Instapaper Android 5.0: Article list redesign, improved reader settings, and many bug fixes

Today we’re launching Instapaper Android 5.0, which completely redesigns the article list view, improves reader settings, reintroduces Send to Kindle, and fixes a number of longstanding issues and bugs with the Android app.

Article List Redesign

In order to bring Android to parity with iOS and web, we’ve redesigned the list to include thumbnail images, and replaced the old dot progress indicator with estimated read times.

On tablet we have included thumbnail images, and also added the option to toggle between grid and list view to more closely match our other tablet experiences.

Please note that previously saved articles will not automatically show thumbnail images. If you’d like all of your articles to show thumbnails, you can redownload all of your articles by navigating to Instapaper Settings > Advanced > Redownload All Articles. We recommend doing this on WiFi and leaving Instapaper open to re-sync.

Improved Reader Settings

We tweaked the default font settings on the reader view for a more pleasant reading experience by default. In particular, we increased the default font sizes and line heights, and customized these for both Android phone and tablet.

Many people have requested to disable pagination animations on Android e-ink readers like Onyx Boox. In this release you can disable pagination animations by navigating to Instapaper Settings > Pagination Options > Pagination Animations (OFF).

We tested on our Onyx Boox, and it’s a big improvement!

Relaunching Send to Kindle

In late ‘23, there was an issue with sharing articles from Instapaper using the Android system share sheet. We fixed that issue, however, in the process it required us to remove Send to Kindle short-term.

With this release, we’re bringing back Send to Kindle for individual articles on Android. Please note Send to Kindle on Android is only available with an Instapaper Premium subscription.

Many Fixes and Improvements

In addition to the above, we’ve also fixed a significant number of bugs:

• Share All Notes now shares your highlights/notes in the order they appear in the article.
• Saving to Instapaper from the share extension saves article description instead of article URL as the description.
• Fixed transparent status bar issue on reader view.
• Improved full screen transitions on reader view.

We’re excited to finally get this release out. It’s a strong foundation on which we’ll continue to improve the Instapaper Android app. 

As always, if you have any feature requests, questions, or concerns please feel free to reach out at support@help.instapaper.com

– Instapaper Team