How to configure Hook to automatically add bookmarks to Instapaper

Here’s a first draft of "How to configure Hook to automatically add bookmarks to Instapaper. We’ll follow up soon with a web page on it, which I will mention here.

  1. In Hook’s Services Preferences Tab, click the “+” button to add an account.
  2. choose Instapaper
  3. enter your Instapaper name and password. Per the dialog box: “Hook uses your credentials (username, password) to obtain an Instapaper authentication token key and secret. Hook does not store your password. It only stores the token key and its secret.” This is how Instapaper works.
  4. Click the “enable” button.

FYI

  1. There’s no Reveal Page in Instapaper yet
  2. there’s no tagging of Instapaper webpages

The Instapaper app itself is not linkable. They don’t have an API for linking. So you can’t invoke Hook in Instapaper. Moreover, Instapaper assigns a unique ID to each page it caches.

Advantages of Hook over traditional Instapaper and Pinboard clients

  1. Hook automatically works across browsers, no need to install a browser extension or use a bookmarklet.
  2. Hook adds bookmarks as part of your normal Hook-bookmarking operation, you don’t need to manually “add bookmark to Instapaper/Pinboard”
  3. Hook supports simultaneously/effortlessly bookmarking to multiple bookmarking SaaS and GoodLinks. So if one of the services goes down, you will still have access to your content.

Please note, Hook will not add a bookmark to itself or other software if you merely open Hook’s contextual window on a web page (or other item). You need to perform an operation that involves bookmarking:

  1. Copy Link, ⌘C
  2. Hook to Copied Link ⌘V
  3. hooking items together via menu bar icon, or
  4. Add Bookmark ( ⌘D)

And in the case of GoodLinks, when you invoke Hook on its cached web page, you will see the same hooked items as you would when you invoke Hook on the external web page itself. (If Instapaper provides an API [feel free to ask them], we will gladly support Instapaper app. Pinboard caches pages but does not provide a user visible version as far as I know, it’s just for search.)

See also Universal, Effortless, Contextual, Linked Bookmarking – Hook.

The title of this post says Pinboard instead of Instapaper.

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If the Instapaper panel shows a green Online indicator presumably that means the access token was successfully retrieved?

I don’t know if this is a bug, but using the global shortcuts doesn’t seem to trigger adding to Instapaper. I have to open Hook and then copy to get it added.

yes

thank you will look into it.

Thanks for pointing it out. For the record we fixed it in a release subsequent to your note.

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Is there a plan to add either ‘Reveal in Instapaper’ or from:Hook type tagging at some point or is that not at all possible due to an Instapaper limitation?

Welcome to the Hook Productivity Forum , @boztek. Instapaper last time we checked did not have a Reveal in Instapaper API. Its bookmarklet has only one function: add bookmark. Unlike Pinboard, you cannot edit its bookmarks’ attributes. We emailed them for integration but unfortunately they never replied to our email. In contrast, Ngoc Luu (GoodLinks Support) was very responsive.

updated 2022-03-15 22:06 PDT, replaced “in Finder” with in Instapaper. But I’m sure everyone knew what I meant.

Welcome to the Hook Productivity Forum

Good to be here and thanks for the details. It’s not a deal-breaker but would have been nice seeing as it’s a web page with a URL you’d think it wouldn’t be too much to ask :slight_smile:

I’m currently using instapaper highlight to readwise integration a fair bit so not ready to switch at this time though goodlinks looks great.

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I had a quick play with their “simple API” (Instapaper) and whenever you add a URL you do get a stable bookmark ID in the response which effectively gives you the ability to get an Instapaper URL for any URL (http://instapaper.com/read/).

One problem with this approach is that it moves the bookmark to the top of the list if it exists already, so unless Hook was going to keep a local copy of the bookmark when it’s added I can see why this is might not be sufficient (also constructing URL from bookmark ID is slightly questionable).

That said, if there’s not enough for your direct integration there might be enough here for someone to do something (like a bookmarklet that copies an Instapaper URL into the clipboard etc.).

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I thought the Reveal in Instapaper request was to reveal it in the Instapaper app as opposed to the website. Very interesting regarding the ID. Users would only experience the re-ordering effect if they chose to use the Reveal… function.

I don’t know if we have many Instapaper users here yet. It would be nice if we could get a lot more Instapaper users to know about (we don’t compete with them, as we don’t cache content). Not sure how we can reach Instapaper users… (anyone have tips? can PM me). Most app developers I write to respond, and we have great communications. But I haven’t gotten a response back from the good folks at Instapaper yet.

We also hope to revisit Pocket integration this year, adding it if possible.