Media
2 items
Description
When an article is paywalled, checks whether archive.ph already has a public snapshot and offers a link to it. ReadVia looks for existing public snapshots on archive.ph of articles that are behind a paywall. When you land on a paywalled article, ReadVia asks archive.ph whether a snapshot of that URL already exists. If one does, a small button appears offering to open it. If no snapshot exists, nothing appears. You can also click the toolbar icon on any page to check it directly. Paywalled pages are recognized two ways: a built-in list of major news, magazine, and trade publications, and generic detection elsewhere (schema.org `isAccessibleForFree: false`, known paywall vendor scripts such as Piano or Zephr, or on-page text like "subscribe to continue reading"). How it works — and what it does not do: ReadVia does not circumvent, disable, or tamper with any paywall. It does not spoof your user agent, clear cookies or article counters, modify the publisher's page to reveal hidden text, or alter any network request to the publisher. Its only action is to look up the current URL on archive.ph — the identical request your browser would make if you visited archive.ph and pasted the link yourself — and, if a snapshot is already publicly available there, open it in a new tab. Features: - Confirms a snapshot actually exists before showing anything — no dead links - Automatic detection on known paywalled sites, manual lookup anywhere via the toolbar icon - Falls back across archive.ph mirrors (archive.today, archive.is, archive.li) if one is down - No accounts, no tracking, no analytics, no data sent to the developer — see privacy policy