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How to disable Reader View in Firefox

With Firefox 38.0.5, which is in Beta stage at the moment of this writing, Mozilla enabled a Reader View feature by default. Reader View strips out unnecessary elements from the opened web page, reflows the text and turns it into a cleaner looking text document without ads, menus and scripts, so the user can focus on reading the text content. If you are not going to use it, you might be interested in disabling Reader View and hide its icon from the address bar.

When you open a page in Firefox 38.0.5, a Reader View tip appears for the first time.

Firefox 38 reader modeWhen you click the tiny icon, the page changes its layout into a cleaner looking text document:

Firefox 38 reader mode in action

To disable the Reader View feature in Firefox, do the following:

  1. Open a new tab and enter the following text in the address bar:
    about:config

    Confirm that you will be careful if a warning message appears for you.
    firefox nightly about config

  2. Enter the following text in the filter box:
    reader.parse-on-load.enabled

    enable reader mode in firefox

  3. You will see the parameter reader.parse-on-load.enabled. Set it to false.Firefox 38 disable reader mode
  4. Restart Firefox.

That's it. This will disable the Reader View feature and remove the reader icon from the address bar. To restore it back, set the reader.parse-on-load.enabled value back to true.

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Author: Sergey Tkachenko

Sergey Tkachenko is a software developer who started Winaero back in 2011. On this blog, Sergey is writing about everything connected to Microsoft, Windows and popular software. Follow him on Telegram, Twitter, and YouTube.

11 thoughts on “How to disable Reader View in Firefox”

  1. I call BS.
    I have changed that value TEN OR MORE TIMES and the Reader View keeps coming back like a ZOMBIE ENERGIZER BUNNY.

  2. Thank you, Sergey, for the tip ….. :-)
    Personally, I find this view very useful when printing eg an article : it allows you to really print out just what is needed, without the useless “surroundings”…. Very ecological ! ;-)

  3. I tried this but am unable to change the default. Ever since the “Reader View” was added, FF never stops loading and there is no X on the Toolbar to force a stop. I have no use whatsoever for Reader View. It should be an option not a requirement. I want it off of my toolbar!

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