Depending on your version of Google Chrome, you might notice a small “Book” icon appearing on the right side of your address bar on certain websites. This icon triggers “Reader Mode,” an accessibility feature that strips away a website’s layout, menus, and advertisements, presenting only the raw text and images in a clean, book-like format.
While this is an excellent tool for reading long articles on cluttered websites, some web developers and power users find the icon distracting, especially if they never use the feature and prefer to view websites exactly as they were designed. You can disable Reader Mode entirely using Chrome’s hidden flags menu.
How to Remove the Reader Mode Icon
You must dive into the Chrome Experiments page to disable this UI element.
- Open the Google Chrome browser.
- Click inside the address bar at the top of the window.
- Type the following exact command and press Enter:
chrome://flags/#enable-reader-mode - The browser will load the Experiments page, and the setting specifically labelled “Enable Reader Mode” will be highlighted in yellow.
- Click the drop-down menu next to this setting (which is likely set to “Default”).
- Select Disabled from the list.
- A large blue Relaunch button will appear at the bottom right corner of the window. Click it to restart your browser.
Once Chrome reopens, the browser will completely stop analysing web pages to determine if they are compatible with Reader Mode. The small book icon will never appear in your address bar, keeping your browser interface clean and minimal.