Aar318's Reading Mask Highlight by Aar318

📖 Aar318's Reading Mask Highlight: Focused, Accessible Reading

Keep your eyes anchored to one line at a time. Reading Mask Highlight adds a movable accessibility overlay to webpages, leaving a clear horizontal reading band between two colored guide lines while dimming the rest of the page. An optional local Simplified Reader can also turn compatible articles into a distraction-reduced reading view.

🚀 Getting Started

1. Install the extension and pin it from your extension menu for easy access.
2. Click the toolbar icon or press Alt+Shift+M to turn the reading mask on for the current tab.
3. Move your pointer vertically on desktop, or drag anywhere inside the clear reading band on a touch device, to position it.
4. Right-click the toolbar icon—or right-click/long-press the injected page control—to open settings, accessibility presets, and reading-session tools.
5. Press Escape whenever you want to turn an active mask off.

✨ New Features (v1.6.0.0)

• Bug Fix: Place backup controls in their own section so Turn Mask On and Reset Appearance retain their normal size and remain visible.
• Bug Fix: Automatically split larger compressed browser-sync backups into verified parts, overcoming the single-item limit while preserving the previous copy if upload fails.
• Improvement: Simplify backups with a default-on Browser sync checkbox, followed by Export and Import on separate rows; keep advanced sync and restore controls out of the way.
• New Feature: Default-enabled automatic browser-profile sync for eligible preferences, with clear status and a choice when copies differ.
• New Feature: Backup & Restore provides portable preference files, validated imports, and a local safety copy before restores.
• Improvement: Keep sensitive saved data and temporary state local; show the exact backup scope and size-limit errors.
• Bug Fix: Use safe defaults for malformed numeric preferences instead of producing invalid mask dimensions or opacity.

⭐ Key Features

• Preference backups: Browser-account sync enabled by default, explicit conflict resolution, portable preference files, and a local safety copy before restores. The backup page identifies excluded saved data.
• Per-Tab Reading Mask: Toggle the mask independently for each tab using the toolbar icon or Alt+Shift+M; the toolbar badge shows when it is active.
• Clear Reading Band: Focus on a single horizontal region while customizable upper and lower masks dim surrounding page content.
• Accessibility Presets: Apply coordinated dyslexia-friendly typography, spacing, high contrast, warm or cool tint, and reduced-motion settings to Simplified Reader.
• Reading Session Tools: Use an optional timer, break reminders, progress marker, resume position, and one-click session restart.
• Pointer, Touch, and Keyboard Control: Follow the pointer on desktop, drag the clear band on mobile, optionally switch to a dedicated grip-only mode, or adjust position with Arrow, Page Up/Down, Home, and End keys.
• Simplified Reader: Open a private text-focused version of compatible article content while retaining reading-mask, preset, progress, and resume support.
• Complete Appearance Controls: Adjust band height, guide thickness and colors, mask color and darkness, page-control position, visibility, and fade timing.
• Responsive Mobile Design: Includes full-band dragging by default, optional grip-only control, larger touch targets, safe-area and orientation handling, native page scrolling, and layouts sized for smaller screens.
• Injected Page Control: Toggle the mask directly from the webpage and open the complete settings panel with a right-click or touch long-press.
• Toolbar Shortcuts: Access mask controls, settings, presets, domain management, appearance reset, and support links from the extension-icon menu.
• Domain Rules: Run everywhere except a blocklist or only on an allowlist, with automatic subdomain matching and current-site controls.
• Optional Page Control: Hide the injected control globally or on selected domains while continuing to use the toolbar and keyboard shortcut.
• Accessibility Features: Provides visible focus states, keyboard-operable controls, descriptive labels, tooltips, isolated styling, and automatic print hiding.
• Quick Mask Presets: Apply Compact, Standard, or Large reading bands and Light, Standard, or Dark mask styles.
• Start-Enabled Option: Automatically activate the mask after supported page navigation when desired.
• Dynamic-Page Recovery: Reattaches the overlay after client-rendered sites rebuild content while reducing checks in hidden tabs.

🔐 Permissions & Privacy

Browser profile sync and preference backups: Open Backup & Restore from the toolbar context menu or settings. Sync is enabled by default unless you turn it off. Use the same browser account with extension synchronization enabled; If your browser requests optional sync data permissions, approve them in Backup & Restore before transfers begin. Eligible preferences are transferred by the browser's account service; Aar318 does not receive them. This is not cross-browser-vendor synchronization or guaranteed backup retention after uninstall. File exports remain available without an account. Synced snapshots are compressed, not independently encrypted by the extension; do not put secrets in preference fields. Oversized preferences remain local with a visible error. Imports validate the extension and schema, merge included preferences, save a local safety copy, and disable sync until re-enabled. Existing tabs may need a reload. Credentials, saved login sessions, document/chat content, transient state, and notification-delivery history are excluded. Saved lists and other content excluded by the backup page continue to use the extension's existing export tools. Disabling sync preserves local settings; deletion of the synced copy is a separate confirmed action. Other enabled devices can republish a deleted copy.

Alarms: Schedules delayed preference synchronization without keeping background code running continuously. Storage: Retains local preferences, sync state, a local safety copy, and the browser-account preference snapshot. No cloud-provider login, new cloud host access, or remote executable code is used.

• Storage: Saves appearance, behavior, accessibility presets, reader-session preferences, domain rules, onboarding state, and other settings locally in the browser.
• Context Menus: Provides right-click toolbar shortcuts for toggling, settings, presets, domain controls, and support actions.
• Site Access: Runs the reading overlay on webpages so it can dim page regions, follow pointer/touch movement, apply domain rules, and create Simplified Reader locally when requested.
• Privacy: Settings, progress, resume positions, and page content remain on your device. The extension contains no analytics, tracking, accounts, remote code, advertising, or background network requests.

Privacy policy: https://gist.github.com/aar318/9d4fc167a12546f162bcef3b91322aad

ℹ Notes

• Simplified Reader appears only when the current page contains suitable article-style content.
• Browser-protected pages and extension-store pages do not allow normal extension content-script access.
• All reading-mask and extension controls are automatically hidden when printing.
• Support: https://ko-fi.com/M4M81VBQPJ
• Donate: https://streamelements.com/hor318/tip