Beyond Books: How I Use My Kindle Paperwhite As A Read-It-Later Device
You might think of Amazon’s Kindle Paperwhite as a device exclusively for books, but for those who consume more online articles than physical ones, it can be a revolutionary read-it-later tool. After purchasing a Kindle Paperwhite during a recent Amazon sale, I discovered its potential to efficiently manage and enjoy my backlog of articles and blog posts.
Why a Kindle for Articles?
Many of us spend countless hours staring at brightly lit screens, whether it’s our laptops or phones. The Kindle’s e-paper display offers a welcome respite, providing a comfortable and less straining reading experience compared to traditional screens. Moreover, its sharp 300 PPI resolution ensures that text remains crisp and clear. The Kindle’s minimalist design and lack of a full-fledged operating system also eliminate distractions from notifications, allowing for a focused and immersive reading experience. You’re free from the tempting pull of Twitter or other apps, which can easily sidetrack you when reading on a smartphone or tablet. Finally, the Kindle’s battery life is a major advantage. Built for reading, it can last for days, even weeks, on a single charge, unlike your constantly draining smartphone.
Read It Later: Exploring Options
I’ve always relied on the Pocket app for saving interesting articles, videos, and images to read at a later time. It’s a powerful tool, offering a convenient way to organize and access saved content across all my devices. There are numerous apps designed to push content from Pocket directly to your Kindle, such as Pocket to Kindle and En2Kindle. While it seems like a straightforward solution, I encountered a significant obstacle.
These services primarily target text content, often failing to send multimedia content like videos and images stored in Pocket. Since the Kindle is optimized for text, sending extraneous media is pointless. I needed a solution that could selectively send only articles while leaving the rest of my Pocket content untouched.
Send to Kindle: A Simple Yet Effective Solution
Amazon’s Send to Kindle browser plugin for Chrome and Firefox is a game-changer. It seamlessly sends a cleaned-up version of a webpage – extracting the article’s content and discarding irrelevant elements – directly to your Kindle. My experience with this plugin was far more reliable than with the third-party services I initially tried. I especially appreciate the fact that it creates individual books for each article, rather than collating them into a single, massive book.
Implementing the plugin requires a slight adjustment to how I use Pocket. While I still utilize Pocket for multimedia content, I now exclusively save articles using the Send to Kindle plugin, streamlining my read-it-later workflow.
Bridging the Gap: Mobile Read-It-Later Solutions
So what about sending articles to your Kindle from your smartphone? Amazon offers a Send to Kindle app for Android, but unfortunately, it’s limited in functionality and doesn’t support saving articles from mobile browsers. You can send files from other apps, such as Adobe Reader, Documents to Go, and ES File Explorer, but that’s not a practical solution for saving articles directly from a web browser.
This is where Push to Kindle by FiveFilters becomes indispensable for Android users. This lightweight app leverages the Kindle Personal Document Service, allowing you to push articles to your Kindle with a single tap on the share sheet. The service also enables document emailing to your Kindle. Simply attach a PDF or Word file to an email addressed to your unique [name]@kindle.com email ID, and the document will be saved as an ebook on your Kindle. The only drawback is that this service generates an email notification for every transmission. However, you can easily mitigate this by setting up an email filter to automatically divert those messages from your inbox.
Meanwhile, the dedicated Kindle app for both iOS and Android can be used to access and read the articles you’ve sent to your Kindle. You can conveniently view the list of articles sent and manually download the ebooks for offline reading.
A Missed Opportunity: The Lack of Official Pocket-Kindle Integration
The ideal scenario would be seamless integration between Pocket and Kindle. However, I suspect this is hampered by contractual limitations due to Pocket’s official support for the rival e-reader, Kobo. While I could have opted for a Kobo instead of a Kindle, its availability in my region was scarce.
The Takeaway
While a complete Pocket-Kindle integration remains elusive, using the tips outlined above, you can effectively leverage your Kindle Paperwhite as a powerful read-it-later device. Enjoy a distraction-free, comfortable reading experience and immerse yourself in a world of articles, free from the constraints of bulky mobile devices and their ever-draining batteries.
