Pro Tip: Bypass news paywalls using the new "Reading Mode" app by Google
Pro Tip: Bypass news paywalls using the new "Reading Mode" app by Google
Reading mode helps you with difficult to read text.
I am sure this wasn't the intended use - but I discovered a useful trick on Android.
Just recently, Google released a Reading Mode app that takes text and removes the clutter, images, etc - and allows you to read in a high contrast easy to view format. There are options on how to toggle it on, but I chose to use the hold volume up/down at the same time.
I was viewing a local paywalled newspaper, and had surpassed my 3 free articles/month. For the heck of it, while the popup blocked me from reading it, I tried the reading mode shortcut. It pulled in all the text and I was able to read the entire story. I then tried another news site and it worked the same way. I even tried some of the big new sites like the Washington Post - and it worked.
I am sure its a bit dependent on how the website is built, but its worth a try if you find yourself running into those paywalls. You lose the photos, but its worth it.
Firefox has had a Reader View feature for a while now. But adding the 'Bypass Paywalls clean' filter on ublock origin in Firefox for Windows and Firefox for Android works the best for me. https://gitlab.com/magnolia1234/bypass-paywalls-clean-filters
Excellent tip! Pretty stoked to discover how many modern web annoyances can be defeated by OSS!
I have yet to find a paywall I couldn't bypass. They all work the same way because they need the content to be exposed to be found by crawlers
There are some sites that I can't figure out how to bypass, for example thelogic.co. The full article doesn't seem to load unless you pay/log in and no matter what I've tried it doesn't work.
Another way to bypass paywalls (especially the ones that restrict content directly from the server) is archive.today. It basically has bots (sometimes with accounts, for example if it's a LinkedIn link) that will open up the page for you if it's the first time the link is accessed on archive.today, then the bot will render it without Javascript and will save a snapshot on the server, and you then get to see the latter.
I use this a lot. Got the sharchive app from f-droid, so I can share articles to it to quickly bring up.
btw, did 12ft.io work?
12ft.io was bought out and now the big news agencies won’t get bypassed.
I use https://www.removepaywall.com now.
good to know 👍
I never tried that but this removes a step and makes it super easy for me. I've tried the websites where you enter the address and get a mirror of the article, but it always seemed clunky.