How to print a web page without ads

You found a recipe, a receipt or a long article and you want it on paper. You press Ctrl+P (or Cmd+P on a Mac) and the preview shows nine pages: a giant header image, a navigation bar, two ad slots, a "related stories" grid and, somewhere in the middle, the 600 words you actually wanted.

The problem is that web pages are laid out for a scrolling screen. Unless the publisher wrote a dedicated print stylesheet, and most did not, your printer receives the whole layout. Here are five ways to fix that, from fastest to most technical.

Method 1: Use a printer-friendly tool (fastest)

A printer-friendly tool fetches the page, runs a content-extraction algorithm over it, and shows you just the article. You then delete anything else you do not want and print the result.

1. Copy the page addressClick the address bar and copy the full URL, starting with https://.
2. Open the cleanerGo to the web page printer and paste the URL into the box.
3. Delete what is leftDelete mode is on by default. Hover any paragraph, image or table and click to remove it. Click and drag to sweep several blocks at once. Ctrl+Z undoes anything.
4. Set the text and image sizeOpen the Style menu to choose a text size, shrink images to half-page, or remove images entirely to save ink.
5. Print or savePress Print for a crisp, text-based printout, or Download PDF to keep a copy.

Method 2: Turn on Reader mode first

Most browsers ship a reader mode that strips a page down to text and images. Turn it on, then print from inside it. Chrome is the awkward one: it has a Reading mode side panel, but printing still sends the cluttered page underneath to your printer.

Method 3: Fix it in the print dialog

The print dialog itself has settings that remove a surprising amount of junk. Press Ctrl+P and look for More settings.

• Background graphics, leave this off. It is off by default and keeps you from printing solid colour blocks and hero images.
• Headers and footers, turn off to remove the page title, URL, date and page number your browser adds.
• Scale, drop to 80 or 90 percent to fit more text per sheet without making it unreadable.
• Pages, do not print the whole document. Look at the preview, find the two pages that hold your content, and enter a range like 2-3.
• Print using system dialog, on Chrome this opens your operating system dialog, which exposes two-sided printing and draft quality.

Method 4: A browser extension or bookmarklet

If you print pages often, a one-click button beats copying URLs. A bookmarklet is a bookmark whose address is a small piece of JavaScript; click it on any page and it opens that page in the cleaner. There is a ready-made one on the extensions page that you can drag to your bookmarks bar. No install, no permissions, works in every browser.

Method 5: Hide elements yourself with DevTools

For a page that resists everything else, you can delete elements by hand. Right-click the ad or sidebar, choose Inspect, then press Delete on the highlighted node in the Elements panel. Repeat for each unwanted block, then print. Changes disappear on reload, so nothing is permanent.

// Or paste this in the DevTools Console to hide common clutter:
document.querySelectorAll('nav, aside, footer, iframe, [class*="ad"], [class*="promo"]')
  .forEach(el => el.remove());

Which method should you use?

Once the page is clean, you might also want to save it as a PDF instead of printing, or cut the ink cost further.

Frequently asked questions