Kobos Getting Instapaper Integration, Pocket Articles Import

Kobo and Instapaper have announced a new partnership with plans to integrate Instapaper’s “Read It Later” service with Kobo’s reading devices. As many expected, Instapaper will be taking the place of Pocket on Kobo ereaders now that Pocket has shut down.

One of the nice things about Instapaper is they have an option to import your Pocket articles so you won’t lose them during the transition. They’re also giving away a free 3-month trial for Instapaper Premium when importing a Pocket account.

Instapaper also offers a free service so you don’t have to pay for a premium plan, but the paid version, which costs $5.99 per month, adds some extra features.

Here’s a quote from Kobo’s press release regarding the anticipated timeline:

In partnership with Instapaper, Kobo is working diligently to bring this integration to its eReaders, with the aim of launching by the end of summer 2025.

Summer officially ends in 2 months so hopefully Kobo ereaders will have Instapaper support by the end of September. Kobo will have to issue a software update for their ereaders to add Instapaper integration, and it’ll be interesting to see how everything works. Maybe it’ll be better than Pocket support; maybe it’ll be worse. At this point, who knows. Hopefully all models with get Instapaper support, and not just the newer ones.

A lot of people were disappointed with losing Pocket support on Kobos, but at least Kobo is working on an alternative. Some were hoping that Kobo would come out with their own “Read It Later” service, but with Kobo lacking their own cloud storage for non-Kobo content that would’ve been a major undertaking. A “Send to Kobo” extension for web browsers would’ve been nice, but it’s not going to work well unless they plan on adding outside content to people’s accounts like Amazon does with Send to Kindle.