Chrome Story

Google Chrome to Get ‘Read Anything’ Feature for Sidebar

Select Fonts for Chrome Read Anything Feature

Google seems to be experimenting with a new version of reader mode called Read Anything. The new feature will be available on the Chrome sidebar.

Read Anything

This isn’t the first time Google is trying to help us read web content. We have seen ‘distilled’ versions of web pages on desktop and Android. This feature was called Reader Mode.

So, what’s new?

The main change is the integration with the sidebar. Looking at the early versions of this feature, we can read a cleaned-up version of web pages (no ads, and other features, simple text and images view) on the sidebar.

Before I show you that, here is the flag that enables the feature:

Read Anything: Enables the Read Anything feature which generates a reader-friendly view of web pages. Open the side panel and select Read Anything to try the feature.

There is one more related flag:

Read Anything with Screen2x: Have Read Anything use a local machine learning model for web page distillation.

Now, here is an early look at this feature.

Read Anything
Colors
Fonts

The feature isn’t fully functional; hence, we do not know how users will add pages to the reader. Stay tuned to Chrome Story for more updates on this.

We will have a short demo video on our YouTube channel as well soon.

Source: Chromium Gerrit.

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4 responses to “Google Chrome to Get ‘Read Anything’ Feature for Sidebar”

  1. Kat Wonders

    There is nothing that Google releases that I would use, they’re going to kill it in a couple of years like Reader (RIP).

    Reply
    1. Dinsan – Bangalore, India – Digital Minimalist & Content Developer. Drinks Tea and writes Stuff (mostly about Chromebooks). My views are mostly copied from others.
      Dinsan

      That is true.

      Reply
    2. Matt

      I am just now coming to this realization. I have been using Google products for just over 3 years now and I think when they killed Stadia, I invested heavily into it, I started rethinking my loyalty to their products and company. Do you recommend anything as far as a reader that includes pdf’s, epub, MD, and txt files? I’m tempted to just use a text editor.

      Reply
      1. Dinsan – Bangalore, India – Digital Minimalist & Content Developer. Drinks Tea and writes Stuff (mostly about Chromebooks). My views are mostly copied from others.
        Dinsan

        I hear you!

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