The Athletic Web Reading List Organizer

WHAT IT DOES

The Athletic Web Reading List Organizer reads saved articles from your The Athletic reading list and presents them in a clean, sortable panel. Each article displays its title, author, publication date, and sport category. You can sort articles by publication date, sport, or title. The extension tracks read/unread status for each article, with a visual indicator and a one-click toggle to mark articles as read or unread. A local note-taking feature lets you attach research notes, key takeaways, or reminders to individual articles. A tag system allows you to organize articles by topic, theme, or priority. A completion indicator shows your overall reading progress, and a summary displays total articles, unread count, and unique sports categories.

WHERE IT RUNS

This extension works on all The Athletic pages at theathletic.com and its subdomains, specifically on the reading list and saved articles pages. It runs on the main saved articles view, the reading list section, and any page displaying bookmarked content. The extension operates entirely within your browser and does not access The Athletic's servers directly—it reads only what is visible on the page you are viewing. It works alongside the free BotGentz extension, which provides the necessary scripting environment.

HOW TO USE

Install the extension, then navigate to theathletic.com and open your reading list or saved articles page. The extension automatically detects all articles and displays them in a panel. Click the extension's icon in your browser toolbar to open the panel. Use the sort dropdown to sort by Date, Sport, or Title. Click any article row to open it in a new tab—the article is automatically marked as read. Use the "Read" / "Unread" button to manually toggle status. Add notes using the note input field under each article. Add tags using the tag input field (comma-separated). The "Show read articles" toggle controls whether read articles appear in the list. The "Refresh" button manually updates the panel. The "Clear Local Data" button removes all local notes, tags, and read statuses.

ADAPTIVE ARTICLE EXTRACTION WITH SPORT DETECTION

Unlike simple DOM scrapers that rely on fixed selectors, this extension uses a flexible multi-selector extraction engine with fallback chains for each article field. It scans for article items using a prioritized list of selectors that reflect The Athletic's varying page structures. For each article, it extracts the title using a chain of title selectors, then falls back to data attributes or plain text parsing. The sport detection engine analyzes multiple sources—sport tags, category labels, section indicators, and even URL patterns—to determine the article's sport category. The publication date parser normalizes The Athletic's various date formats (including relative dates like "2 hours ago") into timestamps for reliable sorting. This multi-source, fallback-chain approach ensures robust article detection across different page layouts and The Athletic's evolving interface.

THE PANEL

The panel supports drag-to-move anywhere on the page. It remembers its position per site, so it stays where you placed it on theathletic.com. Click the panel header to collapse it down to just the minimized bubble, or click the expand handle to show the full panel. The panel can be resized by dragging the bottom-right corner. Press the Escape key to close the expanded panel and return to the minimized state. All panel settings, including position, size, collapsed state, sort preference, and read status visibility, are saved per site and persist across browsing sessions.

PLEASE NOTE

This extension requires the free BotGentz extension to be installed and active, as it provides the underlying DOM injection and script execution environment. The Athletic's website changes periodically, and article element structures, class names, and page layouts may be updated. When that happens, the extension may stop detecting articles until an update is released. The extension stores your sort preference, read status visibility, and all article notes, tags, and read statuses locally in your browser's storage using GM_setValue. Article data is stored as a key-value object where keys are article IDs. No data is ever sent to any server, and no personal information is collected. The extension does not read or store your The Athletic login credentials, email, or any identifying information. You can clear all stored settings and article data at any time using the "Clear Local Data" button or by clearing your browser data for theathletic.com.