Unclutter — A new approach to reader mode
Hey! This is a reader mode browser extension I built that hides noisy page elements rather than extracting and re-rendering only the page text. The idea is to not make all articles look the same [0], have them still render graphs, and ideally to work in more cases. There are a few "tricks": patching the site CSSOM to apply simpler mobile styles even at desktop width, detecting the likely main text & removing its non-text siblings, blocklists for classnames that contain words like "sidebar", and testing this on a few hundred popular sites. I got carried away and also added a dark mode, page…
In plain words
Unclutter is a browser extension that provides a reader mode by hiding distracting page elements rather than extracting and reformatting text, allowing articles to retain their original design and interactive content like graphs. It works across hundreds of popular websites using techniques like applying mobile-friendly styles, detecting main content, and filtering out common noise elements like sidebars. The extension also includes dark mode, page outlines, private annotations, and integrates Hacker News comments directly into articles when accessed from that platform.
written from the facts on this page · September 2026
From the sources
In the maker’s words, at launch
Hey! This is a reader mode browser extension I built that hides noisy page elements rather than extracting and re-rendering only the page text. The idea is to not make all articles look the same [0], have them still render graphs, and ideally to work in more cases. There are a few "tricks": patching the site CSSOM to apply simpler mobile styles even at desktop width, detecting the likely main text & removing its non-text siblings, blocklists for classnames that contain words like "sidebar", and testing this on a few hundred popular sites. I got carried away and also added a dark mode, page outlines, private annotations & inline Hacker News comments. The last feature works by parsing every top-level HN comment with a quote in it (formatted with > or "") within a few minutes, and anchoring these quotes in the related article HTML. So when you click a link on HN you’ll see the parts people are talking about while reading. [1] The code is all on GitHub! [0] Screenshots comparing it to the Firefox reader mode: https://github.com/lindylearn/unclutter/blob/main/docs/compa... [1] It's fun to try this on some of the "HN classics" that got 30+ quote comments over the years. Another project I built, https://hn.lindylearn.io/best shows the number of "annotations" an article has beneath its title.
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I've seen some interests in (simulation) video games here on HN so I thought I'd share a short version of our story. More than 6 years ago, me and my friend from university were playing around with an idea of making a game we always wanted to play. We worked on it on weekends but the progress was quite slow, especially due to so many dead ends and wasted effort. Eventually however, we solidified our direction and decided to take the risk to resign from our well paid SWE jobs and work on it full time. It took more than a year but yesterday we have finally released it on Steam:…
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