Our Apple devices are a pot of gold when it comes to convenient features we may be unaware of. One cool feature on Safari that you may have skipped over is Reader Mode.
Reader View, often referred to as Reading Mode, appears as an icon in the top-left corner of your Safari search bar, and it reworks your webpage into a perfectly organized, ad-free layout to help you focus better on reading the content. You can even make some quick edits to a webpage through this feature.
Want to read a novel or an article without interruption? Reader View is for you. Let's take a look at what it can do and how you can enable it on your iPhone, iPad, and Mac.
How to Turn on Reader View
Turning on Reader View is extremely easy and only takes a couple of taps. Before you begin, make sure Safari is updated on your device.
Then follow these steps to enable the Reader View on an iPhone or iPad:
- After you open the webpage you'd like to read on Safari, tap on the Reader View icon in the top-left corner of the Search Bar.
- From the dropdown menu, select Show Reader View. Your webpage will appear ad-free and organized automatically.
If you want to enable Reader View on a Mac, here's how you do it:
- Load a website in the Safari.
- Use Command+Shift+R to turn on Reader Mode.
- Another option would be to click the same icon at the left end of the Smart Search field.
If you don't see the button, it means that webpage doesn't have any articles that can be viewed in Reader View. To stop using Reader View across all devices, just hit the button again. You can also use the Esc key on your Mac to disable Reader View.
How to Make Edits in Reader View
You can also customize a page to your liking. Reader View allows you to choose from nine font styles, four background colors, and various font sizes. Here's how you can make these edits on an iPhone, iPad, and Mac:
- Tap the Reader View icon again.
- You should see options for font style in the dropdown menu with the font sizes above it and the background colors below it. Choose whatever you like.
The options to edit a webpage are pretty minimal, but Apple will hopefully expand to a broader range in the future.
A distinct advantage of Reader View is the fact that you can save your webpages as PDFs on iPhone and iPad straight into your Books app using this feature.
How to Make Reader View the Default
Happen to love Reader Mode? There's an option that automatically switches a URL to Reader View every time you open it. It saves up a lot of time and is efficient. Follow these steps to enable this feature on an iPhone or iPad:
- Tap the Reader View icon in the top left of Safari.
- Select Website Settings from the dropdown menu.
- Turn on the toggle for Use Reader Automatically and press Done. The webpage will now automatically switch to Reader View every time you open it.
To do this on a Mac, all you have to do is Control-click on the Reader View icon and select Use Reader View Automatically on [Site Name].
You can even enable this feature for all websites that you open in Safari. Here are the steps to do so on an iPhone or iPad:
- Go to Settings and open Safari.
- Scroll down and select Reader under Settings for Websites.
- Turn on the toggle for Other Websites.
Follow these steps to allow all websites to open with Reader View on your Mac:
- Control-click the Reader View button and select Reader Website Preferences from the popup.
- At the bottom of the popup panel, click the dropdown box for When visiting other websites and choose On.
Enjoy Clutter-Free Reading in Safari
Reader View in Safari is the perfect way to do some reading without any distractions. Only relevant text and images will remain on your screen, and all other ads will be removed.
You can adjust the font size, style, and background color with this feature, too. Even better, you can automatically open specific websites, or all of them, in Reader View when you want to.