How to turn Evernote into a handy read-it-later service

Evernote is an incredibly useful service for storing notes and clipped items from the web, thanks to its powerful search function and helpful tag system that puts all your saved data at your fingertips.

But did you know you can also turn it into a read-it-later service by clipping articles on your PC and stashing them in a reader-friendly view in Evernote?

Saving articles in Evernote doesn’t quite rise to the level of a service like Pocket or Instapaper. But for anyone that wants to keep as much data as possible in one place, Evernote is a great choice.

Here’s how to set things up.

It all starts with Clearly

The first thing you’ll need to do is add a special Evernote extension to your browser called Clearly. This extension is available for Chrome, Firefox, and Opera on Windows PCs. Clearly’s primary purpose is to create a “reader mode” view for online articles, where ads and other bits of a site’s design are hidden and all you see is a book-like view of the article’s words.

As part of Clearly’s functionality, however, it allows you to store articles in Evernote for later reading. Open an article you’d like to save and click on the Clearly icon (the little desk lamp) in your browser.

You’ll see the Evernote elephant icon towards the top of a navigation bar on the far right side of the browser window. Click it and you’ll be prompted to sign-in to Evernote.

Once you’re signed in, every article you clip will go to Evernote and be stored in your default notebook. To make this service even more useful we want to create a special notebook where all your stored articles can live.

Creating a new notebook is beyond the scope of this article. If you need to learn how to do this check out Evernote’s help pages. You can name the new notebook whatever you like, but I’d recommend something descriptive like “read it later” or “reading list.”

Once you’ve got your new notebook set-up, you have to tell Clearly to send all clipped articles there automatically.

To access Clearly’s options you’ll need to go to your browser’s extensions management page. Chrome users can get there by typing “chrome://extensions/” (sans quotation marks) into your address bar and then clicking the Options link under Clearly. Firefox users can do something similar by typing “about:addons” into your address bar (again, sans quotation marks) and clicking the Options button. Opera users just need to right-click the Clearly icon in their browser.

Clearly’s options menu will now appear, which is pretty much the same on all three browsers. Under Options, look for the Notebook menu heading. Click the Use this Notebook radio button and then select your “Read it later” notebook (or whatever you called it) from the drop down menu. If you don’t see your new notebook give it a few minutes and try again. Sometimes it takes a few minutes for new notebooks to sync across your Evernote account.

Once you’ve got your notebook selected you can just close the tab on Chrome and Opera. Firefox users will need to click the Save Options button first.

Now you’re all set-up and ready to go. Any time you clip an article using Clearly on the desktop it will automatically be saved to your reading list notebook.Start stashing!