Printing webpages can be a frustrating experience when advertisements, banners, and unrelated content crowd your printout. Whether you’re saving an important article, preparing teaching materials, or archiving research, clean prints improve readability and conserve ink and paper. Fortunately, popular web browsers offer built-in features and support for third-party tools to help you print only the content you need – free from distracting ads. In this article, we’ll go through the best methods for printing webpages without advertisements in Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Microsoft Edge, Safari, and introduces additional tips for achieving ad-free printouts.
Why Print Without Advertisements?
Advertisements are the primary revenue stream for most content publishers. Otherwise also the webpage layout may contain a long sidebar section, header navigation menus, and footer widgets. These elements can be easily distracting and wasting the papers when you only want to print the main article’s content.
- Removing ads declutters the page, making text easier to read and follow.
- Clean prints use less ink and paper, helping the environment and saving money.
- When sharing documents with others, a tidy printout leaves a better impression.
- For personal records or research, ad-free pages are more useful and easier to reference.
Note that you can also save the decluttered page as a PDF file to keep a digital reference instead of a physical printout. Also, avoid using ad blockers which will affect the publishers. You can only remove ads and not the other elements (like sidebar or footer) with ad blockers.
Printing from Browsers
Popular browsers like Edge, Firefox, and Safari (on Mac) removes the clutter by default when printing webpages. Only Google Chrome does not remove the ads when printing. In addition, modern browsers also have “Reader Mode” or “Simplified View” to display only the essential content of webpages, filtering out advertisements, navigation bars, and other extraneous elements. You can print from this mode to ensures a clean result. Again, Chrome does not support printing from Reading Mode and you need an extension to force this.
1. Microsoft Edge
Microsoft Edge supports a Reader Mode called “Immersive Reader”. However, clutter free printing works out of the box without using immersive reader also.
- Visit the target webpage, click on the three dots icon and select “Print” option. Otherwise, press “Control + P” on Windows PC or “Command + P” on Mac.
- This will remove all menu items, footer section, sidebars, and advertisements.
- Scroll down on the print pop-up and click the “More settings” link.
- Again, scroll down to “Options” heading at the bottom and turn off “Headers and footers” and “Background graphics” items. This will help to further declutter the page by removing the links showing on top and bottom of each page and also the background colors.
By default, you will still see logo, breadcrumbs and related posts in the printout. If you want to remove those items also, press F9 to open “Immersive Reader” mode. The main content will be extracted and presented in a distraction-free format. Now, open the print dialog by pressing “Control + P” in Windows and “Command + P” in Mac, and print as usual. You can also remove the background colors and header / footer link as explained above in the print settings.
2. Google Chrome
Since Google Chrome also uses the same Chromium backend as Edge browser, it offers printing options to remove header / footer links and background graphics. However, there are no default method to print a webpage without advertisements and other clutters. You can use the Reading Mode to view the clutter free page but not print. So, the only option is to go for a third-party extension.
- Open Chrome and click the three dots icon on top right corner. Go to “Extensions > Visit Chrome Web Store” menu.
- Search for “Reader View” extension to find that item and install on your browser.
- Open the webpage you want to print. Click on the “Extensions” icon in address bar and select “Reader View” option. You will see the neat webpage without any distractions.
- Press “Control + P” on Windows or “Command + P” on Mac to open the print dialog.
- Check the preview that all ads are removed and click “Print” button.
2. Mozilla Firefox
Firefox offers an options called “Simplified” when printing pages, otherwise, you can use the well-knownReader View mode.
- Navigate to your chosen webpage. Press “Control + P” on Windows or “Command + P” on Mac to open the print dialog.
- Click the “More settings” link on the print pop-up.
- Scroll down and select “Simplified” option under “Format” heading.
- Uncheck “Print headers and footers” and “Print background” options under “Options” heading.
- Now, click “Print” button for physical print out or save the page as PDF without distractions.
If you want to check the Reader View, click the “Reader View” icon (a page like symbol) on address bar next to the URL. Once in Reader View, the page will be reformatted to show just the article content – no ads, navigation, or pop-ups. Open the print dialog to preview and print – your output will be clean and free of advertisements. The only problem is that Firefox may not support Reader View for all the pages and the “Reader View” icon doesn’t appear in this case.
4. Safari on Mac
Safari also removes ads by default and also offers a “Reader” mode on both desktop and mobile.
- Open your desired webpage in Safari and press “Command + P”.
- Check the preview is looking fine. If you find lot of white spaces (replacing ads), close the print dialog.
- Click the icon on the left side of the address bar and click “Show Reader” button. Otherwise, simply press “Command + Shift + R” keys.
- The page shifts into Reader mode, displaying only the article’s core text and images.
- Press “Command + P” to print, and you will have a clean, ad-free layout without any white spaces.
Note: On iOS, tap the icon on left of the address bar and then tap “Show Reader” button. Now, tap the “Share” icon, then select “Print” option. Your printout will exclude advertisements and sidebars.
Final Words
Other than Chrome, all major browsers offer simple ways to remove the advertisements when printing. Some websites also offer a “Printer-friendly” or “Print” button near articles, which generates an ad-free version.Always check the preview before printing to ensure only desired content appears.
