Basics4Mac - Using the Safari Reading List to Hold URLs to Read Later

A temporary holding place

Reading Liest
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Last week, I wrote a tip about using Stickies to hold URLs (web addresses) so you can find them later. A reader said she was glad that I was giving some attention to the "lowly sticky note."

Stickies are useful and underused, but after that tip went out last week, I remembered that Safari has a built-in tool for holding temporary URLs that itself is underused.

At the far left of the Bookmarks Bar is a pair of glasses. When you click the glasses you open the Reading List. The Reading List is a place to store webpages that you want to access later.

The Reading List is basically just another list of bookmarks, but unlike regular bookmarks, the Reading List is meant for links you want to hold temporarily until you get around to reading them.

One nice thing about the Reading List is the way it is formatted. You see the webpage title, icon and the first couple of lines of text from the websites on the list. This can help jog your memory about why you added the item.

To add items to the Reading list, drag URLs from the Address Bar either to the glasses button or directly into the Reading List if it is visible. You can also drag links directly off of a web page, but that takes a bit of finger gymnastics to keep you from just going to the link.

Once you have items on your Reading List, you can filter them to show only the items you haven't visited yet. Items are sorted with the most recently added item at the top of the list.

When you are done with an item on the Reading List, click the X icon that appears when you hover over an item to remove it.

Like any collection of bookmarks, the Reading List becomes less useful if you keep adding items and never remove the ones you no longer need. Once you have to start scrolling down the Reading List to see all the items, you might want to go through and remove the ones you no longer want.