Readability

January 18, 2018 11:08 AM

I used to use Readability to send Longreads to my Kindle. It was absolutely seamless, one click, no effort. I hit "send to Kindle" and the article showed up--in a readable format--on my Kindle. My search-engine searching is not turning up an alternative that has this functionality. Any suggestions?

Just to re-iterate: I am looking for a one-step no intervention from me (beyond entering my Kindle email address) browser extension that will send long reads (or other long form articles) from the internet to my Kindle for reading on airplanes and the bus.

If there is no such thing, are there absolutely dead simple ways of doing this on my own? DRAG AND DROP dead simple. Your least tech-savvy most-easily-panicked-by-the-computer friend simple.

posted by crush to Technology (8 answers total)

Instapaper purports to have this capability, but I personally haven't tried it.
posted by 1970s Antihero at 11:14 AM on January 18, 2018

Best answer: I have used both Push to Kindle and Amazon's own Send to Kindle and they both work well.
posted by vacapinta at 11:20 AM on January 18, 2018

Best answer: Seconding "Send to Kindle". (You don't even need to remember your kindle email as it's by Amazon for this one.)
posted by typecloud at 11:21 AM on January 18, 2018 [1 favorite]

Best answer: I use Send to Kindle too and overall like it, but have found it sometimes doesn't capture the whole article (not sure if some images or ads make it look like the end of the article).

Luckily, it has a Preview and Send option so you can make sure it all got captured before sending to your Kindle and if it didn't, you can also copy and 'send' instead. Helpful if you just want part of the text captured too.
posted by Twicketface at 11:31 AM on January 18, 2018 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: I had no idea Amazon had its own version! I'll try that first. Thanks!

(Apparently I have an Instapaper account but have never used it which makes me wonder if I could not make it work)
posted by crush at 11:46 AM on January 18, 2018

I use Send to Kindle all the time and it's so great. One caveat: if you have an older Kindle (as I do) that automatically connects to a (free) cellular network to download stuff from Amazon when you don't have wifi, be aware that this will not work for the Send to Kindle docs. You will need to be on wifi for that.
posted by BlahLaLa at 1:02 PM on January 18, 2018

Mercury Reader is another option - like Readability, it'll show you a readable format in your browser, and it will also send it to kindle if you set it up in the options. In fact I think it was developed by the same people who did Readability.
posted by AFABulous at 5:33 PM on January 18, 2018 [1 favorite]

One thing to note about Instapaper - there's also an option to have it automatically send you a digest of your articles on a schedule. I get mine sent to my Kindle once a week, but only if there's more than 5 in the queue. It's great, it's like a little weekend paper that I make myself.
posted by Happy Dave at 12:09 PM on January 23, 2018