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For years, I’ve been begging for an option to add articles to Chrome’s Reading List or a Google Collection called “Read later” without first having to open each article in the web wrapper, choose to open it in the full browser, and then bookmark it to my reading list. This process is time-consuming as all get out and frustrating, especially since I need to perform these steps often since for one reason or another I just don’t have time to read things the moment I find them in the feed.
I just discovered something cool though – there’s a new “Add to reading list” option in the Google Discover feed! The catch is that it’s not in the standard Discover feed, but rather on the new tab page for Chrome on Android. Google added this content here to help pad out the NTP and give users more information to explore, so if you prefer to read articles through Chrome instead of swiping left on your phone’s home screen, then you will likely also now see this new reading list option (pictured below!)
It’s surprising that this feature is only available now, I mean, in my humble opinion, this is pretty important, and I’ve gone on about it in several past articles, but that’s neither here nor there. In the meantime, this can turn the process of saving articles for later reading into much less of a chore, wouldn’t you say?
The only issue I’ve noticed across Google News and Chrome Reading List is that Google has no way to remind users to go through that saved data and spend time reading it. If they added a “From your Reading List” section in the Discover feed or in News to remind you that you still haven’t peeked at stuff you tucked away, that would be the ticket, I think.
I’m actually interested in the psychology behind saving articles to read later and why we don’t revisit them like…almost ever. Let me know in the comments how you operate, and if you find this feature interesting. Here’s to hoping we’ll get the same tool in the standard Discover feed before long!
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