# Bionic Reader

> - Apply Bionic Reading style with adjustable strength to a webpage. - Adjustable vowels for different languages. - Adjustable font family, font size, font weight and font opacity. - Support Unicode characters. - Apply dark mode to a webpage.

Canonical page: [https://chrome-stats.com/d/bionic-reader](https://chrome-stats.com/d/bionic-reader)

## Overview

- **ID:** `bionic-reader`
- **Platform:** Firefox
- **Type:** Firefox add-on
- **Status:** Available
- **Publisher:** Rain Jr.
- **Category:** appearance,language-support
- **Daily users:** 3,575
- **Weekly downloads:** 81
- **Rating:** 3.85 / 5 (59 ratings)
- **Version:** 1.6.25
- **Last updated:** 2024-01-08
- **First published:** 2022-07-15
- **Size:** 32 KB
- **Data as of:** 2026-09-06
- **Store listing:** [Firefox Add-ons Store](https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/bionic-reader/)

## Description

Bionic Reader is a powerful Chrome extension designed to enhance your reading experience on any webpage. It applies the innovative Bionic Reading style with adjustable strength, allowing you to emphasize key parts of the text for quicker comprehension. You can customize which vowels are treated for different languages, ensuring functionality across diverse linguistic needs.

Beyond text styling, Bionic Reader offers extensive font customization options including font family, size, weight, and opacity, enabling you to tailor the appearance according to your preferences. It fully supports Unicode characters, ensuring proper display of various scripts. Additionally, the extension features a dark mode toggle to reduce eye strain during nighttime reading. While certain websites and iframe content may have compatibility constraints, shortcut keys and a user-friendly options menu allow easy control of features for an optimal reading experience.

## Rankings

- #1,497 — Overall
- #64 — Language Support
- #240 — Appearance
- #23 — reader
- #43 — algorithm
- #48 — header

## Permissions and access

### Permissions

- `storage`
- `tabs`

### Content script matches

- `<all_urls>`

## Safety

- **Risk impact:** High risk impact
- **Risk likelihood:** Low risk likelihood

### Analysis details

- Grants access to browser tabs, which can be used to track user browsing habits and history, presenting a privacy concern.
- This extension has low user count. Unpopular extensions may not be stable or safe.

> Some risk analysis details are omitted from this free response. [Upgrade to view the full analysis](https://chrome-stats.com/pricing).

## Review summary

Reviewers praise Bionic Reader for strong typography customization and persistent, free-use features, but report major compatibility issues, unreliable saving, weak site-control options, and occasional text duplication that hamper everyday use.

### Pros

- Strong typography customization across sites (emphasis styles and font choices).
- Settings persist across sessions and can be easily reset to default.
- Free to use and accessible.
- Works across dynamic websites / broad site coverage.

### Cons

- Breaks or garbles pages on many sites (e.g., WhatsApp Web, YouTube, ChatGPT, Sudowrite, Substack, Medium).
- Saving changes is unreliable or the save button is missing, so settings may not be retained.
- Weak per-site controls: no wildcard support for blacklists, no easy page exclusion, and limited element-targeting options.
- Text duplication or repeated text on certain pages that disrupts reading.

## Similar extensions and apps

- [Smart Reader - Bionic Reader](https://chrome-stats.com/d/smartreader) — 830 users, 4.03 / 5
- [Bionic Reader](https://chrome-stats.com/d/bionic-reader-web-pdf) — 8 users, 5.00 / 5
- [Bionic Reader](https://chrome-stats.com/d/bionicreader) — 7 users
- [Bionic Reading](https://chrome-stats.com/d/bionic_reading) — 76 users
- [Bionic Text Reader](https://chrome-stats.com/d/bionic-text-reader) — 1 users
- [Bionify - Bionic Reading Plugin](https://chrome-stats.com/d/bionify-bionic-reading-plugin) — 115 users, 2.14 / 5
- [SimpleBionic](https://chrome-stats.com/d/simplebionic) — 1 users, 2.00 / 5
- [BiReader](https://chrome-stats.com/d/bireader) — 95 users, 4.25 / 5
- [FastRead Tweaked](https://chrome-stats.com/d/fastread-tweaked) — 4 users, 5.00 / 5
- [ReadEase - Dyslexia Reading Tool](https://chrome-stats.com/d/readease-dyslexia-reading-tool) — 17 users
- [Bionic Reader](https://chrome-stats.com/d/bionic-reader-v69)
- [ReadBionic](https://chrome-stats.com/d/readbionic) — 1 users

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Source: [Chrome-Stats](https://chrome-stats.com/d/bionic-reader)