Part of the problem with reading anything online are the large number of distractions on the webpages. Be it ads or pop ups or any other number of things, they take away from the reading experience. Clearly, a product from Evernote, helps eliminate the distractions by providing a minimalist reading experience.
Evernote is an extremely popular note taking application with both a free and a paid version that works on pretty much all platforms both mobile and desktop. One feature Evernote has is saving webpages.
When you save a page in Evernote, all the ads and other stuff is removed leaving just the article. Using this same idea, they made the Chrome extension, Clearly.
Getting started with Clearly
You will need to add the extension to Chrome from the Web store. Once Clearly is added you can start using it. Using Clearly is as simple as opening a new tab in the browser.
There is a stipulation though, you need to be on an article page. Clearly is not designed to work on the main page of a site.
So you can get a feel for what you are getting into, here is a before and after using Clearly.
Before Clearly
After Clearly
See how the article is centered and the distractions are gone?
How to use Clearly
Like I mentioned earlier, you just need to be on an article page and click the Clearly icon to activate the extension. There are some other options to help you season the extension to your taste.
In the options menu, you can set the keyboard shortcuts for activating Clearly. There is also shortcut for clipping the page and saving it in your Evernote account.
If you want to add a default tag for everything you clip using Clearly, you can add that here.
You can create a custom theme to better personalize your reading experience. As you can see, there are options to change the font family, font size, colors and other things.
In the sidebar
If you prefer, there are some preset theme adjustments in the right sidebar of the Clearly window.
There are a couple of other options in the right sidebar too. There is an option to clip the page and save it to your Evernote notes.
You can also print the page right from the sidebar. All of these may be simple sounding features, and they are. However, the minimalist view really lets you concentrate on the content.
Conclusion
There is a lot of information trying to get your attention by attacking your senses. Everyone is looking for as much of your attention as they can get for as long as they can keep it. Avoiding these distractions is a good way to keep focused on the reason you clicked on the link to open that page in the first place.
Add Clearly by Evernote for a minimalist reading experience
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