Episode #912
July 25, 2026
I am often frustrated with internet web page paywalls.
Many internet content publishers, such as newspapers, magazines, financial websites, and news sites display a paywall when you arrive at their website. You must pay to view their content.
A paywall will allow you to sign in to read an article or other content. If you do not have an account, the paywall dialog will offer a free temporary subscription or allow you to pay for a subscription.
Sometimes you can look behind a webpage paywall.
Safari Reader and other internet browser reader features can reveal an article and other content by hiding the paywall dialog box. If the article’s content is loaded into the browser before the paywall dialog box appears, then switching to your browser’s Reader Mode may allow you to read the article.
The most popular name-brand websites have hardened their paywalls by withholding the full article until the site verifies your subscription. These cannot be bypassed with Reader Mode.
I recently tried this with The Atlantic website, and the reader only displayed the portion of the article that was visible before the paywall was mandatory.
A Freemium paywall offers some free articles, withholding other articles that require a subscription. These subscription articles are generally not revealed in Reader Mode.
Other sites meter their paywall, allowing a limited number of articles to be read until the paywall kicks in, restricting access to the site.
In the case of a soft paywall, full articles are sent to your browser, then a pop-up, blur, or overlay blocks reading. These websites are most likely to be bypassed using Reader Mode. Switch to Reader as soon as the website begins to load. Don’t wait for the paywall to appear.
The New York Times has such a soft paywall, for now anyway.
For more information about using Reader Mode, go to my blog article “Reader Mode.”
I cannot guarantee which of these for-pay websites will continue to be bypassed by a browser’s reader feature. Web server designers are getting more and more aggressive with their paywall programming.
In any case, if you do not want to pay for a subscription, it does not hurt to try Reader Mode regardless of which internet browser you are using.
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Reader mode sounds pretty good. I’ll give it a try. Thanks for the tip!