The Commuter’s Problem
You are drinking your morning coffee at your desk, browsing the web on your Mac. You stumble across a brilliant, 5,000-word investigative journalism piece that you really want to read, but you have to leave for work in five minutes. You could bookmark the page, but bookmarks are meant for permanent reference, not temporary reading. You could email the link to yourself, but that clutters your inbox.
Furthermore, when you get on the subway to commute to work, your iPhone loses its cellular connection. Even if you emailed yourself the link, you cannot load the webpage underground.
Apple solved this entire workflow with a feature built directly into Safari called the Reading List. It is not just a temporary bookmark folder. When you add an article to the Reading List on your Mac, Safari silently downloads the entire text and all the images, syncing the complete, offline package to your iPhone and iPad via iCloud.
Adding an Article to the Reading List
When you find an article you want to read later, you do not need to click through complicated menus.
- Look at the URL address bar at the very top of the Safari window.
- Hover your mouse pointer over the left side of the address bar. A small plus (+) icon will appear.
- Click that plus icon.
Alternatively, you can press the keyboard shortcut Shift + Command + D.
You will see a small animation of the webpage shrinking down and flying into the sidebar. Safari has now saved the article and is downloading it in the background.
Accessing Your Reading List
When you are ready to read your saved articles (whether you are on your Mac at home or on your iPhone on an airplane), you need to open the sidebar.
- On your Mac, click the Sidebar icon in the top-left corner of the Safari toolbar (it looks like a small rectangle with a column on the left).
- At the top of the sidebar, click the icon that looks like a pair of reading glasses.
You will see a beautifully formatted list of all the articles you have saved, complete with preview images and a short summary of the text.
Ensuring Offline Access
By default, the Reading List syncs the URL to your other devices, but you want to ensure it physically downloads the content so you can read it without Wi-Fi.
- On your Mac, open Safari and click Safari in the top menu bar, then select Settings.
- Click the Advanced tab.
- Look for the section labeled “Reading List” and check the box that says Save articles for offline reading automatically.
If you only want to save specific articles offline (to save hard drive space), you can right-click any article in the Reading List sidebar and manually select Save Offline.
The Auto-Delete Magic
The best part of the Reading List is that it manages its own clutter.
When you open an article from the list and scroll to the very bottom, Safari automatically marks it as “Read.” The next time you open the Reading List, that article will have vanished from the “Unread” tab. (You can still find it by switching the toggle at the top of the sidebar from “Unread” to “All”).
If you finish an article and want it gone immediately, simply swipe left on the article in the sidebar (using two fingers on your trackpad) and click the red Remove button.
Stop emailing yourself links that you can never read without an internet connection. By utilizing the macOS Safari Reading List, you can build a personalized, offline magazine of temporary articles that syncs effortlessly across all your Apple devices.