Facebook just rolled out a new ‘Save’ feature that allows users to store links from the posts in their newsfeed to revisit at some point in the future. This will come in handy for those occasions when you come across a post that captures your interest, but just don’t have the time to devote to reading it.
The new Facebook Save feature easily stores everything for you and eliminates the hassle of trying to go back and find a post manually (which was a thankless task anyway).
I’ve been using Instapaper for years now and have their bookmarklet installed in Chrome to make saving articles (especially long ones) a one-click process. Pocket (formerly Read It Later) and Reading List in Safari also offer the same ability to store your reads and online articles for safe keeping in one spot while also featuring offline viewing for those unable to connect to wi-fi.
Even though these great apps exist, there are also tons of people who don’t take advantage of these programs and choose other primitive methods for saving links such as emailing themselves, keeping a list in an email draft or worse still — not saving the content anywhere.
Facebook’s Save feature is also available on mobile devices which makes saved items cross compatible between desktops/tablets/phones. My video above demonstrates how to use Save on a desktop. It’s not much different, however, on mobile devices.
When you see a link in your feed that you’d like to revisit later, either click the Save button in the bottom right of the post or the drop down arrow in the upper right corner of a post and select Save. You can view something you’ve saved by clicking “Saved” in the lefthand column of your Facebook page just underneath your profile picture.
Things that you saved can also be organized by category (links, places, music, books, movies, TV shows, and events) which is a nice bonus for super users who want to find things faster.
There’s also the ability to archive items by hovering over a link in your Saved items and clicking the small x in the upper right corner. In order to delete something, first archive it, then select the Archives link at the top of the page and then the “…” next to what you want to remove where you can either Unarchive or Delete the post.
There are caveats to using Save, at least for now. It only works with posts that contain links. If you’re trying to save a friend’s picture or status update you’re out of luck. Perhaps these type of posts will be able to be saved in the future, but for now Save very much feels like a work-in-progress.
Facebook claims that all saved items are private unless you decide to share them, but it’s likely that Saved could become viewable to your friends at some point in the future. Remember it’s Facebook — something is always changing…
Now that it’s easier to save things in Facebook I’ll be able to keep better track of what posts I really want to read without having anything fall through the cracks. Save doesn’t allow you to read anything ‘offline’ like the other apps I mentioned previously, but Facebook’s goal is to keep you within their walls and that’s only gotten easier to do with this release.
