whatisgithub

What is readability?

timsuchanek/readability — explained in plain English

Analysis updated 2026-07-18 · repo last pushed 2020-04-13

Audience · developerComplexity · 2/5DormantSetup · easy

In one sentence

Readability.js strips ads, menus, and clutter from a web page and extracts just the article's title, text, excerpt, and author, like Firefox Reader View.

Mindmap

mindmap
  root((repo))
    What it does
      Extracts article content
      Removes clutter
      Returns structured data
    Tech stack
      JavaScript
      DOM parsing
    Use cases
      Build reader apps
      Aggregate content
      Power newsletter tools
    Audience
      Developers
      Content app builders
    Notes
      Needs jsdom in Node
      Pair with sanitizer

Code map

Detail Auto

An interactive map of this repo's files and how they connect — its source is parsed live in your browser. Click Visualize to build it.

filefunction / class

What do people build with it?

USE CASE 1

Extract a clean article title, body, excerpt, and author from a noisy web page for a reader app.

USE CASE 2

Build a bookmark tool or newsletter service that pulls just the article text from arbitrary URLs.

USE CASE 3

Use the readerable helper to quickly skip pages that aren't worth processing as articles.

USE CASE 4

Feed extracted article text into a research tool that needs clean content from many sites.

What is it built with?

JavaScript

How does it compare?

timsuchanek/readability0verflowme/alarm-clock0verflowme/seclists
Language—CSS—
Last pushed2020-04-132022-10-032020-05-03
MaintenanceDormantDormantDormant
Setup difficultyeasyeasyeasy
Complexity2/52/51/5
Audiencedevelopervibe coderops devops

Figures from each repo's GitHub metadata at analysis time.

How do you get it running?

Difficulty · easy Time to first run · 5min

Server-side use requires jsdom to build a DOM first, untrusted content should be sanitized with a library like DOMPurify.

Copy-paste prompts

Prompt 1
Show me how to call new Readability(document).parse() from timsuchanek/readability in the browser.
Prompt 2
Help me use timsuchanek/readability in Node.js by combining it with jsdom to build a DOM from fetched HTML.
Prompt 3
Explain what fields the parse() result from timsuchanek/readability returns and how to use each one.
Prompt 4
Show me how to pair timsuchanek/readability with DOMPurify to safely sanitize extracted article HTML.

Frequently asked questions

What is readability?

Readability.js strips ads, menus, and clutter from a web page and extracts just the article's title, text, excerpt, and author, like Firefox Reader View.

Is readability actively maintained?

Dormant — no commits in 2+ years (last push 2020-04-13).

How hard is readability to set up?

Setup difficulty is rated easy, with roughly 5min to a first successful run.

Who is readability for?

Mainly developer.

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