Pocket’s sorting by reading time feature seems designed for commuting back to work



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Pocket, an app for saving articles to read later, is rolling out a sorting option for Android users over the next few weeks that could resolve my paralysis when choosing something to read. The new sorting function by reading time, identified by The edge’with Dan Seifert, means items can be organized where they are most convenient, whether it’s the five minutes it takes for lunch in the microwave or a 20-minute wait for the late bus.

The feature appears both in the search section of the app and as a sorting feature in your main list. A reader can sort their search for saved articles by length, choosing from Fast (less than five minutes), Medium (six to ten minutes), Long (eleven to twelve minutes), and Very long (over twenty-one minutes) . According to Pocket vice president and general manager Matt Koidin, your list of saved articles can also be organized by last saved, oldest saved, longest to read, and shortest read. If the feature proves popular, after Pocket “modernizes its iOS codebase,” Koidin says the company will bring these sorting options to iOS and the web as well.

In my pre-pandemic life, when I took the bus to work almost every day, I constantly misunderstood what I was getting myself into deciding what to read. Pocket’s pre-existing reading time buffers for articles help, but when you’ve got a dragon’s writing treasure that you wanted to read at some point, things get complicated. Finding an article that fits into a typical commute time can help people finish reading what they care about.

I assumed the reading time was personalized, but Koidin says Pocket is actually basing their estimates on an average reading speed of 220 wpm. Now the hair on the nape comes up when I first think of good writing as length of reading, rather than holistic work of creative effort, but I think it’s easy to see how that might come in handy (if I wasn’t chained to an iPhone currently).

Commuting may not be part of the equation for everyone just yet, but for those who still commute to work regularly, the functionality could help. At least I missed my reading time on the bus.



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