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A browser extension to make Medium more readable
- okket 8y agoIf you use Safari there is no need for an app or extension. Just right click (macOS) / long press (iOS) on the "Reader" symbol and activate "Use Reader Automatically on 'medium.com'". Same procedure for any branded domain that uses Medium.
- bluefin 8y agoFF also has a "Reader Mode" (F9), though it gets rid of all images.
- ericpauley 8y ago> Read and change all your data on the websites you visit Better luck next time.
- samschooler 8y agoYou can build it from source if you would like. It needs to do that because some (most) medium posts are not on the medium.com domain. https://github.com/thebaer/MMRA https://github.com/thebaer/MMRA
- sus_007 8y agoWhen I want a readable Medium, I simply toggle the Firefox's built-in Reader View(Ctrl+Alt+R). It's readable enough for me.
- spraak 8y agoCan it make Medium not ask me to pay for a subscription after N (3 at this time) articles?
- stephengillie 8y agoIn what ways could Medium have financial income without transferring the wealth from us?
- slig 8y agoAsking its publishers to pay? Like WordPress or Ghost does.
- anant90 8y agoOpening in incognito is usually good enough to bypass Medium's paywall.
- terragon 8y agoShh. Lest they fix that bug.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- otras 8y agoEvery time this pops up on my radar, I always consider taking a stab at adding the “make articles with gifs better” feature mentioned in the github issue, but I always end up too busy with other work. I’ll carve out some time this weekend to give it a shot. My workload stars are aligned for some open source, and that would be a great feature!
- r3n 8y agoIn Safari you can ask it to load certain websites with reader view automatically. If you do so, Safari will change to reader view as soon as it can render the page. This how I deal with the annoying stuff in Medium.
- larkinrichards 8y agoThis is a nice feature! Edit: for those wondering, visit a website and long press the reader button on the left side of the address bar to enable.
- nichos 8y agoFirefox on mobile does this too. Can't live without it on my phone.
- craftyguy 8y ago> This how I deal with the annoying stuff in Medium. I deal with it by avoiding medium. Seriously, why support them in any way with page views/whatever if you disagree with their presentation method?
- blaqkangel 8y agoI would be interested in moving on from Medium but haven't found a serviceable alternative. Do you have any recommendations?
- Froyoh 8y agoWhat's with everyone using the "Make X Great Again" phrase?
- arbie 8y agoI take it you're not from North America?
- infinityplus1 8y agoThey are mocking Trump
- minitech 8y agoYeah, it’s too bad about the name because this extension otherwise seems really good. (Just a minor annoyance, but as you say, one that comes up constantly…)
- hprotagonist 8y agoI use the Unobstruct ios app to dedickbar medium. Works quite well. https://medium.com/@tgaul/introducing-unobstruct-230e4e95cf5e https://medium.com/@tgaul/introducing-unobstruct-230e4e95cf5...
- ronjouch 8y agoI use Unobstruct on iOS too and would love an equivalent in my browser. Does anyone know one? (uBlockOrigin-usable blocklist or extension)
- rainbowmverse 8y agoI don't know if the mobile version of uBlock Origin has it, but there's an eye dropper button if you click the uBlock button on the toolbar. You can use that to build block rules automagically. It reminds me of the API spies people used to make for Visual Basic 6.
- ronjouch 8y agoThanks; I know how to make these rules and I have a few, but there's a lot of them (lots of medium domains, and lots of non-medium ones that also deserve the same treatment (de-dickbar-ification), both of them constantly changing) so I'm looking for something assembled & maintained by a community. I'll get in touch with EasyList folks (there's already a CookieMonster list to get rid of EU cookie clutter, an Unobstruct one would be similar or both could be merged) and the author of Unobstruct.
- shabbyrobe 8y agoUnobstruct is awesome! On the desktop, Unstick for Firefox gives you a little nuke icon that gets rid of any dickbars anywhere you happen to find them: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/unstickall/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/unstickall/ That, plus uBlock Origin's "right click, block element" feature for things I visit regularly, gives me a significantly better Internet experience than I'd otherwise be stuck having.
- Cofike 8y agoI just have a bookmarklet that removes any sticky elements.
- wtallis 8y agoI've been doing something similar for years, though the implementation method has changed some as my preferred browser and the set of available extensions has shifted. I want to browse the web with a white-list approach to which pages are allowed to display elements that are anchored to screen coordinates rather than scrolling with the page. Generally speaking, the only pages that should be permitted to pin an element in front of the main content are web apps, but most of the pages I visit are (or should be) purely document-oriented.
- ravenstine 8y ago> Open in App To all sites that do this(I'm looking at you, Reddit), no, I do not want to install yet another app just to continue reading. The web is already designed for reading. You hear that?
- cowpig 8y agoI honestly don't understand why sites do this. Can someone explain it to me?
- scruffyherder 8y agoBetter information on the users, you can harvest their actual location, phone number, contacts, email etc... Instead of being restricted to a browser, you are on their device, with whatever access you want.
- muppetman 8y agoBecause if they can get an app on your device, they can push messages at you easier. Track your usage of the app, assign it a unique ID etc. The app will auto-update, so as new features/tracking/things are desired, they can push these out to devices. Basically, they get more control of the end user.
- tbiteteitb 8y agoAnalytics. They can get a boatload of data from the app that can't be obtained through the browser.
- trishume 8y agoI want to install this addon, but it asks for permission to view and modify data on all sites. Both for security and loading javascript on every page I visit reasons, I wish there was a version that only bound to medium.com. I know I could compile one from source but that's a hassle.
- dredmorbius 8y agoAn alternative is ... to install onlyone extension that tracks allyour activity everywhere (Stylus), and write or apply CSS stylesheets to fix annoyances. The set I use. https://plus.google.com/104092656004159577193/posts/hFzKwoiroQn https://plus.google.com/104092656004159577193/posts/hFzKwoir... Firefox's Reader mode also works well. (It's among the targets I've restyled.)
- pmontra 8y agoYou can also use uBlock to hide parts of a page. It's much easier to use on a phone. Pick the area on screen, possibly select a parent or children in the list on the popup, preview, confirm and it's gone.
- dredmorbius 8y agoYep, and I do. Multiple modes, defence in depth.
- gok2 8y agoagreed
- thebaer 8y agoThen it wouldn't work on Medium-powered sites like hackernoon.com. There is an open, up-for-grabs issue to fix that permission [0] if anyone wants to help us solve this! In the meantime, there isn't anything crazy you have to do to make it only work on medium.com -- just clone the repo to your machine, change this one line to "https://medium.com/*" https://medium.com/*" [1], and then load the extension in your browser. [0] https://github.com/thebaer/MMRA/issues/15 https://github.com/thebaer/MMRA/issues/15 [1] https://github.com/thebaer/MMRA/blob/master/manifest.json#L27 https://github.com/thebaer/MMRA/blob/master/manifest.json#L2...
- dzonga 8y agoMedium, is now full of clickbaitish articles + content marketing from various people pandering their online courses. Way different from the medium, I fell into when I discovered it. Recently deleted the mobile app.
- tandav 8y agoMedium golden age was 2015-2016. Then it started transforming to clickbait-y, ugly garbage. My experience: personal blogs (github.io/whatever) has the most amount of insights, 'a-ha moments', usefull info.
- java_script 8y ago> A browser extension to make Medium less annoying. So this just blanks out the articles or what?
- Gatsky 8y agoThis gave me a good laugh. In my domain (healthcare), the articles on Medium are rubbish.
- drngdds 8y agoThey're not all that great in the software field, either. 75% of them are just content marketing.
- jasonkostempski 8y agoI went one step further and made myself an FF extension to blank out any links to Medium (and other useless sites) from any page. I forget they exist until I come across one of the countless posts complaining about the suck. Or I realise the reason images and other content arent showing is because it's a custom domain hosted by medium, then they get added to the list.
- cyberferret 8y agoI miss the old medium, with it's "Collections" that allowed me to read (and post) articles in specific interest areas. Somehow the nature of the content back then was much more engaging too. It was as raw as seeing a new band perform for the first time in some dive bar. Now it is just a sanitised pool of sophisticated marketing brochures masquerading as articles.
- dvcrn 8y agoI think it's interesting that the author bought a domain just for this extension
- AgentOrange1234 8y agoThank you so much for this. I loathe the pardon the interruption window.
- Kalium 8y agoFirefox Reader Mode is the thing that I find makes Medium an enjoyable experience. It's so much nicer than Medium ever was. They should try that design.
- dreamcompiler 8y agoIt's a shame that almost every decent website (this one being a notable exception) eventually succumbs to the temptation to go to war with their users on behalf of their advertisers. Radio stations and podcasts are doing it too by upping the percent of the *cast dedicated to ads in hopes of generating more revenue. This never ends well, especially since so many cord-cutters are less tolerant of ads than people have ever been before. Oh well. It's a nice opportunity for disruption, and the cycle repeats.
- dawnerd 8y agoYoutubers too. Filler unboxing video with no real content still gets a pre and post roll ad. (On top of whatever ads YouTube inserts). What’s even better is the tech youtubers that do a paid review and still include their normal ads.
- MrEldritch 8y agoTo be fair, ads got way less profitable for Youtubers recently. After the so-called "Adpocalypse", it's a total crapshoot whether any given video will be monetizable, so it makes sense that videomakers would resort to adding more paid-by-the-sponsor ads directly into the video rather than relying on revenue from Yoututbe's own ads.
- listenallyall 8y agoI'd argue that in many cases, the users go to war first. Ad blockers, paywall bypassing, incognito mode, etc. make it virtually impossible for most sites to survive on a straight ad model. The company has to find a way to survive, so it tries memberships, click-bait, nag screens, gathering user data, and in response an extension like this is built, and it keeps going back and forth with anti-ad-blocker, anti-anti-ad-blocker, etc. Medium is far from blameless here, their Twitter feed is repetitive and far too low on quality articles vs junk. And yes, their nag screen and 3-article limit suck. But they need to do something, don't you think? If you are a user of ad blockers and additional strategies, what do you envision as the endgame? No ads, ever? What kind of content are you expecting at that point?
- ErikAugust 8y agoI remember maybe 4-5 years ago looking at Medium’s CSS in order to emulate their readability. Things change.
- saudioger 8y agoRemember when Medium was supposed to be the height of readability?
- vvpan 8y agoYes, this is highly ironic.
- Traubenfuchs 8y agoWas it ever? I only ever knew it as a showcase of ui&ux anti patterns / dark patterns.
- rhizome31 8y agoI've always despised Medium.
- pmlnr 8y agoRemember when blogging systems allowed you to choose a theme? Or that running your own site allowed you to make the site without ads, nag bars, etc? Yeah, maybe, but just maybe, when the next medium comes along with the promise of saving the web, just stick to having your own site, where you're in control. I know this extension is to read, not to write, but if most writers just have used, say, Hugo, we'd not be here.
- slig 8y agoWe can only hope it goes the same way as posterous did.
- Accioni 8y agoPepperidge farm remembers
- reciprocity 8y agoPlease put more substance in your comments.
- southerndrift 8y agoIt comes down to chrome not supporting various css styles per site [1]. Other browsers have a menu option to load alternative styles if a site provides them. [1] https://www.thesitewizard.com/css/switch-alternate-css-styles.shtml https://www.thesitewizard.com/css/switch-alternate-css-style...
- pmlnr 8y agosorry, what? you can just include the <style> on the server side, where you render the page. Or do what I did, <style media="none"> and turn it on with a js click, store the value in cookie/localstorage for which <style> needs to be on. I also don't really understand how this connects to the topic.
- southerndrift 8y ago
- known 8y agoChange browser user agent general.useragent.override.medium.com to Opera/9.80 (Android; Opera Mini/20.1.2254/37.9178; U; en) Presto/2.12.423 Version/12.16
- OoTheNigerian 8y agoUsing Brave browser is how I tackle this.. With it you can selectively disable Javascript, ads, etc on any or all sites you visit.
- strikeX 8y agoI just use a bookmarked script which I came across on some thread here. javascript:(function()%7B(function () %7Bvar i%2C elements %3D document.querySelectorAll('body *')%3Bfor (i %3D 0%3B i < elements.length%3B i%2B%2B) %7Bif (getComputedStyle(elements%5Bi%5D).position %3D%3D%3D 'fixed') %7Belements%5Bi%5D.parentNode.removeChild(elements%5Bi%5D)%3B%7D%7D%7D)()%7D)() I have bookmarked it and whenever there is an annoying pop-up or long headers and footers just run the script. Very useful for these kinds of websites. For those who don't know how to use the above script: Bookmark this page -> go to all bookmarks and replace bookmark address/url with above script. Click on this bookmark with medium website open and you will see all the crap go away.
- beilabs 8y agoDoes anyone else have issues with images on medium being slow to load, always fuzzy and then taking ages to actually render? Seems like a constant problem for my part of the world.
- vezycash 8y agoQuestion: Would adblockers and mods this extension still work when ad networks and sites like these embrace webassembly? Would it not be a crime to "reverse engineer" their code?
- iicc 8y agoWhat "should" authors be using instead of medium?
- drngdds 8y agoLiterally any other blogging platform
- amaccuish 8y agoStill haven't got Medium to log me in properly. Keep getting signed out, I assume it's because I block third party cookies...
- the_imp 8y agoI've put together a Chrome extension that does the same thing, but it requires no permissions and works on all other similar sites as well: Kill-Sticky adds a keyboard shortcut (Alt+K or Cmd+K) that removes all sticky content, and re-enables scrolling. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/kill-sticky/lekjlgffkaencjnlcmbgibodhechofdb https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/kill-sticky/lekjlg...
- ZachSaucier 8y agoWhy just Medium? Make all articles readable (along with other features) with Just Read: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/just-read/dgmanlpmmkibanfdgjocnabmcaclkmod?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/just-read/dgmanlpm... Full disclosure, I'm the developer of Just Read.
- s_trumpet 8y agoJust Read is great, and I would be using it a lot more if I wasn't a Firefox guy. Great work, though!
- ronjouch 8y agoFirefox users who either dislike the requirement for permission on all sites, or don't want an additional extension: know that you can achieve about the same with a few lines in your userContent.css [1] @-moz-document domain(medium.com), domain(backchannel.com), domain(hackernoon.com), domain(mondaynote.com), domain(artplusmarketing.com), domain(codeburst.io), domain(logrocket.com), domain(slack.engineering), regexp("https?://medium\..*") {.js-postShareWidget, .overlay, .overlay--lighter, .postActionsBar, .js-postActionsBar, .metabar, .js-metabar, .postMeterBar, .js-meterBanner, .highlightMenu, .highlightMenu--active, .popover, .js-popover, .popover--dark, .butterBar--privacy, .js-stickyFooter {display: none !important;}} Obvious gotcha: incomplete list of domains, now you have to add medium domains when you meet them and restart Firefox. [1] http://kb.mozillazine.org/index.php?title=UserContent.css http://kb.mozillazine.org/index.php?title=UserContent.css
- newscracker 8y agoThe creator (and maintainers) of Medium ought to crouch in a corner with shame. People (including prominent voices on Twitter and the web) have complained about Medium’s issues for some years. This extension is like one more slap in the face for a platform that started with the premise that: "There's been less progress toward raising the quality of what's produced." [1] Quality? Are we going to talk about quality in all its dimensions? [1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medium_(website)#Background https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medium_(website)#Background
- dethos 8y agoWhy not just use the "reader" mode of the browser? (at least in Firefox this works quite well)
- mbowcutt 8y agoI haven't used the Medium app on my Android device for some weeks now. Today I got a notification about some article and swiped it away. Then later I got another and realized: Wait, I don't normally get Medium notifications! Not sure what changed but it was a nice reminder to delete the app. Also, I was unaware that people found Medium to be a suboptimal reading experience.