Save it now.
Read it properly later.
A read later app makes one small promise: the good thing you found at a bad moment will still be there, in a form worth reading, when you finally have twenty minutes. Lantern keeps that promise and does very little else.
How it works
- Paste a link. Lantern fetches the page and pulls out the article: the headline, the byline, the text, and the pictures that belong to it. PDFs work the same way (a link or a file from your computer) as text in the reader, not a separate document app.
- Everything else gets dropped. Ads, newsletter interstitials, cookie walls, share rails, related-content grids, and autoplaying video don’t make it through.
- Read it whenever. One column, a comfortable line length, light or dark, and adjustable type and text size. Keep a passage if you want it later.
- Stop anywhere. Your place is kept, so a long piece started on a phone continues on a laptop where you left off.
Why not just leave the tab open
Because forty open tabs isn’t a reading list. It’s a low hum of guilt that also eats your battery. And a tab still holds the page exactly as the publisher built it: the popup at 30% scroll, the video that starts talking, the cookie banner you already dismissed on another device.
A saved article has neither problem. It’s a finite list, and every item in it is just the words.
What Lantern deliberately doesn’t do
There are no tags, no folders, and no nested collections. Search and archive already handle retrieval, and every read later app that grew a filing system turned into a cabinet nobody opens. There’s no RSS, because a feed is an infinite stream and this is meant to be a short list you can actually finish. And there are no AI summaries, because a summary is a way of not reading something.
Questions before you start
Is Lantern free?
Yes. Saving articles, reading PDFs, keeping highlights, and syncing your reading place are free. There is no subscription.
How is a read later app different from a bookmark?
A bookmark takes you back to the original website. Lantern extracts a readable copy of a supported article and puts it in your library, with your saved place and highlights. Keep a bookmark when you need the original page’s interactive tools or layout.
Can you save PDFs as well as articles?
Yes. Paste a PDF link or upload a file and Lantern extracts its text into the reader. This works best with text-based documents. Scanned pages and complex layouts may not produce a complete reading copy; keep the original when the page design matters.
Can you move a list of links into Lantern?
Open Import links from the add menu and paste one URL per line, up to 200 at a time. Lantern fetches them in the background. It does not directly import Pocket CSV files. The Pocket migration guide explains what you can bring over from an export you already saved.
Does Lantern bypass paywalls?
No. A publisher’s paywall, sign-in requirement, or restriction on automated access can prevent extraction. Keep using the original site and your subscription for those articles.
Where it came from
Pocket, the app most people meant when they said read later, shut down in 2025, and Omnivore closed before it. The tools left standing mostly answer with more features and a subscription. I wanted the opposite, so I built this.
If you’re arriving from one of those, start with the Pocket page. If you’re weighing the paid options, there’s Readwise Reader and Instapaper.