Today we’ve covered Chrome Canary added an icon in the address bar to toggle Reader Mode on or off, it may be coincidence that Microsoft also landed a change related to Reader View in Chromium-based Edge in Canary build, they’ve added “Text Preferences” to change font size and page background theme, Chrome reader mode doesn’t have these controls at the moment.
First things first, Reader View in Chromium Edge is different from that available in Chrome behind a flag. Former ported feature from classic Edge whereas latter uses DOM Distiller to distill Page contents. Both are different, but their aim is to provide a better reading experience to the user on the website by removing unneeded and distractive elements such as ads, menus, and toolbar.
New Microsoft Edge has Reader View enabled by default in both Canary and Preview builds, today’s update to Canary build added text preference flag which lets you “customize font sizes and background themes” on Windows and Mac.
To see the new settings for Edge Reader View in action
1. Ensure you’re using latest Edge Canary 77.0.216.0 or later
2. Visit edge://flags
3. Search for “Text”, select “Enabled” for “Microsoft Edge Reading View Text Preference”
4. Restart the browser.
Using Text Preferences in Edge Reader View
1. Visit any reader-friendly page, click on the icon in the address bar to enter reader view
2. you’ll notice Text Preference on top, click on it to access “Text Size” that offers a slider to change the font size from Small to Large with Medium in the middle, stop the slider wherever you satisfied with the page font size. You can also change “Page theme” to Light, Sepia, Gray, and Dark.
Seems Reader View implementation in Edge Chromium is now completed with Text Preference addition, what do you say?
Related articles:
Vivaldi 1.11: Use Reader Mode with Dark/Light Theme
Vivaldi 1.11 adds Configuration Panel for Reader Mode
