archive gets synced automatically even if you set sync to “manually.” Thanks.

2018-11-06

Disappointed paid past subscriber

Agree with others. I was a paid subscriber early in the products history then it went free. Now I why. To hook you into the product and move this pricing scheme. It’s a great product but I feel new developers disrespected my loyalty. They could have offered a discount off the first year to previous premium users to show appreciation. Since I have to pay no reason not look for other products.

2018-10-21

You can’t keep changing

You can not expect a customer for 7 years to like paying for anything more than once. You can’t expect a customer to allow changing in subscriptions every time you turn around to be a reason for staying. I’ve been with Instapaper and had others talked into buying it even though they could have went the free route back then. Now the developers turn out to be like all the other businesses like Evernote and everyone to try and make this a 401k app.

It’s been fun but I got to goooo.

2018-10-18

Mostly Love

I’ve used Instapaper for as long as I’ve had an iPhone. I love it aside from a few minor things. First, I wish the visual design were a little more inspiring. It’s fine, but doesn’t quite live up to Readability (R.I.P.) and their suite of H&FJ fonts. Second, I wish the parser did a better job of picking up media of all types. If an article I’m reading contains a YouTube video or tweet inline, I want to see it. More and more, I find myself having to resort to the web view to get the full story. A couple other super minor things: I’d like to see pull quotes get treated correctly by the parser, and I’d like a pure black mode for OLED screens. But aside from that, it’s all love. Keep up the great work!

2018-10-16

Latest update STILL didn’t fix the voice issue!!!

What are y’all doing?!?

I paid for premium specially for the audio playlists. The user selected accessibility voice had worked forever but suddenly today it reverted to Samantha and I can’t change it. I don’t want Samantha, I use Susan. Give me the ability to choose what I want.

Remind me why on earth I paid $29 for this BS app, only to immediately have the developers screw up its most useful feature and STILL not fix it despite having another update?

Meanwhile, Pocket now has playlists itself (for free!) and a dramatically better text to voice feature that sounds like a real human!

I want a refund. How do I get one?

2018-10-12

Great app

Instapaper is an important tool for me. I use it to read a ton of articles for my work. Their support is great too. Every time I report a bug they fix it as soon as they can.

2018-10-11

No warning for changes

I’m really disappointed in this App. 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 the App 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 the App back to what it was before, otherwise you would lose another customer to your competitors.

2018-10-08

Paid for this so many times

I’ve used Instapaper for years. I bought the first paid version and have subscribed in the past. Now, the developer who I used to highly respect sold the app 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 Instapaper 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 Instapaper, 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 this app 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 the app 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.

2018-10-07

Saving

Have yet figured out how to save an article. This app headed for Dead App Cemetery.

2018-10-04

Unexpected change without warning

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 the App 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.

2018-10-03

Great app for saving, searching, and sharing content

Top features I love about Instapaper:

1. Article full text search (Premium-only)

2. iOS integration with Safari/News apps

3. Ability to save URLs for paywalled content

4. Offline reading (for occasional flying)

An invaluable companion when you think “I read an article about that”, and what to quote or share it.

2018-09-28

Amazing

Best app ever ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

2018-09-27

Was good until recent update

I’ve used this for probably 2 years and liked it. Recently the developers came out with some kind of paid version and severely crippled the free version, which now limits the number of highlights I can make a month. WTH? I’m uninstalling and looking elsewhere for my reading app.

2018-09-27

Subscription fee?

Really a sub fee for a copy and paste bot?

2018-09-26

Disappointed After Upgrading to Premium

I upgraded to premium because I wanted to try the playlist feature because reading can be difficult for someone like me with ADHD and I can focus better on audio content. However, the voice that Instapaper reads with is the outdated Mac voice called Fred, which is much harder to comprehend due to it’s robotic voice.

If I slide two fingers down from my iPhone screen, it will read anything on the screen and by default it uses the more natural sounding Siri voice.

I wish the developers could add an option to choose which voice to read the articles aloud in Instapaper.

2018-09-25

Multilingual Dictionary !

I am a Korean native speaker using Instapaper for English studies. It is very useful but the dictionary in the app only supports English Wikipedia dictionary. It could be a great feature if the app has multilingual dictionaries for English learners.

2018-09-25

Version 7.3 made this a great app - no more

Moving features to the “new” premium version after the same features were made part of the app in version 7.3 especially with no notice in the release notes is a low blow to users. At one time this was the best there was - there are options that are every bit as good as Instapaper (that don’t mislead their user base)

2018-09-25

Far superior to Pocket®

Remembers the article and place of the last thing you were reading with the app, and reopens it regardless of whether its memory has been aggressively garbage-collected by iOS. (Pocket forgets what you were reading and shows you the home screen if you, e.g., don’t open it for awhile)

Less expensive premium version

Better aesthetic rendering

No adverts, even in free version

Highlights are automatically aggregated without having to clumsily “share to profile” which isn’t even consistently available on Pocket frontends

“Random article” JavaScript can load article in reading view on desktop browsers (haven’t found a way to open a random article with Pocket® in its native view).

More minimalist yet effective browser plugins

Instapaper

iPhone Screenshots

iPad Screenshots

Description

What's New in Version 7.7.1

Seller

Name

URL

Information

Developer

Categories

Version

Size

Game Center

VPP Device Licensing

Rating

Compatibility

Devices

Languages

App Store: Customer Ratings

Ratings & Reviews

Rarely updated, space hog, not worth the price

Scrolling freezes

needs in-article “find on page” function

Would leave pocket, but instapaper Needs messages integration

Excellent.....almost

My reliable reading tool

Subscription price is absurd

Adding Friend Feature Broken

Solid app!

Premium question

No longer able to download article after recent update

Little improvement

Bait, and bait again

The Best

Very nice

If only we could have the choice of background and font color

Very Simple Review.

Recent version freezes on images

Love the Update

Almost there

Great reading experience

My Most Used App

Love love LOVE Instapaper

One Minor Adjustment

The wrong path for this app

Best app I’ve ever downloaded

Still no iPad Pro Update

Apple Pencil Highlight Support

Wow an app that does nothing!

Switcharoo

Notifications

Essential app, but not perfect

Disappointed paid past subscriber

You can’t keep changing

Mostly Love

Latest update STILL didn’t fix the voice issue!!!

Great app

No warning for changes

Paid for this so many times

Saving

Unexpected change without warning

Great app for saving, searching, and sharing content

Amazing

Was good until recent update

Subscription fee?

Disappointed After Upgrading to Premium

Multilingual Dictionary !

Version 7.3 made this a great app - no more

Far superior to Pocket®