How to Print a Web Page Without Ads from Mac OS

If you ever print articles from the web, you may be interested in learning how to print a stripped down and more simplified version of articles so that only the article content is printed. This is made easy on a Mac with Safari, where by using a little trick you can print out a webpage article with a focus on the page content exclusively, thereby preventing you from also printing out various other page elements like advertisements, logos, buttons, widgets, polls, social media details, crazy layouts and formatting, and other information that is not particularly worthwhile to print to paper. The end result is a simplified printed article that is focusing only on the article content and article pictures, without any extraneous details or complex layouts; instead you’ll get just a nice simple and clean article printed out with text and images.

Another added bonus to this slimmed down article printing approach is that you can save a bit of printer ink and printer paper too, since unwanted or unnecessary content won’t be printed out with the article.

This approach to printing out simplified versions of webpages will use Safari Reader mode in Mac OS, it works the same in MacOS or Mac OS X and with any vaguely modern version of Safari as long as it has Reader support.

How to Print Web Page Articles Without Ads or Other Unwanted Content from a Mac with Safari

Here’s how to print any article from the web in simplified form, focusing just on the text and images within the article itself and stripping away other data:

1. Open Safari on the Mac if you have not done so already, then visit the web page or article you wish to print a simplified version of (you can try it yourself with this article you are reading now if you’d like!)
2. Click on the reader button in the URL bar of the web page to enter into Reader mode (alternatively, you can pull down the “View” menu and choose “Show Reader”)





3. The article web page will be redrawn into Reader mode, which offers a simplified viewing and reading experience





4. Now pull down the “File” menu and choose “Print” as usual to print the article or web page





5. At the Print window, adjust any other printing settings as necessary, and optionally but recommended choose “Print Headers and Footers” so the printed version includes the original web page title and URL, and then choose “Print”

Now what is printed is will be the simplified “Reader” version of the article or web page, which strips out all content from a web page that is not directly related to the content text and content images.

You can also use this same approach to create simplified versions of web pages and articles to print to PDF from a Mac, which will generate a stripped down content-centric version of the web page or article just the same, except it will be saved as a PDF file instead.

Bonus Tip: Customize Reader Before Printing

Another nice bonus tip to combine with this; you can change the Safari Reader appearance and font too to make it even more suitable to your preferences before printing.

Printing an Article from Reader vs Default

Here’s an example of a webpage article printed out as usual from Safari, and the same webpage article printed out from Reader mode (these are just screenshots of PDF files but you get the idea).

In a typical article printed out from Safari, you’ll also be printing out other page data, including layouts, logos, links, ads, sidebar, and other information that just isn’t necessary to print out:

Compare that to a Reader version of the same article printed out from Safari, where the article has been stripped down into a simplified version with no layouts, logos, ads, links, sidebars, and other data:

The “Reader” version of a printed page in this case ends up using one less page of paper, and it would likely use less ink as well since there is simply less data being printed out.

This is a great trick but do keep in mind that most websites are supported by advertisers and run banner ads on webpages to fund their operations, and those efforts are circumvented by Reader mode. But, for printing out articles, it makes perfect sense for wanting to print out a simplified version of a webpage, particularly since it will reduce ink and paper usage. This makes Reader Mode in Safari particularly helpful for printing out articles and web pages, and it works on basically every website you’ll find on the web that has article type content, whether it’s news, blogs, tutorials and walkthrough guides, recipes, instructions, or just about anything else in article format. Happy printing!