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iOS/Android: Using your commute time to read is a noble goal in theory, and an uphill battle in practice, between crowded trains, interruptions for transfers, and the difficulty of focusing on a long read or massive novel in five-minute increments. But if you still want to get some reading done in the few minutes of downtime you can find on your journey to work, look into Shortly, which presents you with stories that are just the right length for your trip.


Shortly is an iOS and Android app that pulls top-rated stories from Reddit’s /r/writingprompts community. Pulling from the best of the community’s short stories usually means you’ll read interesting takes on prompts like “You’re a killer dumping your latest victim into the river. Just as you’re about to be done, you spot another person. Doing exactly the same thing. And they’ve just spotted you, too.” Happy Halloween!


When you open Shortly, you can choose between a one, three, or five-minute story from the community, and you’ll be able to see the story’s writing prompt along with the story itself. If you’ve got another few minutes to kill, you can head back to the main page and refresh for a new story. Its simple interface and random story selection means you can just open it and start reading, knowing that the story will exactly fit into the few minutes you’ve got left on your journey (and that you can start another one when your train is, once again, delayed).

