Reader in Safari bypasses The New York Times paywall

9to5 Staff | Apr 27 2011 - 4:00 am PT

Many people have skipped on the opportunity to purchase one of The New York Times subscriptions in order to enjoy unlimited access to articles via smartphones, tablets and the web. I know I haven, but that didn’t stop me from fighting that paywall with a bunch of workaround solutions. Most are clunky, however, like searching for articles on Twitter, and limiting.

As a result, folks generally give up upon hitting the paywall after using up their allotment of twenty articles the newspaper generously gives away each month. But you needn’t despair, for the ultimate hack has been sitting right in front of you all along. Read on…

If you’re using Safari 5 for Windows or Mac, simply navigate to a desired article on the New York Times homepage. When the paywall brings up the warning that you need to subscribe in order to continue, just hit the Reader icon in Safari’s address bar.

It’s a feature akin to Readability that strips away all the graphics, animations and other interactive elements from a webpage, leaving only raw text which is then re-formatted for easy reading. Somehow, Reader in Safari also bypasses the paper’s paywall. Go ahead and try this method now – I did and it worked.

If this is an unintended consequence of the backend changes on The New York Times’ side rather than a feature, we’ll probably be enjoying it until the next Safari update.

via Cult of Mac