Inspiration

We wanted a simple way to read long articles — like a lightweight reader mode you can directly get to the core idea.

What it does

  • Extracts the main article, removes noise, and reflows content into a clean, print-friendly view while keeping important images and structure.
  • Save readers' time and improve reading experience.

How we built it

  • Pure frontend: JS for content detection and cleaning, HTML/CSS for the UI and distilled styling.
  • Modular code: finder, sanitizer, renderer.

Challenges we ran into

Pages vary wildly, async-loaded content. We need to make our extension generalized.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

A small, dependency-light tool that improves readability across many sites, with a maintainable pipeline and good print styling.

What we learned

Heuristics that judge content density work better than brittle selectors; real-world test pages and accessibility checks are vital.

What's next for Page Distill

Make a browser extension/bookmarklet, better async handling, add export options (Markdown/PDF), and optional ML summaries.

Built With

Share this project:

Updates