Recently we reported Chrome for Windows, Mac, Linux, and Chrome OS is getting the ‘Read later’ feature after iOS, Google now wants the feature to available for Chrome on Android as well. The Chromium team has begun the work to implement it on Android.
Google Chrome on iOS allows saving articles to read them later. Google has decided to bring the feature to the desktop platforms.
Currently, the feature is available behind a flag and when enabled, you can notice Read later folder on the bookmarks bar and an option in the bookmark icon to add pages to it These options are not functioning right now.
For Chrome on Android, you have to download articles to see them later, this is not intuitive. Here is how you can do that right now: visit any website, tap on the menu, and select the download icon, after that, visit downloads and filter by pages to see all saved articles.
You may not need to do this in the future as the Read later feature will be available for Chrome on all platforms including Android
In the main bug for implementing Read later on Android, the Chromium team made commit says :
“Read later: build the feature and flag for Read later on Android
This CL adds the existing read later feature and flag to android. We notice the backend of Read later may change, but these still can be reused directly.”
In case you don’t know, new Microsoft Edge based on Chromium brought Collections instead of Edge Legacy’s Reading list and Mozilla offers Pocket Service in Firefox to view stories later.
Soon the flag for Read Later will show up in the Chrome Canary of Android. The feature may not work straight away, but you can surely know what’s coming if you use and follow Canary regularly.
Update September 19, 2020: As expected, the Read Later flag is now available in the latest Chrome Canary version 87.0.4267.0 or later.
Enable Read later in Chrome on Android
- Launch Chrome browser
- Visit chrome://flags page
- Search for Read later, tap on the dropdown and select “Enabled”
- Restart the browser
As of now, the flag doing nothing when enabled. We’ll keep you updated.
What your thoughts on this? Will you use read later in Chrome on Android when available to you? Let us know in the comments below.
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Download Read It Later Beta extension with Support for Firefox 4 (Panorama)