Instapaper gets faster than ever in latest update

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Reading articles in Instapaper just got faster than ever. Photo: Instapaper
Reading articles in Instapaper just got faster than ever. Photo: Instapaper

If you haven’t used Instapaper for awhile, it might be time to dig the app out again. It’s just received a great new update to version 6.2, adding some slick features like speed reading, the ability to tweet screenshots of text, and more.

Pushed live today by the dev team at Betaworks, the Instaper 6.2’s speed reading function allows users to more quickly go through their articles.

It uses a technique based on rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP), showing you one word a time at the speed of your choosing. This method of speed reading is meant to help you eliminate subvocalization, that voice in the back of your mind repeating words as you read them, and reduce time lost scanning between words. The result is a more focused, faster reading experience, and it even tracks how much time you save reading any given article.

Another new feature is Instant Sync. By enabling the feature in the settins, Instapaper will receive silent push notifications when you save a new article, which allows the iOS app to download the new content immediately.

My favorite new feature of Instapaper, though, is tweet shots. You know how sometimes you want to share a particularly profound snatch of an article on Twitter, only for it to not fit within 140 characters? With Tweet Shots, Instagram will push a screenshot of the text in question to Twitter as an image, which anyone can click on to read.

It’s pretty snazzy, and I’m not the only one who thinks so. Marco Arment, the original developer of Instapaper and current programmer behind the Castro podcasting app, posted on his blog:

Another solid Instapaper update from Betaworks. I definitely found the right buyer.

Source: Instapaper

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