Before I pull myself the last couple of steps up from my recent blogging funk, a quick item from the “Things I Wished I’d Known for the Last Two Years Department.” My major, major, major frustration with Google Reader has always been what I thought was the inability for me to mark a post “unread.” As with my practice in Firefox when I leave like 87 tabs open, by work flow is such that I just like to keep alive all the potentially good stuff I scan through when I don’t really have time to read it. The “Add a Star” feature in Reader has never done the job, and I have been staring at the stupid “Mark as Read” button (which I have never understood the purpose of) wishing I could turn it into “Mark as UNread.” No amount of staring helped.
So today, I find out all you have to do is hit the “M” key on a post to keep it active in Google Reader. I know, I know…I should have spent more time on the shortcuts page.
Not sure what it says that my life suddenly feels a whole bunch better right now. Sad, I know.
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You’re the man! I guess sometimes it pays to read directions or the shortcuts page, in this case. Starring items is a great idea, but I still haven’t taken the time to go back to my starred items yet - maybe this summer. In the meanwhile, I’ll be hitting that M key.
Ann
That M is a shortcut for unchecking Mark as Read which you can do by just clicking on it
You’re not alone! For some reason, it took me months and months to identify the symbol next to “Mark as Read” as a checked checkbox that I could uncheck.
I’ve been using Google Reader for a while and never knew about that trick - thanks!
Interestingly enough, I recently noticed that the “Mark as Read” box has been changed to a “Keep Unread” box (pressing “M” still works), which makes the whole process a bit clearer and intuitive.