Top browser and extensions for best reading experience

Do you read a lot of articles on the web? Then this article is for you. I use both Firefox and Chrome as my browser. As a part of my job, I have to read a lot of articles, for research. And we all know, not all sites are that friendly to users. There are ads, popups, other distractions, or sometimes the formatting is too much complicated.

Reader mode/view is the option that can remove all those distractions away, and let you focus on your reading.

 I have tried Firefox reader view and a lot of chrome extensions for an extended period of time. And here is what I found. 

After discussing the default reader option available in the browser, I am going to present to you a list of chrome extensions, which will make your reading experience a lot better. 

Default option in Firefox (This is perfect):

If you don’t use Firefox then ignore this section. I am including this section because I really like the reader’s view implementation of Firefox.

The option is beside the URL on top. This option only appears when it detects an article, not for all web pages. Click on the icon if you want to get a reader view of the article.

After clicking on the icon you will get a view like this. A simple and clean view with only the article content, nothing else.

Do not forget to check the options on the left. You can change text size, font, the background of the page (dark mode is available)

If you prefer to listen instead of reading the text, there is an option too.

Try it. It is really a good implementation I think. Properly implemented, simple but perfect options.

Default option in Chrome:

Chrome does not have available reader mode options right now. It will probably be available in the future.

But there is an experimental flag that you can use to switch reader mode on. To enable the experimental flag, go to: chrome://flags , In your chrome browser.

Search for enable-reader-mode in the search box and select Enabled from the dropdown on right.

Restart your browser, and you have reader mode now.

To see the reader mode go to the Chrome options icon on the top right and choose Toggle Reader Mode.

Don’t want to go through all those steps in chrome. Try the following extensions. 

Best Chrome extensions for readers:

Here we have 10 extensions for chrome which will give you a pleasant reading experience. Check the features and pros & cons, then decide which extension works best for you.

Use any of these extensions for better reading.

Mercury Reader

Offered by https://postlight.com/, this extension is very popular. With lots and lots of downloads, this extension is one of the best available for chrome. Cleans out distraction and only leave text and images, which in turn gives you a very clear view of the content and enables you to absorb more information from the page content.

Features:

• Clears out the distraction.
• Has keyboard shortcuts available.
• Can optimize the printing view.

Offered by yokris.dev, this extension has the option to filter out button, background, text size, contrast etc. Reader view implements Mozilla’s open-source readability implementations. Has lots of downloads.

Features:

Offered by https://justread.link/, this extension has lots of downloads, works really really well. This extension has a premium option with a very reasonable price. Premium service offers you – sharing the clean content, add annotation, and domain specific content selector. Free options contains basic options for a reader view.

Features:

• Remove distractions like weird page style, popup, ad, comment.
• Default dark and white theme.
• Customizable theme.
• Print content customization.
• Customizable options.

EasyReader

Offered by https://www.antonj.se, one of the options for reader view. It really helps for getting a comfortable view. Design is not that great but has the option to block section of content.

Features:

• Easy content selection on-page to read.
• Content index available.
• Color, font, size customization.
• Print customization.
• Content highlighting.

DOM Distiller Reading Mode

Offered by metarmask, this extension distills and display content and shows an ugly website properly. Works consistently, and figures out important part of the pages, also presents a mobile friendly view on your phone. This extension has frequent updates.

Features:

• Font customization support.
• Multiple page content concatenation support.

AlphaText – Make text readable!

Features:

• Readability improvement.
• Fixes broken style and poorly formatted text.
• Customizable configuration and ability to save the configuration.
• Automic style and color adjustment.
• Clear distractions like multimedia.

Simply Reader

Offered by Awedoo Studio, this extension has a decent download. It gives you are beautiful to view content. Gives you options for change theme, and other options.

Features:

• Choose a font from limited options, customize text size, choose color schema from light, sepia, dark
• Select and copy the text.
• Shortcuts available.

Tranquility Reader

Removes unnecessary elements from webpage. Use the options on navigation bar. It supports offline mode, export and import of content. This is a good option for implementing reader view using your browser.

Features:

• Removes page elements that are not required.
• Save content offline.
• Export and import offline content.
• Customizable font and color.
• Include a note to some portions of offline content.

Reeader – Minimal reader with speed reading

• Minimal and opensource option.
• Different themes are available.
• Speed reading available for fast reading.

Reader View for Google Chrome

Offered by https://readerview.freebusinessapps.net/, this extension works with google drive, also supports offline mode. This extension removes clutters from web page contents and increases their readability.

This app uses the Readability library from Mozilla, so it gives the almost same result and experience as you have on the Firefox browser.

You can save the content on Google drive and also on your computer. Privacy is taken care of properly in the extension, and all the content and files are deleted from their server after processing. All the processing is done on their server, so it does not require many resources on your computer.

Features:

• Remove distraction like button, background.
• Customize font size, contrast, and layout.

Finally, if you use Firefox, then use the reader view, it works well, and I highly recommend it. If you use Chrome, then try any of the extensions. They will give you a similar result.

Thanks for reading.