If you regularly check the news on the net, you probably know that reading a web page on a smartphone is far from a pleasant experience. Between fonts that are too small, advertisements and pop-ups popping up everywhere, the comfort of reading on a mobile remains poor. The good news is that Google Chrome for Android has a hidden reader mode which allows for a much more pleasant reading experience..
The new reading mode of Google Chrome
When we talk about smartphones, we often think of screen size, processor power or RAM memory size, but rarely read comfort. And yet this question is far from anecdotal.
We spend an average of more than 3 hours a day in front of the screen of our smartphones. Obviously all this is not without consequence on the health of our poor pupils. To avoid unnecessarily tiring our eyes, there are various tools supposed to improve the comfort of reading web pages. This is the case, for example, with the Pocket application or Yooboox..
It is one of the most useful apps on an Android smartphone. Thanks to it, you will not only be able to save an article to read it later but also to modify the font of the text, change the background color and even delete all the elements that can affect reading comfort such as menus or advertisements.
Activate the reading mode of Chrome on Android
But now, the use of these tools requires you to download a third-party application. When you start to run out of storage space it is not necessarily the optimal solution. So not to waste time sorting through your photos and music, here is a tip to activate the playback mode directly integrated into Google Chrome..
This new option offers, with some details, the same functionality as the tools presented below. You will be able to extract the text from a web page and display it on a plain background without any advertising or sidebar.
You are probably wondering how it is that I do not know the read mode function. Rest assured it's normal. The Chrome web browser for Android smartphones has many hidden so-called experimental functions.
The Read command, like many other functions, is activated from a hidden menu called flags. If you are a frequent reader of Prodgmeobile.com, you certainly already know the manipulation to be carried out to reach it. For the others, here is a catch-up session.
- Open Google Chrome web browser
- Type in the search bar chrome: // flags taking care of the test no space between each character
- Press the Ok button
- Then enter the word Reader Mode in the search flags field
- Click the multiple choice button and select the Always option
- Then press the Relaunch button to restart Chrome
You do not see the Reader Mode triggering option appear in the hidden options of Android? No wonder. The latest versions of Google Chrome have a playback mode integrated natively into browser settings.
You can activate it very easily from the application menus. We explain how it works.
- Launch Google Chrome
- Press the Menu button (3 points) on the right
- Click on the Parameters section
- Scroll down the window to the Advanced settings section
- Select the Accessibility option
- Check the Simplified view for web pages box
- Then return to the Chrome home page
How to use Chrome reading mode
The reading mode of Google Chrome (also called simplified view) emphasizes simplicity. Its use presents no particular difficulty. This device is launched directly from the browser interface.
- Open the web page whose display you want to change
- Click on the banner that appears at the bottom of the screen
- Wait a few seconds
- Chrome then takes care of displaying a light version of the site
- Press the Menu button
- Select the Settings option to change the font size as well as the background color
If you want to return to the original version of the web page, simply click on the little cross in the upper left corner. The simplified view function, although very practical, can sometimes be improved. Indeed, some sites block the display of articles when advertisements and popups are not present on the screen.