This free iPhone app makes it quick and easy to send links to yourself to read later.

Many times I encounter an interesting but long article on my iPhone that I want to read later on my iPad or laptop. Since my browser bookmarks are a mess and I have not committed myself to a read later app, I usually just email myself the link. If you share my disorganized reading habits, then I have an app to share with you: Mail to Self.

This free iPhone app simplifies the process of emailing links to yourself. It adds a button to the sharing panel, saving you from having to enter your email address each time you want to send yourself a link. By the app's own calculations, it saves you 22 taps each time you use it. Here's how it works.




After launching the app for the first time, you will need to give it your email address so it can send you links upon request. Before we proceed, let's hear a few words from Mail to Self's developer, Extra Thought, about your privacy concerns:

We verify every email before someone can use the service, so no one else can spam you.

We don't use your email for any promotional emails or any kind of spam. Ever. We don't pass it to anyone else.

We use a third-party email service called Mandrill by the people who built Mailchimp. As such, we are bound to their Privacy Policy. Also the service keeps a log of the mails sent for 30 days -- we've reached out to them to ask to reduce this log to a few hours (so we have some info for troubleshooting). This is not the ideal scenario and we're trying to figure out a way to obscure this information completely from ourselves. We wouldn't want to give access to anyone about the links we share, we don't want to have access to the links that you share either.

Should you choose to proceed, Extra Thought will send you a verification code after receiving your email. After you enter the verification code in Mail to Self, you will be up and running. You won't need to use the Mail to Self app itself moving forward, unless you want to see a running count of the emails you've sent with it, the taps it has saved you (zapped, in its parlance), or email yourself the current contents of your iPhone's clipboard.



Instead of using the app, you will use the button it adds to your iPhone's sharing panel. According to Extra Thought, Mail to Self works with all iOS apps that support extensions. I found it worked with Safari and Chrome as well as apps including Dropbox, Huffington Post, and The New York Times. The button was not available, however, in iOS apps Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.