Strip out the ads, sidebars, pop-ups, menus and other web page clutter using Simplified view in Chrome on your Android phone. See how to use it to enable a cleaner view of web content.

The web is both brilliant and frustrating, and often at the same time. There are some fantastic articles but they are often accompanied by a lot of on-page distractions like menus, toolbars, adverts, requests to sign up for this and that email, and so on.

It can be even more frustrating on a mobile phone where the screen is small and the layout of web pages is compromised. There can be endless ads and junk that fill the screen.

What can you do to remove the distracting clutter when browsing the web on your Android phone?

Use an ad-blocker

One possibility, and one that some people use, is an ad blocker. However, that is only a partial solution because there is more to a web page than ads. The blocker does not remove the sidebar, menus, buttons and countless other distracting items.

An ad blocker makes web pages only slightly better and it leaves a lot of clutter still on the page.

Use Chrome Simplified view

A far better way to clean up web pages so that you can focus on the content and read it more easily is to use Chrome Simplified view. This strips out all the clutter and ads on the page to leave just the article content.

It presents a clean and easy-to-read article in the browser and it makes a huge difference to the web.

Take look at a typical web page on a phone:

Here is the same page viewed using simplified view:

This is so much better for reading articles and it is clean, simple, and easy to read without all the clutter, ads, menus and so on. Once you have seen it, you will want to view every page this way!

Unfortunately this is not possible and sometimes you are stuck with the standard view. However, Simplified view is offered wherever possible and it takes just one tap to enable it.

Chrome accessibility settings

Tap the three dots in the top right corner of Chrome to show the menu. Find and press Settings and then press Accessibility on the Settings menu.

.

Enable Chrome Simplified view

Among the accessibility settings is Simplified view. Select the checkbox to turn it on. Whenever a web page is compatible with Simplified view, a bar appears at the bottom of the Chrome window.

.

Press Show simplified view and the page is refreshed without the clutter. This is the same web page, but in Simplified view. It is so much better and easier to read.

Quit Simplified view in Chrome

How do you get out of simplified view, after all, there are no buttons or menus! Just use the Back button to return to the previous page. Try it and see how much cleaner and easier to read web articles become when in this special clutter-free mode.

If you are wondering why all web pages cannot be displayed this way, it is simply because some are unsuitable. The Google homepage for example, does not have any content and you can't really strip down the results page either.

Some home pages of websites are not suitable for this view because they lack content. The view needs plenty of text and images and the page must be an article with body content, so you will only see the option pop-up when you want to read articles.