Finally, Chrome desktop gets Reader Mode, here’s how to activate it

chrome reader mode

For whatever reasons, Google has been withholding one of the most important features for a browser; the Reader Mode. Other competing browsers like Firefox and Safari have had this feature for years.

A reader mode is useful especially to users who hate having to deal with ads, auto-play videos, and web pages with lots of bells and whistles. The feature simply strips all the nuisance away leaving you with just the important texts and unformatted images.

For the record, this feature has been available on Chrome on Android since 2014, but it seems Google stopped there and forgot about the desktop version until now. Last Thursday, the company quietly added the feature under the experimental flags on the Chrome Canary.

That is to say, this feature is currently only meant for developers and high-technical users (read nerds). So it is quite rough on the edges, and if you are not any of the aforementioned, you are better off waiting for a better-baked version.

If, however, you are willing to give it a go. You must first install the Google Chrome Canary if you don’t already have it. Launch the browser and go to the Flag page with the ‘Enable Reader Mode.’ Click on the ‘Enable’ option and then restart the browser.

You can now go to the web page you would like to read, and after it is loaded up, click on the three dots next to your profile picture. Then click on ‘distill page.’ If the web page you are reading is an article or having lots of text content, it will be stripped down to no ads, videos, or special formatting.

You will simply get black texts and still pictures against a white background within a single column. Like mentioned earlier, the Chrome Reader Mode is still in beta mode.

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