Read it later

Read it later is a browser extension for saving pages and links to read later, then actually reading them. Click the toolbar icon or right-click any page or link to save it; every new tab shows your saved items as a sortable, searchable grid or a compact list. Beyond basic saving, it proactively fights the “saved and forgotten” problem: a reminder highlights stale items, a “Worth a second look” strip resurfaces old ones without nagging, and an optional auto-delete clears out things you truly never got back to. Everything lives in the browser’s own storage, with no account and no external server, and it optionally syncs across your devices through the browser’s built-in sync.

Saving

• Click the toolbar icon to save the page you’re currently on. A screenshot of the page is captured automatically as a thumbnail.
• Right-click any page and choose “Save page for later,” or right-click a link and choose “Save link for later” (this works even for links you haven’t opened; they show a favicon instead of a screenshot since the browser never loaded them).
• Saving the same URL twice just bumps it back to the top and refreshes its metadata, instead of creating a duplicate.

The shelf (new tab page)

• Two views: a grid of cards with thumbnails, and a compact list styled like spines on a bookshelf.
• Sort by newest, oldest, title, or site.
• Search filters by title, domain, URL, or tag as you type.
• Archive tucks an item away without deleting it; “Show archived” brings archived items back into view.
• Delete removes an item, with a 5 second Undo.

Tags

• In grid view, add one or more free-form tags to any card (comma-separated entry supports adding several at once), and remove them individually.
• Click any tag, on a card or in the toolbar’s tag dropdown (which lists every tag currently in use), to instantly filter the shelf to it. This works by filling in the search box, so typing a tag name filters the same way.

Reminders and auto-delete

• An optional “Remind me after” timer highlights and pins items older than a chosen period, so they surface when you’re browsing the full shelf.
• An optional “Delete unarchived items after” timer quietly removes items you never returned to. Archiving an item takes it out of consideration permanently.
• The delete period is required to be longer than the reminder period, both as a settings-panel validation and as a hard rule in the deletion logic itself, so nothing is ever deleted without having been flagged first. Auto-delete runs on an hourly background alarm (so it works even if the new tab page is never opened) and again whenever the shelf is open, where it shows a courtesy toast with an Undo.

Worth a second look

• A small strip above the shelf proactively surfaces 2 to 3 old, unarchived items each time a new tab opens, aiming squarely at the core failure mode of every read-later tool: saving something and never coming back to it.
• It’s designed to never become a nag. The more times an item is shown without being opened, archived, or deleted, the less often it’s picked again, backing off from every few days out to every couple of months. Nothing is shown forever, but nothing goes silent forever either.
• Archiving or deleting a spotlighted item removes it immediately, with no replacement sliding in until the next refresh.

Appearance

• Light, dark, or system theme, chosen in the settings panel.

Sync and storage

• No account and no external server. Full items, including screenshot thumbnails, live in the browser’s local extension storage on each device.
• A lightweight copy of each item (URL, title, domain, favicon, dates, archived state, tags, and the “Worth a second look” backoff counters, never the thumbnails) can also sync across devices signed into the same browser account, using the browser’s own sync storage. This is best effort: if a device is offline, not signed in, or over the sync quota, it simply keeps working from local storage alone.

Platforms

• Works in Chrome, Edge, and Firefox.