Read It Bookmarklet for Websites

2025-09-11 | #news #javascript | @Acidus

When I do read news sites on the web, I often encounter paywalls or signup gates or other junk preventing me from reading the content. And while there are a variety of techniques that can work to bypass this nonsense, Archive.is is usually a good option. Archive.is is nominally a free web archiving service that allows users to create public permanent snapshots of webpages. However, it is often used to get around paywalls for web content. Someone who can read the content of a URL accesses it and saves a copy to Archive.is, where other people can read it.

Usually, the flow to use Archive.is is:

• Find an article that is gated or blocked.
• Copy the URL.
• Go to Archive.is.
• Search snapshots for that URL.
• Click on the latest version.
• Read the news story.

This is kind of tedious and slow, especially on mobile devices. So instead, I created a simple bookmarklet.

if (window.location.hostname != "archive.is") {
    window.location.replace("https://archive.is/" + 
        (new % 20 Date().toISOString().slice(0, 10)) + 
        "/" + 
        window.location.origin + 
        window.location.pathname);
}

• If you are already looking at a page on `archive.is`, don't do anything. This stops accidentally recursive clicks of the bookmarklet.
• Uses `window.location.replace` so the crappy, unreadable page is removed from the history, so the forward/back button will go directly to the readable page.
• Uses a deeplink feature of Archive.is and the current date to automatically select the most recent snapshot.

I enjoy finding these little "extra" bits of polish that make the experience more enjoyable.