Filter articles in Pocket by length & age

Filtering articles in Pocket, powered by AcceleReader
Filtering articles in Pocket, powered by AcceleReader

I’m happy to announce that the latest update of AcceleReader for Chrome brings article filtering to Pocket.

Articles may be filtered by age or length:

  • By length1, articles can be filtered as Quick Reads (<4 mins), Medium (4-8 mins) and Long Reads (>8 mins)
  • By age2, the articles can be filtered as Fresh (< 1 week), Ripe (1-2 weeks), Ageing (2-4 weeks), and Old (>4 weeks)

The filtering interface is brought up by:

  • clicking on the total time displayed on top left, or
  • by pressing the key ‘.’ (Period).

It can be dismissed in the same manner, or by clicking anywhere on the page.

After reading-time tags for mobile, this is the second big feature I’ve been enjoying using myself, and hope other users like it as well!

Aside: Interestingly, I’ve also been noticing the bias against medium length articles since I turned this on. I filter and read the quick reads whenever I’ve got a couple of minutes – reduces the number of unread articles. And I read long reads if I’ve got a bit more time on hand – takes big chunks out of total time number. The medium reads have been getting ignored :/

Note: The filtering feature is still under development, and thus has some constraints3.


  1. AcceleReader converts the length of article, in words, to estimated reading time, in minutes. The reading speed assumed for this conversion is 200 words per minute. 
  2. Age is defined as least of time since added, and time since the article was last opened in pocket. 
  3. Constraints/bugs:
    – For age-based filtering to work, Trello-style ageing is required to be enabled in extension settings
    – However, this impacts UX badly when filtering for Ageing or Old articles, since the fading reduces readability of their titles 

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