Good news, long-form reading fans: The Instapaper app for iOS—one of the grandaddies of “read it later” offerings for the iPhone and iPad—is free this week on the App Store as part of Apple’s “App of the Week” program.
For Instapaper’s developers, it’s a chance to introduce the venerable app to the reading public after a year of changes both to the app and the work done for it behind the scenes. Instapaper’s founder, Marco Arment, sold the project to Betaworks in April, citing a desire to see Instapaper grow and add new features. Indeed, the changes to the app have been dizzying in the months since.
“We’ve built a ton of improvements into Instapaper this year, including iPhone, iPad, and website redesigns, a rebuilt Android app, powerful sorting and filtering features, InstaRank, better article parsing and video support, improved dark and sepia modes, and a Chrome extension, among many others,” the developers said in an unsigned blog post last week.
In addition offering the app for free, Instapaper is also providing new users with two months of the service’s “subscription” features—including improved search, the removal of ads from the Instapaper site, and a “send to Kindle” bookmarklet that lets users send any article to their e-reader.
Instapaper typically costs $4 to download from the App Store. Its run as a free offering ends Thursday.
Author: Joel Mathis
Joel Mathis is a regular contributor to Macworld and TechHive. He lives in Philadelphia with his wife and young son.