Text-only websites are quite useful, especially today, because web pages are increasingly filled with ads, videos, and bandwidth-hey content.
Here is a list of text-only news sites:
US News Lenexia — a customizable news aggregator that allows you to choose your news sources Timef — Collects headlines from various popular news sources News Minimalist — uses AI to rank news stories by significance CNN Text Only — U.S. news from CNN Newsnow — Collects headlines for UK, US, Canada, Australia, Romania, Italy and Nigeria — ask you to subscribe sometimes New York Times Wire — A stream of the latest headlines from New York Times Christian Science Monitor Text Only — News from Christian Science Monitor NPR News Text Only — News from National Public Radio (US) Canadian News CBC Low Bandwidth — A low-bandwidth version of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation Newsnow (Canada) — Collects headlines UK News Minimalist Today’s Guardian UK Daily Mail Text-Base Neuters – a text-only version of the Reuters home page Post Online — a text-only Post Online (UK) — focuses on “global events that impact the US and world economies” Technology News Readspike — More news headlines condensed Clone — Clone.fyi is a tech and culture news aggregator that curates links hourly. Think of it as a modern Drudge Report for founders and tech enthusiasts. Hckr News — a condensed version of Hacker News HackerWeb — a more accessible version of Hacker News Lobsters — computing topics — centered around link collection and discussion Cyber Report — cyber security news in text format Alterslash — the unofficial Slashdot digest 1MB Club — a collection of performance-focused web pages weighing less than 1 megabyte Sports News PlainTextSports – Sports news and results in plain text format Lightweight Interfaces To Social Media SitesAlternative interfaces are quite handy to access content on various social media platforms.
However, it’s important to find ones that reliable and fast-loading. These services are shown themselves to be reliable this year:
Accessing YouTube Nadeko is the most reliable interface to YouTube (back-end info). Hosted in South America. Accessing X/Twitter Xcancel is the most reliable interface to Twitter (about page). It’s lightweight, and has no JaScript or ads. Hosted in the USA using an instance of Nitter. Accessing Instagram Imginn is a reliable way to access Instagram without login (about page). Allows you view any public Instagram profile, posts, Reels and stories. Hosted in USA with Cloudflare. Accessing Reddit Perennialte is the most reliable interface to Reddit (instance info). Hosted in Switzerland. Accessing TikTok Lunar ProxiTok is a reliable way to access TikTok without login (about page). Here are some articles explaining Tiktok’s privacy issues. Hosted in Germany using Cloudflare. Accessing MediumScribe by rawbit.ninja — a lightweight and minimalist interface for Medium.
Wikipedia-Based News LegibleNews — news from Wikipedia in an easy-to-read format (Global) Wikipedia Current Events — current events from Wikipedia Mobile Wikipedia — mobile web version of Wikipedia News As Facts — concise world news Current Events — Wikipedia’s current events, delivered daily General News AggregatorsBrutalist Report — A text-only compilation of news articles. Here are selected subsections of the Brutalist Report: Tech – News – Business – Science – Culture – Politics
SkimFeed — this site also aggregates many news sources.
Here are selected subsections: Design – Investing – Long Reads – Mobile – News – Politics – Reddit – Science – Tech – Trend – Youtube – Weather
Weather NewsWttr.In provides text-only weather reports. There’s also a text-only weather from the National Weather Service.
Use Reader Mode In Your Web Browser To Get Text-Only PagesYou can also use “Reader Mode” in many web browsers. This mode strips the page down to text and content-related images. You can read how to enable this mode in various browsers here.
Textise: Browse Sites In Text-Only ModeYou can also use the Textise service, which will create a text-only version of the web page.