How to use FocalReader

Everything it does, in about two minutes.

Reading online means losing your place — a notification slides in, a sidebar autoplays, your eyes drift to a headline in the margin. FocalReader is the quiet fix: a band of light follows what you're reading, and the rest of the page dims away.

The first minute

Open any article and press Alt+Shift+F. Move your cursor over a paragraph — a band of light follows it, everything else fades back. That's the whole idea. Everything below is just tuning.

Smart Window

Instead of a fixed rectangle, the band snaps to the actual paragraph, heading, or list item under your cursor — taking its exact shape. Shift+↓ and Shift+↑ jump between blocks. Too big or small? Shift+→ drills into a single line, Shift+← backs out. It's on by default, and free.

Explain (AI)

Hit a dense paragraph? Focus it and press Alt+Shift+E — FocalReader rewrites it in plain language, right there. Works on web pages and PDFs. Turn on Explain (AI) in the popup first. Free tier is 5 a day; Pro is unlimited.

Haze

Haze turns the dimmed area into frosted glass instead of a flat shade — softer, easier on the eyes. Set the level with the Haze slider in the popup. Switch on Auto haze and it deepens when you pause to read.

PDFs

It all works on PDFs too — band, Smart Window, Explain. For PDFs stored on your computer, flip on Allow access to file URLs once: chrome://extensions → FocalReader → Details. (Firefox works out of the box.)

Tuning the band

• Width — Alt+Shift+← / Alt+Shift+→. Narrow it to dim sidebars and widgets too; widen it for tables and code.
• Height — Alt+Shift+↑ / Alt+Shift+↓. Short for dense papers (one sentence at a time), tall for casual reading.
• Tint & opacity — in the popup. Swap to warm amber for night; dial opacity down if it feels heavy.
• Re-center — Alt+Shift+C snaps the band back under your cursor.

Auto Dim

Stop moving and the page dims a touch further, like a library settling once everyone's seated. Move again and it lifts. On by default — toggle with Alt+Shift+A.

Lock it in place

Found the paragraph you want? Press Alt+Shift+M. The band freezes there — now scroll, click links, switch tabs, and it stays put. That's deep-reading mode. Press again to unlock and move on.

Pause on a site

Not reading — searching, filling forms, watching a dashboard? In the popup, toggle Pause on this site. It's per-hostname, and subdomains inherit: pausing google.com also covers mail.google.com.

Keyboard shortcuts

More help

Bug, feature request, or just want to share how you use it? Join the community forum or email support@focalreader.com.

Sibling tools

If FocalReader helped, you might also like FocalTabs — a time-aware tab manager that cools inactive tabs, snoozes them into a searchable archive, and keeps your browser quiet without losing anything.