SimpRead (简悦) for Chrome and Firefox: a reader view that exports to your notes

What SimpRead solves and who it is for

Most pages are built for scanning, not reading. Navigation, sidebars, comment widgets and ad slots sit around the article text. SimpRead approaches that problem from two directions at once. The first is a reading view: the README describes a focus mode that only highlights the part of the page worth reading without changing the page structure, and a reading mode that extracts title, description, body and media into a new page. The second is what happens after reading: the project ships export to Markdown, HTML, PNG, PDF, EPUB, offline HTML, Textbundle and Markdeep, plus send-to-Kindle, Pocket and Instapaper, and integrations with Yuque, Nutstore, flomo, Youdao Note, WizNote, Joplin, Dropbox, GitHub, Notion, OneNote, Google Drive and Evernote.

The audience follows from that. If you read long-form articles in a browser and your notes live in a Markdown-based tool, SimpRead is aimed at you. The README positions the 2.0 line as "阅读模式 + 剪藏 + 标注 + 稍后读", that is reading mode plus clipping, annotation and read-later, described as glue for knowledge management. The annotation system is called the most important feature of 2.0, with five highlight colors, four styles, automatic detection of text, images and code blocks, and a tag system the README says supports unlimited nesting, with a note and tag on each tag. If you only want a distraction-free view and never export anything, the reading modes alone are the useful part and the rest is weight you can ignore.

How the reading view and the export pipeline actually work

Two pieces of machinery are visible from the repository. The first is site adaptation. The README states that the reading mode was built by adapting hundreds of site types, and links to a site list at simpread.ksria.cn/sites/. That is the mechanism: rather than one generic readability heuristic, the project carries per-site adapters that know where the title, body and media live on each domain. The README also lists forum pages and pagination (Zhihu, Baidu Tieba), code highlighting, local HTML, a TXT reader, LaTeX, a Markdown reader, and some scientific journal sites as covered cases. The trade-off is direct: a site the adapters do not know falls back to focus mode or manual selection, where you drag over the content yourself and choose which mode to generate.

The second piece is the export layer. The README frames it as a set of services and an automation feature it calls SimpRead's IFTTT, meaning several actions chained together. Custom export is documented as a way to reach Obsidian, Roam Research and Logseq, and Webhooks are listed as an export target. That matters for engineers because a webhook is the one path where you control the receiving end. If a named integration is broken or missing, a webhook plus your own endpoint is the escape hatch the documentation itself offers.

The repository layout matches this split. The top level holds ext/, src/, webpack.config.js and webpack.config.ext.js, so the extension build and the surrounding web assets are separate webpack entry points. package.json names the project simpread_project_workflow and describes it as "SimpRead develop/deploy", which tells you what this repository is: the source and build toolchain for the extension, not a library you import.

Installing SimpRead and getting one clean article out

For normal use you do not build anything. The README points at the Chrome Web Store, an offline .crx download, a UserScript build on Greasy Fork for browsers that support UserScripts (it names Apple Safari, Microsoft Edge, Opera and Dolphin), and separate iPhone, iPad and Android versions. Start with the store listing for your browser.

If you are working from this repository instead, the build is a webpack pipeline driven by npm scripts. The develop script runs a development build in watch mode, and publish runs the production build. The ext_dev and ext_pub scripts do the same for the second webpack config, which is the one that produces the extension bundle.

npm install
npm run develop
npm run publish

After npm run publish, the built extension is what you load into the browser as an unpacked extension. The repository does not spell out the output directory in the files available here, so check the webpack config before pointing the browser at a folder.

Once the extension is active, the first real use is a page you actually want to keep. Open the article, trigger the reading mode, and you should get the extracted title, body and images on a clean page. From there, export. If your notes live in a Markdown tool, the custom export path is the one the README points at for Obsidian, Roam Research and Logseq; if you want to receive the page yourself, configure a Webhook target and read the payload on your own endpoint. The README gives no example payload, so treat the first webhook call as a discovery step.

Where SimpRead is the wrong tool

The clearest limitation is the one the project states about itself. Focus mode exists because some sites are not adapted for reading mode. If you read a long tail of small or new sites, you will spend time in focus mode or manual selection rather than getting an automatic clean page. That is a different experience from a tool that applies one generic extraction algorithm everywhere and accepts the occasional miss.

The second limitation is the interface and documentation language. The README, the docs at ksria.com/simpread/docs and the help center are Chinese-first. The related searches include "Simpread english", which suggests people look for an English entry point and the project does not document one. If your team cannot read Chinese documentation, adopting this is harder than the feature list implies.

The third is the repository itself. package.json pins webpack ^1.14.0, react ^0.14.8 and babel-core ^6.21.0, with engines set to node >= 0.10.0. That is an old toolchain. Building from source in 2026 means either reproducing a legacy Node environment or upgrading the build yourself, and the repository does not describe a supported modern build path. The last push to the repository was on 2026-09-05, so work is happening, but the declared dependency ranges are the constraint you will hit first, not the commit date.

Finally, the licence split is worth noting. The repository LICENSE is GPL-3.0 while package.json declares "license": "MIT". Those two statements do not agree, and the project does not explain the difference. If you plan to reuse code, resolve that before you do.

SimpRead compared with SingleFile and with plain reader modes

SingleFile appears in the related searches, and the comparison is instructive. SingleFile's job is to capture a page faithfully as a single self-contained HTML file. SimpRead's job is to rebuild the page into a reading view first and then export the rebuilt result. Those are opposite priorities. If your requirement is an archival copy that proves what the page looked like, including its original layout, a faithful single-file capture is the right shape and SimpRead's extraction step is a liability because it changes the document. If your requirement is text you will read and annotate later, SimpRead's extraction is the point, and the README argues that content routed through its reading mode imports into productivity tools better than those tools' own clippers.

Against a browser's built-in reader view, the difference is the export and annotation layer. A built-in reader gives you a clean page and stops there. SimpRead adds annotations with five colors and a nested tag system, a read-later store with what the README calls bidirectional links, a knowledge graph and a Mindmap, and multiple layouts for that store named Evergreen, Workflowy and Kanban. It also reads local HTML files. Whether that extra layer is worth the extension's footprint depends entirely on whether you want the notes, not just the view.

Maintenance, upgrade cost and licence implications

The repository is not archived and the last push was on 2026-09-05, so the source is being touched. The release history is uneven, though: 2.2.0.520 is dated 2025-07-13, and before it the listed releases jump back to 1.1.4.6025 in June 2020 and 1.1.4.6022 a few days earlier. Between those two points sits the whole 2.0 rewrite the README describes, so the release list does not show the intermediate steps. If you depend on a specific behaviour, check the releases page rather than assuming a steady cadence.

Upgrade cost is where a source build gets expensive. The declared devDependencies are from the webpack 1 and Babel 6 era, and the engines field accepts Node 0.10.0 and above. Any attempt to build this on a current Node release will run into those ranges. For users of the store or UserScript builds none of that matters, because the release is prebuilt. For anyone forking, it is the first real task.

On licensing: the repository ships a GPL-3.0 LICENSE file, while package.json states MIT. GPL-3.0 carries copyleft obligations that MIT does not, so the two are not interchangeable for anyone redistributing modified code. This is not legal advice; if you intend to ship a derivative, get the discrepancy resolved with the maintainer or a lawyer before you build on it.

Editorial conclusion

Adopt SimpRead if you read long articles in Chrome or Firefox and want one step from page to Markdown or a note tool, and you are comfortable with a Chinese-first interface and documentation. Do not adopt it if you need a documented rollback path for your annotations, or if you expect a stable public API from this repository. Verify first that the site you read most is covered by the site adapters, and that the export target you rely on is one of the listed services.

Frequently asked questions

Official sources

1. Kenshin/simpread on GitHub
2. License: GPL-3.0
3. Project website
4. README
5. Releases