reader-view ports Firefox's Readability to Chromium, and ships three versions side by side

Mozilla's reader mode, ported to Chromium

reader-view is a browser extension whose stated purpose is to access Firefox's built in reader view from a right click context menu, and the repository description says the same thing. What it actually does is bring Mozilla's open source Readability implementation to Chromium.

That is the whole mechanism. The parsing that decides what is the article and what is clutter is Mozilla's, not the author's. The extension is the plumbing that gets that parser running in a browser family that does not ship it, and the parser is what strips away things like buttons and background images and changes the page's text size, contrast and layout for better readability.

So the value proposition is narrow and clear. If you use Chromium and you want Firefox's reader mode on a site that Chromium's own reader mode either refuses or handles badly, this is the tool. If you want configurable typography, a font picker or a dark mode for the stripped article, this is not that tool, because the extension's user interface is a toggle.

The interaction model is one button. The README says the extension allows you to toggle between normal view and reader view by pressing the page action button, and the repository description frames that as a right click context menu entry. Either way it is a single action that switches the page in place, not a separate reader window and not a service that rewrites the page for you.

The licence is MPL-2.0, and the primary language of the repository is JavaScript.

It ships to four browser families, which is where most of the work is

The Links section of the README lists a homepage, a produce review post, and a download for each of four browsers: Chrome, Firefox, Opera and Edge.

Firefox has an add-on listing, which is unsurprising given the origin of the code. Chrome, Opera and Edge each have their own extension listing, and the Opera and Edge entries point at the addons.opera.com and microsoftedge.microsoft.com addon pages rather than at a shared codebase. Edge in particular now uses its own addon store, so an extension that wants to be present by default in Edge has to be submitted there separately.

That four-way distribution is a real engineering burden for a project this small, and it explains something about the repository layout that would otherwise look odd. The top level contains a v1/ directory, a v2/ directory and a v3/ directory, alongside misc/ and tests/.

Keeping three generations of the extension side by side is what you do when each browser family needs a different manifest generation, or when a change to the build for one browser risks breaking the others. The README does not explain the versioning scheme, and the directory names are the only signal available. That is the first thing to check before you modify anything, because a change that goes into the wrong directory will not reach the browsers you expect it to.

The homepage is a webextension.org listing rather than a site of the author's own, and there is a blog post linked about producing a review of the extension, which suggests the project is maintained in the open for extension reviewers as much as for users.

Installing it: a store listing per browser, and no build step

There is no install command to copy, because the extension is distributed through the browser stores and the README gives you one link per browser family.

The Links section lists a homepage at a webextension.org listing, a post about producing a review of the extension, and then a listing for Chrome, one for Firefox on addons.mozilla.org, one for Opera on addons.opera.com and one for Edge on the Microsoft Edge add-ons site.

So the first real use is a store install. You open your browser's extension listing from those links, install it, and then the extension appears as a page action button. Pressing it switches the current page into reader view, and pressing it again returns the page to its normal form.

Because the extension is ported from Mozilla's Readability, the behaviour you get in Chromium is the Firefox reader experience rather than the Chromium one, which is the entire point of the project.

The one thing the README does not tell you is which of the v1, v2 and v3 directories in the repository corresponds to the build your browser store serves. If you are only using the extension, that does not matter. If you intend to build from source, it is the first thing to establish.

What the README does not tell you, and where to look instead

The documentation here is thin, and the gaps are specific enough to name.

There is no install command and no build instructions in the README. The reason is visible in the Links section: the extension is distributed through the browser stores, so the install path is the store listing for your browser, and the ones listed are Chrome, Firefox, Opera and Edge. There is nothing to compile unless you are changing the source, and the README does not describe how to do that either.

There is no description of the permissions the extension requests, no list of which sites it is allowed to act on, and no privacy policy in the README. For an extension whose entire job is to parse and rewrite the content of pages you visit, that is the information you would most want to have, and it is not here.

There is also no changelog and no release history beyond the repository tags, and the release list for the repository is empty. The Recent releases section of the project metadata records no GitHub releases, so the version a store serves is tracked outside this repository.

What the repository does have is a tests/ directory, a misc/ directory, and the three version directories. So the information exists somewhere in the tree, and for anyone evaluating the extension, reading the test files and the contents of misc/ is the substitute for a README that does not exist. That is a legitimate way to work with an open source extension, and it is also the reason this article is necessarily about the shape of the project rather than about its features, because the features are one sentence long.

Where reader-view is the wrong choice

Three cases, and only the first one is about the software.

The first is that this is a toggle, not a reader. The extension switches the page between its normal form and the stripped form, and the README describes nothing else: no settings panel, no font size control, no theme choice, no width setting, no list of rules for which sites to open automatically. If your problem is that articles are hard to read because the font is too small or the line length is wrong, this does not solve it, because the readability adjustments it does make are the ones Mozilla's parser makes by default.

The second is that the extension duplicates something the browser may already do. Chrome and Edge both have a built in reader mode these days, and Firefox has the original. The case for this extension is that the built in modes are not always good enough, most often because the built in parsers are conservative about what they consider an article, or because the extension's behaviour differs between browsers in a way you prefer. If the built in mode already handles the sites you read, this is one more extension permission for no gain.

The third is the one you cannot check from the README. An extension that reads and rewrites every page you open is a privileged component, and the README here does not state the permission scope, the host permissions, or whether anything is transmitted anywhere. The project links a Ko-Fi and a PayPal for supporting development, and the code is described as Mozilla's open source implementation ported, which is a reasonable basis for trust, and it is still not the same as a documented permission list.

What the extension is good for is narrow and real: a single site you read regularly where the built in reader mode fails, and a button that fixes it.

One maintainer, a sponsorship link, and a repository that keeps moving

The Support Development section lists two ways to support the project, a PayPal link under PayPay and a Ko-Fi link, both pointing at webextension.org accounts.

That is the entirety of the governance and funding information, and it tells you something about the shape of the project. A single extension, ported from an upstream Mozilla implementation, distributed to four browser stores, with a sponsorship link and no organisation behind it.

The repository is not archived and the last push was on 2026-10-01, so the code is being touched. The topic list in the project metadata is minimal, and the repository has a .github/ directory and a tests/ directory, which is a reasonable minimum for an extension that is going to be reviewed by several stores.

For a user, none of this changes what the extension does. For someone who wants to contribute, the v1, v2 and v3 directories mean the first question is which of them you are working on, and the answer is not in the README.

The honest summary is that reader-view is a small, focused port that does one thing, ships to the four browser families that matter, and leaves the user interface at a single toggle. That is a coherent product decision. It is also the reason the project can be maintained by one person and still be present in every store, and the reason there is not much to read in the documentation.

Editorial conclusion

Adopt reader-view if you work in a Chromium based browser and want Mozilla's Readability parsing on pages the built-in reader mode does not handle, and you are comfortable with an extension whose documentation is minimal. Do not adopt it if you need configurable typography, or if a maintained reader mode already covers the sites you read, since the extension offers a toggle and nothing more. Before installing, check which version directory in the repository corresponds to the build you are about to install from the store, and read the entries in the misc/ directory before changing any parsing behaviour, since the README documents neither.

Frequently asked questions

Official sources

1. Issues
2. License: MPL-2.0
3. Project website
4. README
5. rNeomy/reader-view on GitHub