Instapaper · laytr.app
Instapaper is a good reading app and it is still running. If what you want is a read later app that needs no sign-in, keeps your saves on your own device, and brings a save back on a day you chose, Laytr is that, and it reads Instapaper’s CSV export.
iPhone, iPad and Mac. Free is the full app with room for 30 saves. Import and export are free on every plan, and on none.
What is different
What you save is scattered across apps and never returned to. Laytr takes articles, links, screenshots, PDFs and photos from the share sheet of any app and files them in one place, with no account and no server of ours behind it, so the saves stay yours.
Then it does the thing a reading list never did: you give a save a day, and on that day it comes back to the top of the app. The list shrinks instead of growing.
No account, no server
There is nothing to sign up for. Your iPhone and iPad keep each other up to date through your own iCloud, on by default with one switch to turn it off. Laytr for Mac is on the Mac App Store, and a version that joins the same iCloud sync is coming.
Cases, not folders
Saves file into cases: a trip, a course, a project, a decision. Your Instapaper folders become cases of the same name on import.
What Instapaper has that Laytr does not
Highlights and notes inside the text, sending to a Kindle, text to speech, and a web app. If those are what you use every day, keep Instapaper. Laytr is for the person whose problem is the pile, not the page.
How to import from Instapaper
Laytr detects the file by its contents, so a renamed export still works. Re-running the same file never duplicates anything, and an interrupted import carries on from where it stopped.
1. Export from Instapaper
On instapaper.com, open Settings and choose the CSV export. The file has the columns URL, Title, Selection, Folder and Timestamp; newer exports add Tags. Put it where the Files app can see it, or AirDrop it to your iPhone.
2. Open the import in Laytr
Open the Now tab and tap the gear for Settings. Under Archive choose Import, then Choose a file and pick the CSV.
3. What comes across
Links, titles, tags and the date you saved each one. Unread lands as saves and Archive arrives already marked done. Starred is kept as a favourite. A custom folder becomes a case with the same name. The Selection column, Instapaper’s saved highlight, is not imported.
4. On the free plan
Free has room for 30 saves. A bigger export brings in the first 30 and reports how many are waiting; open the same file again on Premium, or once you are below the limit, and Laytr imports exactly the rest. Nothing is changed or deleted.