A Read-It-Later App for Android That Works Offline: Savely on Firefox

Chrome on Android can't run extensions, but Firefox for Android can. Here's how to save articles on your phone, read them offline, and keep your phone and computer in sync.

2 min read

Your phone is where you find most of the things you want to read, and where you have the fewest good moments to read them. That's exactly what a read-it-later app is for.

On Android, there's a catch: Chrome for Android doesn't support browser extensions. Firefox for Android does. That's why Savely runs there, with the same list and the same reader as on your computer, laid out for a small screen.

What you need

  • Firefox for Android, version 142 or newer (Release, Beta or Nightly all work).
  • A couple of minutes.

Install Savely on your phone

  1. Open Firefox on your phone.
  2. Open the Firefox menu and go to Extensions, then find Savely in the add-ons catalog (or open Savely's page on addons.mozilla.org).
  3. Tap Add to Firefox and confirm.

Saving an article

Android doesn't have a right-click menu, so saving on your phone goes through the Savely list:

  1. On the page you want to keep, open the Firefox menu and choose Extensions → Savely.
  2. Your list opens. Tap Save this page.

Savely extracts the article from the page you were on and stores it on your phone. It's the same extraction engine Firefox uses for Reader View, so it copes with most news sites, blogs and newsletters.

Reading offline

Tap any article in your list to open it in the reader. The text is stored on your phone, so it opens instantly, with or without signal. That makes it ideal for flights, subways and roaming abroad.

The reader adjusts to how you like to read:

  • Text size and column width
  • Serif, sans-serif or a dyslexia-friendly typeface
  • Light, sepia, dark or system theme, which is handy at night
  • A progress bar, and it remembers where you stopped

Want the reader to use no data at all? In the reader settings (Aa), tick Don't load remote images. You'll get the text without downloading any pictures from the original site.

Organizing on a small screen

Everything you can do on desktop is reachable from the list on your phone:

  • Switch between To read, Favorites and Archive
  • Search the full text of everything you've saved; type tag:name to filter by a tag
  • Tag, favorite, archive or delete the selected article from the buttons at the top
  • Open the options (⚙) for export, import and sync

Keep your phone and computer in sync

Savely doesn't have accounts or servers, so sync works differently from most apps: it goes through a private GitHub Gist that you own. Connect the same token on your phone and your computer, and both will read from and write to the same list.

Here's the step-by-step sync guide, including exactly what's stored and the privacy trade-off to be aware of.

Prefer not to sync? You can still move your list manually: export a Full backup (JSON) on one device and import it on the other.

What about iPhone?

Savely doesn't run on iOS today. Safari extensions are a different platform, and Savely currently targets Chromium browsers and Firefox. On Android, though, Firefox gives you a real, offline, private read-it-later app, with no account required.