How to Use Reader View in Safari iPhone App?

In this digital world, there are mobile apps for every purpose. However, still many people use mobile browser apps for viewing websites. Safari is the default browser in iPhone that has multiple settings for readers to have smooth user experience. Reader View is one of the useful features in Safari to remove all clutters from the page you are viewing. In this article, we will explain how to use Reader View in Safari iPhone app.

Reader View in Safari iPhone

Reader view is an option to remove all unnecessary content from the webpage you are viewing. This will help to remove advertisements and show plain text content with images. It helps you to quickly go through the webpage’s content without any distraction. Good part is that you can toggle reader view in Safari whenever you need or permanently enable for certain site.

Using Reader View When Needed

This is useful when you want to remove the clutter instantly on the page:

• Tap on Safari app and open any webpage that has plenty of images of shows advertisements.
• When the page loads, you will see a flash message in the address bar that will read “Reader View Available”. However, this message will disappear when the page loads completely.
• Tap on the font change icon showing on the left of the address bar to view a list of options.
• Select “Show Reader View” option.
• This will remove all clutters on the webpage you are currently viewing.

Permanently Using Reader View

This is useful for reading certain websites like news sites that primarily focuses on text and images. For example, instead of using CNN app, you can read CNN website with the reader view. In this way, you can view the content without advertisement and other distractions.

• Tap on “Settings” app and navigate to “Safari” section. Alternatively, you can swipe down after opening settings app to search and find Safari settings.
• Scroll down and tap on “Reader” option available under “Settings for Websites” section.

• Enable “All Websites” option for “Automatically Use Reader On”.

• Now, open any website in Safari and it will automatically open in a reader view.
• You can tap on the font icon and select “Hide Reader View” option to temporarily disable it for reading full content.

Points to Consider When Using Reader View

Remember the following points when using reader view in Safari iPhone:

• All websites do not support this feature and you will the option is greyed out if the website does not support.
• You can’t whitelist websites to exclude from the reader view when using the global settings option in Safari settings page. Some websites like Apple will show you in the list separately for you to enable or disable. However, this is not possible with many other websites.

• Some web pages, especially those depend on JavaScript, may not load properly with reader view. If you see the page content is truncated, then disable reader view to get complete webpage’s content.   

Reader View in Other Browsers

Almost every browser out there offer reader view in both desktop and mobile. You can simply click on the icon to toggle the view on or off.

• Safari Mac also offers “Reader View” to remove the clutter on webpage you view.
• Google Chrome does not offer this option in the frontend. However, you can use an experimental flag to enable this if you like to use this.
• Browsers like Firefox offer similar feature like Safari. In addition, you can use Firefox Privacy browser to have automatic privacy protection. every other browser also offer reader view.