How To Use Reading List App Effectively on Windows 8.1

7

I’m a big fan of Instapaper. The creation and the result of this product provides a perfect opportunity for reading online articles at a later time, or even better, reading offline. This type of service has grown over the years. Copy-cats are all over the place, with each having its strength and competing selling features. Some do better formatting, while other offering more platform supports.

In Windows 8.1, Microsoft introduced a new Windows 8 app, called Reading List, that comes out of the box since Windows 8.1 preview. What it does is essentially, filling the gap for the lack of native support for reading articles you are interested at a later stage. Much like a bookmark organizer, Reading List lets you save the articles you are interested and want to read at a later time.

How to use Reading List App

In Windows 8.1, with IE 11, you can swipe right to bring up the charm bar on the right, and tap to Share > Reading List

2013 07 11 0015 thumb - How To Use Reading List App Effectively on Windows 8.1

The share option brings a list of relevant apps that support this “sharing” feature. Reading List is one of them. Tapping Reading List pops up the title of the current article. You need to tap the little “mailing” icon again to add the article into Reading List.

2013 07 11 0017 thumb - How To Use Reading List App Effectively on Windows 8.1

Once you have articles added to the Reading List, you will be able to see it by going to the app itself or have the app open side by side.

2013 07 11 0019 thumb - How To Use Reading List App Effectively on Windows 8.1

The list is organized in reversed chronological order, meaning the newest articles is always at the top. You can’t organize it, but you can search within the list. The search actually does a quite good job at live search articles.

2013 07 11 0023 thumb - How To Use Reading List App Effectively on Windows 8.1

Head over to the Reading List app itself, you can view all the bookmarks. However, in order to view the articles you’ve saved, you need to be online. This app doesn’t support offline reading capability.

2013 07 11 0030 thumb - How To Use Reading List App Effectively on Windows 8.1

You can’t do much here except deleting a bookmark from here and there. No need to worry If you accidentally deleted a link. You can view and retrieve them from the recently deleted links which stores all the links saved in the last 60 days.

2013 07 11 0030 001 thumb - How To Use Reading List App Effectively on Windows 8.1

If this is not enough, you can go to the PC settings > Sync settings to enable SkyDrive syncing for App data. This will allow you to have a seamless experience when switching to another Windows 8.1 device.

Give it a try if you are the type of person who likes to consume news. At this stage of development, Reading List does indeed filled a void of this type of app, but with the limited feature, I wonder for how long this can be any more relevant.

7 COMMENTS

  1. When I click “share” there is no “reading list” to click on to save anything. I have the app elsewhere. How do I get it to show up in the “share” list?

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here