The Cluttered Bookmarks Bar
In an effort to match features offered by Safari and Edge, Google Chrome introduced the “Reading List.” This feature allows you to save articles you want to read later in a dedicated panel, separate from your permanent bookmarks. By default, Chrome aggressively promotes this feature by permanently pinning a “Reading List” button to the far right side of your Bookmarks Bar, taking up valuable screen real estate.
While useful for some, many users already have established workflows for saving articles. You might use a dedicated service like Pocket or Instapaper, or you might simply use standard Chrome bookmarks organized into folders. If you fall into this camp, the built-in Reading List is entirely redundant. Worse, the pinned button shrinks the space available for your actual bookmarks, forcing them into a dropdown menu sooner than necessary. If you want to reclaim your Bookmarks Bar and remove a feature you never intend to use, you can forcefully disable the Reading List via Chrome’s experimental backend.
How to Turn Off the Reading List
You can completely remove the Reading List feature and its persistent button via the experimental flags menu.
- Open Google Chrome.
- Click inside the main address bar at the top of the browser window.
- Type
chrome://flagsand press Enter. - On the “Experiments” page, use the search bar to look for Reading List.
- If the flag is available, click the dropdown menu next to it and change it from “Default” (or Enabled) to Disabled.
- Click the blue Relaunch button at the bottom of the screen.
Upon restarting, the Reading List button will vanish from your Bookmarks Bar, and the option to “Add to reading list” will be removed from context menus, returning your browser to a cleaner, traditional bookmarking state.