Adding Instapaper to the Guardian iPhone app

I like the Guardian’s iPhone app. It’s not perfect by any means but it does the job reasonably well.

One thing I would really like is the ability to save articles to Instapaper, but I can’t see this being added anytime soon. So I’ve created a bodge-fix using Twitter and Ifttt.

First I authorized the Guardian app to send stuff to one of my spare Twitter accounts, @peteashton2. Whenever I want to add something to Instapaper I simply hit Share > Twitter > Post. Three taps.

It goes to Twitter and the automatic magic takes over.

On Ifttt (which is still in invite-only mode so let me know if you want an invite [invites all gone now - sorry]) I’ve set up a task to check for links in tweets from @peteashton2 and send them to Instapaper.

And the next time I go to my iPhone Instapaper app, there it is.

Slightly convoluted, relies on two 3rd party services and could be solved if the Guardian put an “open page in Safari” option in the app, but only requires three taps to set it off.

And, before anyone asks, I don’t use the Fave function in the app because I like to have all my Read Later stuff in one place and Instapaper is a damn fine app for reading from.

Update: Tom asked why I don’t just use Instapaper’s email in links service, thus bypassing Twitter and Ifttt. This is actually where I started this process, the problem, if that’s not too strong a word, being emailing a link is a bit too fiddly for my liking. I really like that my method, while convoluted under the hood, is triggered by three blunt taps.