Google Chrome includes a built-in “Reader Mode” designed to strip away ads, sidebars, and confusing formatting from news articles, leaving only clean text. When you visit a supported article, a small book icon appears on the far right side of your Omnibox (address bar).
While useful for reading long-form journalism, this feature frequently misidentifies pages. It will often appear on complex web apps, forums, or online storefronts where activating Reader Mode completely breaks the page’s functionality. If you never use this feature and find the constantly appearing and disappearing book icon distracting, you can permanently disable the Reader Mode engine.
How to Remove the Reader Mode Icon in Chrome
You must use Chrome’s hidden developer flags to completely disable the reading engine.
- Open the Google Chrome browser.
- Click on the address bar at the top of the window, type
chrome://flags, and press Enter. - In the “Search flags” search box at the top of the screen, type Reader Mode.
- Look for the specific flag labelled Enable Reader Mode.
- Click the drop-down menu next to this entry (which is likely set to “Default” or “Enabled”).
- Select Disabled from the drop-down menu.
- A prompt will appear at the bottom of the screen stating “Your changes will take effect the next time you relaunch Chrome.” Click the blue Relaunch button.
Chrome will restart. The background scanning engine that looks for readable text will be shut down, saving a tiny amount of processing power. The book icon will permanently disappear from your address bar, regardless of what website you visit.