Read Later

A Pocket-inspired read-later app for Android, built with Flutter.

• Save anything — share a link to Read Later from any app, or paste a URL.
• Ad-free reading — articles are extracted on-device with a Dart port of Mozilla's Readability, so navigation, ads and clutter are stripped before anything is stored. Works offline.
• Listen like a podcast — the Android TTS engine reads articles aloud paragraph by paragraph with play/pause, skip, and playback-speed controls. The current paragraph is highlighted and auto-scrolled, and your position is saved so you can resume later. While playing, a media notification with play/pause, skip and a seek bar appears — including lock-screen controls (audio_service), and playback keeps running in the background.
• File backup — export your library to a JSON file (and restore it) through the Android native files app; you decide where it lives.
• Auto backup — optionally save a JSON backup automatically every 12 hours, 24 hours, 1 day or 15 days (Settings → Backup → Auto backup). The periodic backup runs in the background via Android WorkManager, even when the app is closed, and lands in the app's external storage.
• Favorites, archiving, search, read-progress tracking, light/dark themes.
• Simple theming — Light, Dark (Pocket red palette) or Dynamic (follows your system's Material You colors and light/dark mode), selectable in Settings → Appearance. Bold black text in light mode, bold white text in dark mode.

Getting started

flutter pub get
flutter run

JDK note

Gradle 8.14 cannot run on the Java 25 runtime bundled with Android Studio. The project's android/gradle.properties points Gradle at the JDK 24 installed on this machine (org.gradle.java.home). If you build on another machine, adjust that line or set JAVA_HOME to a JDK 21–24. kotlin.jvm.target.validation.mode=warning is set because the receive_sharing_intent plugin mixes JVM targets under newer JDKs.

Saving articles

1. In any app, tap Share and pick Read Later (a "text/plain" share).
2. Or open the app, tap +, and paste a link.
3. The app fetches the page, extracts the readable content, and saves it.

File backup

Backup/restore lives in Settings → Backup. No account or permissions are needed:

• Back up opens the Android native files app where you choose the location (e.g. Downloads, or Google Drive if you have it) and saves a read_later_backup.json.
• Restore opens the files app to pick a backup file. It merges by URL, keeping the newer copy of each article — local-only articles are never deleted.
• Auto backup saves the same JSON automatically at the frequency you pick (12 hours, 24 hours, 1 day or 15 days). The task is scheduled with Android WorkManager, so it runs even when the app isn't open, and writes read_later_auto_backup.json to the app's external files directory. The Back up now button runs it immediately; the last backup time and article count are shown below the picker.

Architecture

lib/
├── main.dart                  # entry point; wires up the Android share sheet
├── app.dart                   # providers + MaterialApp (theme, navigation)
├── models/article.dart        # Article model (statuses, JSON/DB serialization)
├── data/
│   ├── app_database.dart      # sqflite schema
│   └── article_repository.dart# ChangeNotifier store: CRUD, upsert-by-URL, merge
├── services/
│   ├── article_extractor.dart # fetch + Readability extraction + URL absolutizing
│   ├── tts_service.dart       # podcast-style TTS: segments, position, speed
│   └── backup_service.dart    # JSON export/import via the native file picker
├── screens/                   # home, add-article, reader, listening, settings
├── widgets/                   # article card, mini player bar
├── theme/app_theme.dart       # Material 3 theme (Pocket red, serif reader text)
└── utils/text_chunker.dart    # splits articles into paragraphs/TTS segments

• Reading — the reader renders the extracted HTML with flutter_widget_from_html, tracks scroll progress, and shows a mini player.
• Listening — text is chunked into ~350-character segments; each segment is spoken and then the next starts, mirroring Pocket's Listen feature. Progress (character offset + segment index) is persisted per article.
• Storage — all data lives in a local SQLite database; backups are JSON files the user saves/opens through the native files app.

Tests

flutter test

Covers the text chunker, on-device extraction (incl. ad-stripping and the metadata fallback), the repository (persistence, upsert-by-URL, backup merge, JSON round-trip), the theme system, and app-level provider wiring.

Roadmap ideas

• Download article images for fully offline reading
• Tags and text search over full content