How To Send Email Newsletters To Instapaper

Email newsletters are trendy right now, but they can be a lot. If newsletters are clogging up your inbox, here’s how to send them to Instapaper. (Plus a workaround for Pocket.)

Add an email to Instapaper

1. Log into Instapaper and go to instapaper.com/save/email.

2. Copy the email address in the blue box. That’s your special Instapaper email address.

3. Open the email you want to send to Instapaper.

4. Forward it to that special address.

5. Save the address to your email contacts so you never have to look it up again.

Now the text of the email will show up in your Instapaper account, just like an article. And just like an article, if that email newsletter is highly formatted, it might get a bit garbled in Instapaper. But the main text should be there.

Automatically forward a newsletter to Instapaper

If you know you always want to send a certain newsletter to Instapaper, then make an email filter. First, you have to add a forwarding address. In Gmail, do this:

1. Go to Settings (click the gear icon in the top right) and open the Forwarding and POP/IMAP tab.

2. In the Forwarding section, click Add a forwarding address.

3. Paste in your special Instapaper email address and click OK.

4. Gmail will send a verification email to your Instapaper account. It’ll appear at the top of your reading queue (or bottom, if you sort it that way). Copy the verification code and paste it into your Gmail settings. Hit Verify.

Now, any time you want to set a newsletter to automatically forward:

1. Open an issue of the newsletter.

2. Hit the three-dot button on the top menu, and select Filter messages like these.

3. The drop-down window that pops up should include the newsletter sender (or a string that starts with list:). Hit Create filter.

4. In the new drop-down window, select Forward to: and select your Instapaper address.

5. OPTIONAL: In the same window, select Skip the Inbox (Archive it).

6. Click Create filter.

Now every time that newsletter comes in, it will pop up in Instapaper.

Don’t subscribe to an email newsletter with Instapaper

When you join an email newsletter, you could simply give it your secret Instapaper address. All the emails would go straight to Instapaper without ever touching your inbox. But you shouldn’t, because it can be very hard to unsubscribe from a newsletter through Instapaper.

When Instapaper processes an email, it tries to delete extraneous headers and footers—including the link to unsubscribe. And Instapaper doesn’t let you change your secret email address. So you can end up trapped on an email newsletter’s distribution list, unless you find a way to unsubscribe through the web, or by emailing the distributor to explain and request a manual unsubscribe. Embarrassing.

Add an email newsletter to Pocket

Instapaper’s main competitor, Pocket, doesn’t let you add emails. Instead, paste the email into a tool for quickly publishing text online, like JustPaste.it, and then save the page to your Pocket account.