ADHD Reading is a Chrome extension designed specifically for readers with ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) and neurodivergent readers, with the goal of turning cluttered web pages into a calmer, more focus-friendly reading space. It works as a smart reading assistant, reformatting articles or documents on any website to reduce cognitive load and make long-form reading smoother.
Uses
- Reduces visual crowding and distractions in long web articles, helping ADHD readers reduce attention drift and understand content faster.
- Suitable for both immersive deep reading and efficient quick scanning.
- Primarily optimizes web content; it also works on online PDFs rendered as HTML.
Main capabilities
- Bionic Reading: bolds the beginning of words to guide eye movement, help the brain recognize words faster, and improve reading fluency.
- Semantic Bold: bolds the most meaningful words in a sentence, making key information stand out without being noisy.
- Semantic Highlight: marks key phrases with soft highlighting for quick scanning and reduced visual fatigue.
- Focus Mode / Line Focus: dynamically highlights the current line or paragraph being read, hides sidebar ads and distractions, and helps you enter a flow state.
- Typography Controls: fine-tune font size, line height, letter spacing, and paragraph width to create a more comfortable reading environment for each website.
- Preset intensity: provides three calibrated presets—Light, Medium, and Heavy—for quickly getting the right level of assistance.
- Multilingual support: supports Chinese, English, Japanese, Korean, French, German, and more, with intelligent recognition of mixed-language content.
- Built-in TTS: supports multilingual read-aloud, so you can "listen" to articles and give your eyes a rest.
- Themes and color schemes: the settings panel offers multiple color schemes, including dark mode for nighttime reading and a low-contrast eye-friendly mode.
- Site Memory: saves preferences individually for each website and automatically applies them next time.
How to use
- After installing the Chrome extension, enable the desired modes on a web page (Bionic Reading, Semantic Bold, Semantic Highlight, etc.).
- Switch between the three emphasis modes according to your current level of focus, and choose the Light/Medium/Heavy preset.
- If you need more fine-grained control, adjust font size, line height, letter spacing, paragraph width, emphasis level, and the opacity and color of the focus mask in the settings.
- You can enable "Site Memory" to save preferences for individual websites and apply them automatically; when results are poor on complex websites, you can click the extension icon to temporarily disable optimization for the current page, or use the feedback feature.
- Pro users can automatically apply and save default settings per site.
Use cases
- Reading long texts such as papers, reports, technical documentation, medical journals, contracts, emails, and competitive analysis.
- Writers, developers, students, and teachers who need to quickly scan literature or proofread drafts.
- Parents who want to block sidebar distractions when reading aloud to children.
Limitations and notes
- Free version: provides 3 emphasis modes and Light/Medium/Heavy presets, prioritizes local processing, and is best suited for text-dense pages; it does not include fine-grained typography sliders, per-site automatic application, or custom default/site profiles.
- Pro version: includes all features of the free version and unlocks full typography controls (scaling, spacing, emphasis), focus mask controls (opacity, color), per-site automatic application and saved default settings, as well as prioritized improvements and updates. The official page shows it as a one-time purchase with permanent access to Pro local features and no subscription; Pro features can be used across supported Chromium browsers, including future local updates, but excluding future cloud add-on features (such as cloud TTS quotas). Payments are securely handled by Stripe at adhdreading.org; for cancellation, billing issues, or plan changes, you can contact the official email.
- Compatibility: supports Google Chrome, Edge, Brave, and all Chromium-based browsers; currently focused on the desktop experience, with mobile on the roadmap.
- Privacy: no account is required for local use; all processing is done locally on the device, and reading history and settings are not sent to servers; the official description says there is minimal impact on browsing speed.
- Updates: as a Chrome extension, it usually updates automatically, and you can also manually check for updates on the browser extension management page.
- Feedback and suggestions: can be submitted through the "Feedback" button in the extension or by visiting the official website.
- Details not explicitly provided in the paper (such as specific price figures, timelines for more platform support, etc.) are not yet available.
