Aar318's Reading Mask Highlight

An accessible reading mask with mobile grip controls, onboarding, domain rules, and a simplified reader.

**📖 Aar318's Reading Mask Highlight: Focused, Accessible Reading** Keep your eyes anchored to one line at a time. Reading Mask Highlight adds a movable accessibility overlay to webpages, leaving a clear horizontal reading band between two colored guide lines while dimming the rest of the page. An optional local Simplified Reader can also turn compatible articles into a distraction-reduced reading view. **🚀 Getting Started** 1. Install the extension and pin it from Chrome's Extensions menu for easy access. 2. Click the toolbar icon or press **Alt+Shift+M** to turn the reading mask on for the current tab. 3. Move your pointer vertically on desktop, or drag anywhere inside the clear reading band on a touch device, to position it. 4. Right-click the toolbar icon—or right-click/long-press the injected page control—to open settings, accessibility presets, and reading-session tools. 5. Press **Escape** whenever you want to turn an active mask off. **✨ New Features (v1.5.0.1)** - **Kinetic Pause Persistence:** Closing Simplified Reader no longer restarts a guide that the user paused. - **True Live Toolbar Menus:** The extension-icon menu now reads the active tab's current Reading Mask state directly, keeping mask status, injected-control visibility, domain access, opacity, and band size accurate. - **Immediate Menu Refresh:** Appearance, visibility, and domain changes update their right-click menu states without requiring a reload. - **Consistent Support Menu:** Ko-fi and Donate now appear together in the first native menu section above a separator and the Reading Mask actions. **⭐ Key Features** - **Per-Tab Reading Mask:** Toggle the mask independently for each tab using the toolbar icon or **Alt+Shift+M**; the toolbar badge shows when it is active. - **Clear Reading Band:** Focus on a single horizontal region while customizable upper and lower masks dim surrounding page content. - **Accessibility Presets:** Apply coordinated dyslexia-friendly typography, spacing, high contrast, warm or cool tint, and reduced-motion settings to Simplified Reader. - **Reading Session Tools:** Use an optional timer, break reminders, progress marker, resume position, and one-click session restart. - **Pointer, Touch, and Keyboard Control:** Follow the pointer on desktop, drag the clear band on mobile, optionally switch to a dedicated grip-only mode, or adjust position with Arrow, Page Up/Down, Home, and End keys. - **Simplified Reader:** Open a private text-focused version of compatible article content while retaining reading-mask, preset, progress, and resume support. - **Complete Appearance Controls:** Adjust band height, guide thickness and colors, mask color and darkness, page-control position, visibility, and fade timing. - **Responsive Mobile Design:** Includes full-band dragging by default, optional grip-only control, larger touch targets, safe-area and orientation handling, native page scrolling, and layouts sized for smaller screens. - **Injected Page Control:** Toggle the mask directly from the webpage and open the complete settings panel with a right-click or touch long-press. - **Toolbar Shortcuts:** Access mask controls, settings, presets, domain management, appearance reset, and support links from the extension-icon menu. - **Domain Rules:** Run everywhere except a blocklist or only on an allowlist, with automatic subdomain matching and current-site controls. - **Optional Page Control:** Hide the injected control globally or on selected domains while continuing to use the toolbar and keyboard shortcut. - **Accessibility Features:** Provides visible focus states, keyboard-operable controls, descriptive labels, tooltips, isolated styling, and automatic print hiding. - **Quick Mask Presets:** Apply Compact, Standard, or Large reading bands and Light, Standard, or Dark mask styles. - **Start-Enabled Option:** Automatically activate the mask after supported page navigation when desired. - **Dynamic-Page Recovery:** Reattaches the overlay after client-rendered sites rebuild content while reducing checks in hidden tabs. **🔐 Permissions & Privacy** - **Storage:** Saves appearance, behavior, accessibility presets, reader-session preferences, domain rules, onboarding state, and other settings locally in the browser. - **Context Menus:** Provides right-click toolbar shortcuts for toggling, settings, presets, domain controls, and support actions. - **Site Access:** Runs the reading overlay on webpages so it can dim page regions, follow pointer/touch movement, apply domain rules, and create Simplified Reader locally when requested. - **Privacy:** Settings, progress, resume positions, and page content remain on your device. The extension contains no analytics, tracking, accounts, remote code, advertising, or background network requests. **ℹ️ Notes** - Simplified Reader appears only when the current page contains suitable article-style content. - Browser-protected pages and extension-store pages do not allow normal extension content-script access. - All reading-mask and extension controls are automatically hidden when printing. - Support: https://ko-fi.com/M4M81VBQPJ - Donate: https://streamelements.com/hor318/tip