Google is testing out a new “Read It Later” option within its Chrome Beta and Chrome Dev apps
‘Read It Later’ apps such as Instapaper or Pocket are immensely popular nowadays because we don’t always have time to just sit and read an article as it pops up in Twitter or Facebook. Google has been working on their own way for users to read articles or topics at a later time, and has introduced the feature within the Chrome Beta and Chrome Dev applications.
Whenever Google wants to test out a new feature, these two applications are where the initial testing begins, and the same rings true this time around. In order to access the new Read It Later feature, you’ll need to tap the three-dot overflow menu and select “Read it later in Chrome” if you’re using Chrome Dev. If you’re using the Chrome Beta application, everything functions the same, but the prompt reads “Keep tab in Chrome”.
Image courtesy of Android Police
There is a bit of hitch, however, if you want to use this feature within the Chrome Beta application as you’ll need to enable it. Here are the steps you need to take:
- Navigate to chrome://flags
- Scroll to “Enable read it later in app menu.”
- Toggle the drop down menu and select “Enable”
Once selected the app will restart, and you should be able to see the option to save webpages directly from within the Chrome application. Luckily, the Chrome Dev version already sees this new feature enabled, so there’s no extra tinkering that needs to be done.
I’m super excited for this functionality to be built-into Chrome, as I’ve never been a huge fan of saving to another application. As long as everything goes according to play, we can hope to see this new feature rolled out to the stable version of Chrome sometime in October.
The update is available today, so you can head over to the Play Store and download either the Chrome Dev or Chrome Beta application. Keep in mind, not all of the features that are included in these applications are ready for prime-time, so you may experience some crashing or other issues while using the app.
Download on Google Play: Chrome Dev
Download on Google Play: Chrome Beta