Safari’s “reader mode” feature has, quite rightfully, won plenty of plaudits over the years, making the arrival of a similar option in the latest beta builds of Chrome for Android warmly welcomed.
But what about on the desktop?
Google don’t yet offer a similar feature built-in (other desktop browsers do) but thanks to the extensibility the browser allows, it is super easy to add it in yourself by using an extension or bookmarklet from a service like Readability.
Readability for Google Chrome
As with the ‘Reader Modes’ available on other platforms, Readability strips web pages down to their bare essentials: the content.
Site menus, social widgets, banner sliders, search boxes and text stylings are all removed to leave you with the article text and any images it features.
Readability offers both an extension and a bookmarklet to Chrome users. Both offer the same core function to let you take a web page from this:
To this, all in a single click:
A small panel of options lets you adjust the appearance, font size and paragraph spacing of an article in ‘readability’ mode.
Get Readability for Chrome
The browser extension offers more than just reader mode features, with options to send content to your Kindle or save it to your Readability account (if you have one) for later viewing.
The bookmarklet is a lighter affair and doesn’t require installation – just drag and drop onto your bookmarks bar and click when you need it.
Do you use an alternative reader mode add-on? Let us know about it in the comments section.