ReadNow Brings Instapaper & Read-It-Later To A Sleek Mac Interface [Mac 10.6+]

You can’t always read things you find online straight away. Sometimes you see great links in Twitter only to remember that you really should finish your work for the day before you start reading those articles. This is why so many of us use services like Instapaper and Read-It-Later – we love to get home and just cruise through all the interesting stuff we didn’t have time to read before.

But if anything could make these delayed reading services just a tiny bit better, it’s the thought of accessing those articles via a native Mac application. With a native app, there’s no need to log in when you use it and it looks great on your Mac. Thankfully, there is now such an app called ReadNow. We thought you might be interested, so here’s the details.

Why Get ReadNow?

This application is for you if you’re a Mac user who loves native applications, uses Read-It-Later or Instapaper to store articles for later reading, doesn’t want to log in repeatedly and wouldn’t mind a menu bar icon for easy access. To get an account for Read-It-Later or Instapaper, sign up directly with the service you prefer. Instapaper users will need to have a subscription with Instapaper in order for ReadNow to work.

You can use the ReadNow application for both parts of the reading later process — easily adding articles via the application or reading them in the minimalist view later. As well as opening the articles for reading, you can also move, archive and edit the articles, depending on which service you choose.

The pane for reading the articles is a clutter-free minimalist design, ensuring you read without the distractions of regular online articles. The article list comes in three different themes: light grey, yellow and dark grey.

ReadNow runs on Mac OS X 10.6+, costs US$3.99 from the Mac Appstore and is also available via the ReadNow website.

Using ReadNow

It’s so easy to use ReadNow. The best feature is being able to add a new article by a number of useful and easy methods:

• Using a keyboard shortcut to add the URL of your browser’s current tab to ReadNow.
• Dragging a URL from your browser directly on to the ReadNow icon in the menu bar.
• Copying a URL to the pasteboard and add it to ReadNow using a keyboard shortcut.
• You can also use the Read-It-Later or Instapaper web interface, bookmarklets, scripts and browser extensions to add articles during the day at work, then read articles later in ReadNow.

Arrow keys can be used to navigate the articles and there’s a keyboard shortcut to launch ReadNow.

ReadNow can also allow you to save the text and images of each article for offline reading.

You can choose whether to archive your articles automatically or manually. Articles can also be tagged and “liked” for future access easily using ReadNow.

Do you prefer to use Read-It-Later or Instapaper? Will you be giving ReadNow a try? Why or why not? Let us know in the comments!