Supercharge your Pocket usage with Android, Chrome and IFTTT

Pocket is one of my favourite Android apps. It?s cross-platform for mobile, has extensions for several web browsers and also has a desktop app for Mac.?It?s free, so if you haven?t tried it yet it?s certainly worth doing so.

In its most basic form, Pocket is an app that lets you save content for reading later, either offline or online. However, there are several other great uses for it that are simple to set up. In this article I?ll mainly look at ways to improve your Pocket experience using with Chrome and Android, but also include some tips that are applicable to all Pocket users.

Pocket for Android

Thanks to Android?s sharing intents, adding items to Pocket from any browser is simple. The developers of Pocket have been clever in naming the sharing intent as ?Add to Pocket?, causing it to appear at the top of the list when using the stock sharing options.This is great, but using Dolphin Browser can make the process even more efficient.

Dolphin Browser has many extensions that can be installed for it. Once installed, these extensions can be accessed with a swipe inwards from the right-hand-side of the screen. I find it much quicker to swipe to the right in Dolphin and tap the Pocket extension than going to Share > Add to Pocket in other browsers. The other nice thing about the Dolphin extension is that it lets you immediately add tags to saved items. This isn?t possible with the standard sharing intent, which means you either need to switch to the Pocket app to add a tag, or do it at a later date (and possibly forget).

It?s not worth switching to Dolphin purely for this feature unless you?re a Pocket power user, but certainly something worth considering when you?re picking a web browser for Android.

Pocket for Chrome (Desktop)

Install the Pocket?browser extension?and?the Chrome app. The extension enables you to click the Pocket icon to bookmark a page, but installing the Chrome app adds a Pocket button to other services, such as Google Reader (hopefully Feedly soon instead) and Twitter. It will also add shortcuts to some news aggregators such as Reddit and Hacker News, which saves you from having to click into an article and then send it to Pocket with the extension/keyboard shortcut.

Another nice extension for Chrome is PickPocket. Clicking the PickPocket icon will show a pop-up of your unread icons and there?s also an option to open all unread items in new tabs (not advisable if you?re unread count stretches into double figures). The same can be achieved by adding a bookmarklet for ?getpocket.com?, but I find this to be a bit temperamental in recognising that I am logged in to Pocket.

Keyboard shortcuts -

When viewing a web page in Chrome, hit CMD + Shift + P (Mac) or Cntrl + Shift + P (Windows) to add the page to Pocket.

Pocket Channel in IFTTT

Use?IFTTT triggers?to organise content: automatically share saved pages on social media, archive them in cloud storage services or send items starred in Google Reader (or Feedly) straight to Pocket.

I use Pocket as a bookmarking service, so it can be easy to lose track of items that have simply been saved for ?read it later? rather than archival purposes. I therefore have an IFTTT recipe to add a reminder to Google Calendar if a Pocket item is tagged with ?must read?.

Use Pocket to strip ads & simplify web pages.

Not only can Pocket be used as a ?Save For Later?/bookmarking tool, but it?s also a great way to simplify web pages, stripping adverts in the process and creating easy-to-read text. If I come to a web page on my phone that does not have a mobile/responsive design, I can simply add the page to Pocket and read it there in an optimised view. Furthermore, this strips adverts?and converts those post that are annoyingly paginated into one big body of text. Within Pocket you can switch between ?Article (simplified) View? and ?Web View?, so if you are reading an article in Pocket and want to leave a comment, you can simply switch to Web View and do so. ?There is also a dark theme, the ability to increase text size and the option to have an article converted from text to speech.

For Mac there is also a desktop app, so if you do a lot of reading online you can have Pocket running and configure a swipe gesture or keyboard shortcut to quickly switch to the app.

Email a page to Pocket

This is one of the tools that I use least often, but can be handy if you?re on a public computer that doesn?t have the pocket extensions installed, or if you want to send a body of text to Pocket, which will then save sync it to your phone for offline reading. The instructions for saving by?email are here and there are also some nice IFTTT recipes for this, such as save a starred email to Pocket.

Sync Pocket for offline reading

This is a great feature when you find yourself in a situation with no internet connection, or if you need to save battery ? on a long journey, for example ? and therefore need to turn mobile internet off. You can configure Pocket to only sync items over Wi-Fi, but this is only really necessary if you?re installing Pocket for the first time and syncing a shed-load of articles. Syncing is fast and doesn?t use up a lot of data.

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