Reading Spotlight

Dim the surrounding page and use reading aids like a ruler and typography controls for long web pages.

Reading Spotlight is a local, privacy-conscious reading focus aid for Chrome. It keeps the original web page in place and adds a lightweight focus layer that can highlight the current paragraph, dim nearby content, show a manual reading ruler, and adjust typography on article-like pages. It is designed for readers who want less visual noise without switching into a separate reader view. Reading Spotlight does not extract articles into a new page, summarize content, send page text to a server, or collect browsing activity. Key features: - Paragraph Spotlight dims the surrounding page while preserving context around the current block. - Gentle Dim provides a softer mode for feeds and mixed layouts. - Reading Ruler adds a draggable horizontal guide with color and thickness presets, plus an optional persistent line highlight in a choice of colors. - Progress Bar shows paragraph-based reading progress. - Typography Layer adjusts readable content width and line height on article-like pages. - Safe Mode reduces or suspends the focus layer on form-heavy, player-heavy, and app-like pages. - Site Exclusions let users disable the extension on selected hostnames. - Privacy and data controls show and clear locally stored reading progress and excluded sites. Privacy: Reading Spotlight runs locally in the active tab after a user action such as opening the popup, using the keyboard shortcut, or choosing the context menu item. It does not request broad host permissions. Page content, browsing activity, settings, and reading progress are not sent to any external service. Permissions: - activeTab and scripting: inject the reading layer into the current tab after a user action. - storage: save visual preferences, local site exclusions, and optional reading progress. - contextMenus: provide a page context menu toggle. New in 2.1.1: - Single-page apps behave better: when a site swaps pages without a full reload, the spotlight no longer lingers over the old page and re-finds the new text automatically — including sites that load their content a moment after the page appears. - Classic table-layout sites such as Hacker News are readable again instead of being treated as app pages. - On pages where the main text starts below the fold (such as GitHub README pages), the spotlight now starts on the actual article and scrolls it into view instead of landing on a sidebar. - Gentle Dim keeps its brighter zone inside the reading column instead of spilling into sidebars. - Moving the Focus Lock frame no longer leaves keyboard navigation anchored to the old position. - The floating toolbar now folds away reliably after mouse and touch use, and Peek can no longer get stuck when the page steals focus or you switch windows.