txt-only-reader by George Mac

txt-only-reader turns any website into a clean, text-only reading view.

Click the toolbar button, press Alt+Shift+T, right-click a page or link, or type a txt. URL — for example https://txt.example.com/some/article — and the page is rebuilt in place as a calm, readable page: every image, video, and ad is stripped out, and the remaining content is laid out with proper typography (adjustable size, reading width, and font — serif, sans, or mono — plus a light/dark theme that follows your system setting).

On article pages this is a distraction-free reading view, similar in spirit to a browser's built-in reader mode but working the same way across far more sites, with an estimated reading time and a scroll-progress indicator. On list/index pages, it also tries to pull out article-like links and sort them by publish date when a date can be reliably detected — a best-effort feature: when dates aren't detectable, the list keeps its original order with an honest notice rather than guessing. When extraction comes back too thin on either kind of page, it automatically falls back to a plain sanitized view of the whole page instead of showing a broken result — you can also switch to that view manually per site.

First run: the extension needs your permission to act on the sites you choose (see "Permissions" below) — a setup page walks you through granting it, with a one-click link to try the extension immediately afterward.

What it does:
- Strips all images, videos, ads, and iframes
- Rebuilds the page with readable typography, adjustable size/width/font
- Light/dark theme, following your system setting (with a manual override)
- Toggles in place — no reload to turn on, one click or keypress to leave from a prominent "Exit text-only" button in the header
- A visible toolbar badge and tooltip show whether the current tab is in text-only mode and what a click will do
- Mark a site to always open in text-only mode, from the reader, the right-click menu, or the options page
- Every link you click stays in text-only mode, so you can keep reading
- A toolbar button, keyboard shortcuts (press ? on any text-only page for the full list), and a right-click menu give you every control without typing the txt. prefix by hand
- An options page for reading preferences and (for the curious) the underlying link/date-detection tuning

What it doesn't do:
- No telemetry, no analytics, no tracking of any kind
- No data sent anywhere except the page you're already visiting
- No account, no sign-in, no cloud sync — your reading preferences and any sites you've set to always open in plain view or text-only mode are the only things stored, and they're stored locally on your device

Permissions, plainly: the extension checks the URL of pages you navigate to, locally, to see if you've asked for the text-only view (via the txt. prefix, toolbar button, keyboard shortcut, right-click menu, or an always-on site rule you set). If you haven't, it does nothing — the page loads completely normally. It requests access to all sites because it's designed to work on whichever site you choose, but that access is granted by you at runtime (not automatically at install), and nothing is ever read, stored, or sent anywhere in the background.