Throughout any given day, I am reading a lot of content from my favorite websites and blogs. And sometimes I run out of time running between meetings here at work, picking up my puppy from “doggie daycamp”, and wedding planning to finish reading those articles. So I share those articles to Reading List in Windows 8.1 to read later when I have time. Because I also read articles on my phone, I have always thought it would be awesome to have Reading List on my Windows Phone too. And now it is! Reading List is now available from the Windows Phone Store for devices running Windows Phone 8.1.
Reading List on Windows Phone 8.1 shares many of the awesome features seen in the Windows 8.1 app like being able to organize and filter articles into categories. Reading List on Windows Phone 8.1 has an improved Home screen that highlights an article from your list with a nice big version of the article’s image and under that, the Recently viewed section will show the five most recent things launched from Reading List.
Also on Windows Phone 8.1, you can pin your favorite categories to your Start screen! As you can probably imagine, I’ve got the tech category pinned to mine.
Once you’re done reading an article, you can quickly delete that article. If you accidentally delete an article, you can go into the recently deleted section and find it. If you really like an article you read, you can select and share it to apps like Facebook or OneNote.
Ok, here is the really awesome part: articles you share to Reading List on Windows Phone 8.1 will sync across to your devices running Windows 8.1. So you can access your articles across all your devices! This means if I’m on the go and share an article from my phone to read later, I can go to that article on one of my PCs or tablets running Windows 8.1, fire up Reading List and access that article. This is really awesome.
If you’re giving Windows Phone 8.1 a try today as part of the Windows Phone Preview for Developers, give Reading List a try!
UPDATE 5/8: Today we released an update for the Reading List app that addresses one of the top pieces of feedback we’ve received about the app: a transparent tile! If you are using a Start background on your device running Windows Phone 8.1 and Reading List pinned to your Start screen, you will now see that is has a transparent tile.
