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by r3bl 3146 days ago
> reader view (not sure if chrome has that out of the box nowadays)

As far as I can tell, Firefox, Safari and Edge all seem to have it, and Chrome does not. Not on mobile, and not on desktop.

There are some extensions that accomplish the same. I've had some good (but very limited) experience using Mercury Viewer some time ago: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/mercury-reader/okn...

2 comments

It's not in Google's interest to allow you to see a site without their ads.
I think Chrome does have it on mobile, because it prompts me to "reader view" a page when it isn't properly formatted for reading, on Android 7.
Ah, you are correct, it does have it for non-mobile-optimized pages. Completely forgot about that.

I would still argue that its function is different than the "reader view" functions of other browsers, but it does have it.

Mobile Chrome has some broken heuristic to prompt it. I never know when I can expect it to appear. Sometimes the website already looks good and it appears. Sometimes it looks horrible and it does not appear.

Also sometimes this "reader view" looks worse then the original. It has too small font for my taste. When you pinch to zoom it looks like it changes the font size, but also the viewport. So it is entirely useless.

I expect that it will be removed (or replaced) in future.