Reader mode

Reader mode shows an article as plain, comfortable reading: the text, its pictures and headings, without menus, ads, pop-ups or scripts. It also frees most of the page's memory.

Using it

• When a page looks like an article, Aa appears in the toolbar.
• Click Aa, press ⇧⌘R, or choose View → Reader Mode.
• Press ⇧⌘R or click Aa again to return to the original page, where you left it.

The reader view shows the site, the title, the authors and an estimated reading time, then the article. It follows the system's light or dark appearance, and ⌘+ and ⌘− change the text size.

Following a link from the reader view opens that page normally in the same tab.

If Litr can't find an article on the page, it says "No article on this page".

Memory

Entering reader mode throws the original page away, along with its scripts, ads and trackers. The article is shown as a static page, which typically needs a fraction of the memory. An NRK article went from 131 MB to 61 MB. Leaving reader mode loads the original page again, with its back and forward history and scroll position.

A tab that is unloaded while in reader mode comes back as the original page.

How it works

Litr uses Mozilla's Readability, the engine behind Firefox's Reader View, to find the article. It runs in WebKit's isolated script world, so the page's own scripts can't see or interfere with it. Readability is licensed under the Apache License 2.0.