Goodbye, Instapaper: This is why Chrome's secret free reader won me over

Published Oct 4, 2026, 8:00 AM EDT I am an author and features writer at Android Police. I primarily writes guides, how-tos, and roundups on the latest smartphone apps and features for Android Police since joining the team in early 2022. While my work often diversifies depending on the topic, you'll often find me writing about the newest entertainment or hidden utility Android apps or discussing my paranoia about digital privacy and poor smartphone practices. I will occasionally dabble in Samsung's latest features in One UI. On the games side, my area of expertise is in action RPGs and gacha games, but I will play and study the occasional competitive shooter. But most of all, my appetite for new stories still goes unquenched — as shown with my personal love for the Trails series. Before joining Android Police, I studied chemistry and graduated with an honors specialization in Chemistry in 2016, leading me to spend many hours toiling around the lab as an undergraduate. Eventually, all those hours spent at the lab led me to develop my analytical mindset. So now, if you give me a problem, I will relentlessly tackle it to find a solution. My favorite pastime as a student was always writing reports, presentations, tutorials, and literature reviews, which guided me into completing a graduate certificate in technical writing in 2019. Thanks to my current role with Android Police, I learned to appreciate user security and privacy, leading me into studying Cyber Security. My first Android phone was the Samsung Galaxy Note II in 2012, which gave me a taste of how a small piece of powerful hardware can open up endless opportunities for my favorite hobbies. Though if you ask about my purchasing regrets, I will always say missing out on the Google Nexus still stings to this very day. I've also been a gamer for over 20 years, starting with Super Mario Bros. on the NES. Thanks to those early influences, I now own over 15 devices for gaming, ranging from handhelds to consoles. Nowadays, you'll find me studying spreadsheets and assembling data to theorycraft new teams and builds for Genshin Impact, Honkai: Star Rail, Wuthering Waves, and Zenless Zone Zero. You'll also see me digging deeper to uncover the truth behind AI as a field: which part is actually useful, or it just a bunch of bloat being sold with your phone? In the last six months, I've been cleaning up and deep-sleeping redundant apps on my phone. One of these apps is Instapaper. I like using reader apps to keep my eyes from squinting when viewing up close; it's been a great experience. Lately, I have had some problems with Instapaper that have led me away from it — archiving web pages hasn't been as instantaneous or smooth. That's when I started gravitating toward immediate options on my trusty Android phone — Chrome's built-in reading mode. Instapaper and Chrome's reading mode remove distractions No digital clutter on my favorite web pages I don't have to worry about ads, video embeds, and random pop-ups getting in the way of reading. Apps like Instapaper, Readwise, and Raindropfunction similarly. They strip web pages down to display only the core text and images. These apps let you bookmark content to read or listen to later. Plus, if you use a dedicated e-reader or read on Kindle, you can send saved articles to those devices (from Instapaper). Then, my absolute favorite is having text-to-speech playlists (happy this became free) so I can still enjoy consuming content without gluing my eyes to a screen. All was well and good with Instapaper until I found myself using it less and less due to its performance. Some websites are trickier to parse because of heavy JavaScript use, but the longer it takes to build my reading library, the less patient I get. I thought to myself. I already love Chrome's built-in reading mode; it doesn't feel sluggish, and I can tab-hop between websites while toggling reading mode on and off on my phone — if a website doesn't load properly, I don't use reading mode. To access Chrome reading mode, open any website, tap the three-dot icon in the upper-right corner, and select Show Reading Mode. I also don't just use it for reading; I use it for research. While I love staying up to date on the latest happenings from Samsung, Google, and Apple, I also like to pin helpful articles to my tab groups. Sometimes, even then, my reading becomes more like exploring — I go from web page to web page, opening new links within them. Ideally, I would prefer being immersed, not having to go back and forth between apps to read uncluttered text. It also helps that I am more fond of Chrome's font customization, simply because it's simpler. I can make the text bigger when I want to lie down and relax without holding my phone close to my face, and I can also change the style and background color without ruining the web page. Instapaper does a pretty good job with its stylization options, but I don't use some of the extra options, like Justify text and Width, inside the app. A big reason I am moving on from Instapaper is that I am much more of a chaotic reader than I used to be. I don't see myself spending time curating a digital library of web pages like I may have a year ago, when I was a lot more active with the app. So it's not like Instapaper is a bad app; it's still really good — just my approach has changed. Chrome's reading mode can 'sort of' be used offline You just need to plan ahead of time Credit: Lucas Gouveia / Android Police One concern about switching from Instapaper to Chrome's built-in reading mode is using it offline. This upcoming weekend, I'm going to lose power, and I like spending weekends catching up on major news stories. My weekend routine is to wake up and spend the day reading online tech and gaming news while enjoying a cup of tea. That's why I want to have offline access. Instapaper handles this easily, since you only need to connect to the app initially to sync your content. Anything saved in the app can be accessed offline. Chrome's reading mode isn't as smooth; you need to keep articles locally in the cache or save them to your reading list. I save mine to the reading list instead of relying on leaving them open. You need to open the tab when you're online, tap the Three-dot icon, and tap the Star to bookmark it. Then I tap Bookmarks from the more menu (the menu that opens from the three-dot icon). To manage bookmarks for offline reading, I tap the three-dot icon next to it and choose Move to > Reading list. From there, you can open them in a tab and use Chrome's reading mode. You can also download the article, but you lose the reading mode perks. Downloading the full web page is more reliable for offline use, but for now, since I don't normally lose power at home (I have mobile data), using the reading list is totally fine (I prefer the organization like Instapaper has). Instapaper's offline viewing is more straightforward, since every time you share it to the app, it saves it as an offline version. It's not a feature I rely on often, meaning I am not too worried about the trade-offs from Chrome's reading mode for offline use. But if I find myself without a network too often, that's when Instapaper makes an active return to my phone and routine. Chrome's reading mode and Instapaper are great for reading web pages. If you're rocking a tablet or a bigger phone, you might want to consider a solid free e-book reader app for Android and an e-reader, mainly because these apps offer more eye-comfort options than a standard reading mode app does. Then, when you run out of content to read, check out Libby. It lets you borrow reading materials from your local library — completely free.