Changelog

What's new in FocalReader.

1.11.4 — October 2, 2026

• PDFs work in Firefox. Opening a PDF in Firefox used to fall through to Firefox's built-in viewer, where FocalReader can't run, so the focus window never appeared. PDFs now open in FocalReader's reader, just like in Chrome — including links that don't end in .pdf, such as arXiv papers.

1.11.3 — September 19, 2026

• Protected PDFs can recover. If a repository rejects FocalReader's direct PDF request with authentication or verification, it retries through the site's own browser context and loads the downloaded bytes into the reader.
• Signed PDF links stay intact. Query parameters, credentials and fragments are preserved, so expiring download links are not corrupted by the viewer redirect.
• Login and verification failures are clear. FocalReader keeps the browser fallback available instead of hiding the original site behind a failed PDF screen.

1.11.2 — September 15, 2026

• PDF focus lands where you point. The focus window used to ignore the outer edges of a paragraph, so clicking near the start or end of a block did nothing and you had to aim for the middle. The dead zone is now a few pixels instead of a couple of dozen — the whole paragraph responds.
• Focus stays locked to the text when you zoom. At higher zoom levels the window drifted away from the words it was meant to be on, because the page's decorative border was being measured along with the page. It now tracks the text itself, at any zoom, and re-aligns the moment you change the zoom level.
• Opening the sidebar or the find bar no longer strands the window. Both of them resize the area you're actually reading in; the window now notices and moves with it.
• Two-column papers read in the right order. Shift+↓ now goes down the left column and then down the right, instead of zig-zagging across the page. A full-width title or abstract stays ahead of both columns where it belongs, even when the PDF has broken it into several pieces.
• Justified text isn't mistaken for two columns. Wide word spacing in a justified single column used to look like a gutter, which scrambled the reading order on a lot of ordinary documents.
• Paragraphs break in the right places. A sentence that happens to end at the right margin no longer starts a new paragraph. Real breaks are recognised by a short final line together with the spacing and indentation around it.
• Rotated and cropped PDFs work. Scanned pages and journal PDFs with a crop box put focus in the wrong place before; the coordinates now go through the same transform the viewer uses.
• Images no longer shuffle the page. Figures finishing loading used to reorder the paragraphs around them mid-read.
• The window no longer slides off its own text. When a paragraph is only partly on screen it's now clipped to the visible part, instead of the whole window sliding away to fit — which was most noticeable at high zoom. The dim and the haze cutout also stop disagreeing during a scroll, because the window's geometry now follows the page every frame rather than easing into place behind it.

1.11.1 — September 13, 2026

• The reading window picks up more of the page. Short paragraphs, headings, table cells and text in div-based layouts used to be skipped over — the window would jump straight past them. They all take focus now.
• Hover and the keyboard agree. Arrow navigation accepted a narrower set of blocks than hovering did, so a paragraph you could point at was sometimes one Shift+↓ refused to move to. Both use the same rule now.
• Widening stays in its column. Shift+→ groups neighbouring paragraphs without reaching across into the next column or swallowing nearby navigation and buttons.
• The window keeps up with the page. It re-aligns as reading panes scroll, images load and text reflows, clips itself to a nested scrolling pane, and disappears when its text scrolls out of that pane.

1.11.0 — September 1, 2026

• Focus, in three settings. A new Focus switch in the popup picks how tightly the dim closes in — Window snaps to the paragraph you're on, Line narrows to a single line, and Band is the free rectangle you size and place yourself. Line focus used to be reachable only through a keyboard gesture most people never found. Shift+→ and Shift+← still step between Window and Line, and the switch follows along.
• Explain has a button. The sparkle on the little toolbar above the focus band rewrites the paragraph you're reading in plain language — no shortcut to remember and no setting to switch on first. Same on web pages and PDFs. Alt+Shift+E still works.
• A visible grip on the band. In Band mode you could always drag the band, but nothing said so. There's a handle on its top edge now.
• Opacity is back in the popup. How dark the page goes was buried in Settings. It sits beside the Haze slider again, and it edits whichever dim level is actually live, so it never sits there doing nothing.

1.10.1 — August 29, 2026

• Notes on any paragraph. With Smart Window on, a small toolbar rides just above the focus band. Click the pen to write a note on whatever paragraph you're reading, and an indigo rule appears down its edge so you can see at a glance which paragraphs you've marked up. Come back to the page later and the note is waiting — it re-finds its paragraph by the text itself, so it survives the page being re-laid out, ads shifting, and most edits.
• The note shows itself when you reach the paragraph, and puts itself away when you leave. No clicking around to find what you wrote. If you'd rather a particular note stayed out of the way, the eye icon puts that one away for the rest of the session — the edge rule stays, so you never lose track of it.
• Notes stay on your device. They're saved in your browser's local storage and never sent anywhere. Export them all to a JSON file from the popup, or import a file from another machine — importing never overwrites and never deletes: if the same paragraph has a different note on each side, you get both, in one note, and can trim it in seconds.
• Turn it all off whenever. The Annotations toggle in the popup hides every note and mark without deleting a thing.
• Requires Chrome 105+ or Firefox 140+. The popup tells you if your browser is too old rather than leaving the feature quietly doing nothing.

1.9.2 — August 23, 2026

• The Discord invite works again. The link behind the popup's Discord button had expired, so it led nowhere. It's fixed, and the new invite never expires — join here. If you tried before and landed on a dead page, sorry about that; the button glows once more so it's easy to find.

1.9.0 — July 16, 2026

• Join the FocalReader community on Discord. A new Discord button in the popup's footer takes you straight to our server — share feedback, vote on what gets built next, and get help. It glows until your first click so you can't miss it.

1.8.0 — July 1, 2026

• Guided tour for new installs. A quick walkthrough points out each control the first time you open FocalReader — Enable, Follow Mouse, Smart Window, Auto Dim, Haze, Explain, and where shortcuts and settings live. Replay it anytime from the ? icon in the popup's top-right corner.

1.7.0 — June 29, 2026

• Explain (AI) — understand any paragraph instantly. Focus a paragraph and press Alt+Shift+E to rewrite it in plain language, right where you're reading. Works on web pages and PDFs. 5 free explanations a day; sign in and upgrade to Pro for unlimited.
• Haze — frosted-glass dimming. A softer, glassy dim instead of a flat shade. Set the strength with the new Haze slider, or turn on Auto haze to deepen it when you pause to read. Works on web pages and PDFs.
• Smart Window is out of beta and on by default for new installs.
• Popup redesign: a cleaner layout, appearance settings moved to the Options page, and a live count of your remaining free explanations.

1.6.0 — June 2026

• Site Control — choose where FocalReader runs. A new "Run only on the sites I choose" mode lets you allowlist a handful of sites; FocalReader turns on automatically there and stays off everywhere else. The default "Run everywhere except sites I block" still works as before. Set it in Options, or toggle the current site from the popup.

1.5.0 — June 6, 2026

• Line focus — read one line at a time. Smart Window can now narrow all the way down to a single line. With Smart Window on, press Shift+→ to drill from a paragraph to one line, Shift+↓ / Shift+↑ to move line by line (rolling into the next paragraph at the edges), and Shift+← to widen back out. Works on web pages and PDFs.
• The focus band can now shrink lower — down to a single line of text — for tighter line-by-line reading.

1.4.2 — June 3, 2026

• Local PDFs are easier to turn on. Opening a PDF saved on your computer? FocalReader now detects when Chrome is blocking access to local files and shows a one-tap prompt — in the popup, plus a status card in Settings — to switch on Allow access to file URLs. Local PDFs then get the same dim band and Smart Window as online ones.

1.4.1 — June 2, 2026

• Fix (Firefox): the popup now opens reliably — a Chrome-only API reference was stopping the background script from loading on Firefox — and no longer renders wider than it should.
• Smart Window: the page now stays fully visible until you move onto a paragraph or heading. Previously, with Smart Window on and nothing focused yet, a cursor-following band could briefly appear before you'd picked a target.

1.4.0 — May 27, 2026

• Smart Window is now free for everyone. Element-aware focus that snaps to paragraphs, headings, and articles — previously a Pro feature, now part of the default extension. No accounts, no upgrades, no upsells.
• Removed the Pro upgrade modal, license activation flow, and PDF upsell strip. Removed the api.gumroad.com host permission and the alarms permission since we no longer poll a license server.
• If you previously purchased Pro: everything you paid for is now free for everyone. We're winding down the paid tier — there's nothing for you to do, Smart Window just works.

1.2.0 — May 14, 2026

• Send feedback in one click: a new feedback button in the popup footer and a full form on the Settings page deliver your message straight to the FocalReader inbox.
• Auto-hide on cursor exit: the focal band now fades out smoothly when your cursor leaves the page viewport (URL bar, dock, other window) and fades back in on return — no more stale dim while you're elsewhere.
• Popup polish: Opacity and Active Opacity sliders share a single row; values snap in steps of 10 for less twitchy adjustments.

1.1.3 — April 28, 2026

• FocalReader now activates on tabs that were already open at install or update time. Previously you had to reload each tab manually after installing or updating; now the focal band shows up immediately on every supported page in your browser.

1.1.2 — April 27, 2026

• Fix: Sign-out confirmation now uses an in-popup two-tap pattern instead of the native browser dialog (which Firefox clipped inside the narrow popup window).

1.1.1 — April 27, 2026

• Fix: Pro checkout button on Firefox now opens the Gumroad checkout page (background script load path corrected for Firefox MV3 event pages).

1.1.0 — April 26, 2026

• Smart Window Pro: element-aware focus that snaps to paragraphs, headings, and articles instead of a fixed band.
• 7-day free trial for Pro — try Smart Window risk-free, cancel anytime before day 7.
• Country-localized pricing (Purchasing Power Parity) — automatic regional discounts on the Pro plan based on visitor country.
• Switched billing to Gumroad as merchant of record. Handles VAT/GST/sales tax globally; you get a license key by email after checkout.
• Auto-pause on payment pages: the focal band now stays out of your way on gumroad.com.
• Popup polish: cleaner Pro entitlement chip, tighter modal copy, fixed yellow band glitch under Smart Window toggle.

1.0.1 — March 2026

• Spam-email detection and filtering for the support inbox worker.
• Email worker reliability improvements.
• Added FocalTabs to the product suite cross-link on the homepage.
• Intro video added to the marketing site.

1.0.0 — Initial release

• Movable focal band with adjustable width, height, and opacity.
• Tint color picker for the dimmed area.
• Follow Mouse mode — focus follows your cursor instead of the page center.
• Auto Dim — automatically lowers brightness on the area outside focus.
• Per-site pause: turn the extension off on specific domains.
• Keyboard shortcuts for toggle (Alt+Shift+F), follow mouse (Alt+Shift+M), auto dim (Alt+Shift+A), and popup (Alt+Shift+P).
• Available on Chrome and Firefox.

Have a feature request? Email support@focalreader.com or post in the community.