read-it-later/README.md

Read it later

A new-tab page that shows everything you've saved to read later, as a sortable grid or list. No account, no server — everything lives in your browser's local extension storage.

How to save something

• Click the toolbar icon — saves the page you're currently on.
• Right-click a page → "Save page for later"
• Right-click a link → "Save link for later" (doesn't need to be open)

A ✓ briefly appears on the icon to confirm the save.

The shelf (new tab page)

• Toggle between grid (cards with thumbnails) and list (compact, bookshelf-spine style) — top right.
• Sort by newest, oldest, title, or site.
• Search filters by title, domain, or URL as you type.
• Archive tucks an item away without deleting it; "Show archived" reveals archived items again.
• Delete removes an item, with a 5-second Undo.

Thumbnails are captured automatically when you save the current page (a screenshot of what's on screen). Links saved via right-click show a favicon instead, since the browser hasn't loaded that page yet.

Reminders and auto-delete

The gear icon opens a settings panel (also home to the light/dark/system theme picker) with two optional timers, both off by default:

• Remind me after — items older than this get pinned to the top of the shelf and highlighted, so they don't get buried.
• Delete unarchived items after — silently removes items you never came back to. Archiving an item takes it out of consideration entirely.

The delete period must be longer than the reminder period — enforced both in the settings panel (an inline error if you try to set it shorter) and as a hard rule in the deletion logic itself, so you're always warned before anything is removed. Auto-delete runs on an hourly background alarm (so it still works even if you never open the new tab page), and again whenever the shelf page is open; when the shelf page does the deleting, it shows a courtesy toast with an Undo.

Worth a second look

Above the shelf, a small strip proactively surfaces 2–3 old, forgotten, unarchived items each time you open a new tab — on by default, toggleable in the settings panel. Unlike a notification, it doesn't nag: the more times an item gets shown without you opening/archiving/deleting it, the less often it's picked again (backing off from every few days out to every couple of months), so nothing gets shown forever, but nothing gets shown so rarely that it's effectively forgotten again either. Archiving or deleting an item removes it from the strip immediately with no replacement until the next refresh — no whack-a-mole.

"Old enough to matter" uses the same period as the reminder setting above when reminders are on, or a 14-day default when they're off. It's fine (and expected) for the same item to show up both pinned/highlighted in the main shelf and in this strip at once — they're not trying to be non-overlapping, just two different nudges.

Install — Chrome / Edge (unpacked)

1. Go to chrome://extensions (or edge://extensions).
2. Turn on Developer mode (top right).
3. Click Load unpacked and select this folder.
4. Open a new tab — you should see the Read it later page.

Install — Firefox (temporary, for testing)

1. Go to about:debugging#/runtime/this-firefox.
2. Click Load Temporary Add-on…
3. Select the manifest.json file inside this folder.
4. Open a new tab. Firefox will ask permission to let the extension override the new tab page the first time — allow it.

Temporary add-ons in Firefox are removed when you close the browser. For a permanent install, the extension needs to be signed by Mozilla (via addons.mozilla.org) or loaded in a Developer Edition / Nightly build with xpinstall.signatures.required set to false.

Syncing across devices

Read it later keeps full items (including screenshot thumbnails) in chrome.storage.local, and also mirrors a lightweight copy of each item (url, title, domain, favicon, dates, archived state, spotlight backoff counters — no images) to chrome.storage.sync, one entry per item so each stays well under the 8KB-per-item sync limit. On another device signed into the same browser account, opening the shelf pulls those in automatically; thumbnails just aren't part of what syncs, so items saved elsewhere show a favicon instead until re-saved on that device. Archiving and deleting also sync. This is all best-effort — offline, not signed in, or over the (~100KB / 512-item) sync quota just means that device keeps working from local storage alone.

Note: chrome.storage.sync needs a stable extension ID to work, which only applies to a permanently installed, signed add-on — not a Firefox "temporary add-on" loaded via about:debugging (see install notes above), which won't persist sync identity across restarts.

Notes / things you might want to change

• Icons in icons/ are placeholders — swap them for your own artwork any time; sizes 16/32/48/128 are already wired up in manifest.json.