How to Access Paywalled Articles for Free in Google Chrome

A step by step guide to downloading and using the Hover extension

hover extension logo

Insulting Introduction

Ok listen up you dummies, it's not that hard to access paywalled articles for free.

If one more person tells me they are helpless to read something because they are "out of free articles", I'm going to lose it!

So here's the guide, as simple as I could possibly make it. After this, you have no excuses!

Patronizing Play-by-play

  1. Click this link Hover and it will open in a new tab
  2. Click on the green button that says "Code" and then click on "Download ZIP"
    Download Hover on Github Example
  3. Open that location in your computer's file system and find a button that says "Unzip" or "Extract" and click that. This will unzip the file and you should see a new folder called hover-paywalls-browser-extension-master
  4. Open the folder and leave it open in your file explorer
  5. Open a new tab on Google Chrome and type in chrome://extensions in the address bar
    Chrome Extensions Tab
  6. Click on the "Developer Mode" toggle in the top right corner to toggle it on
    Developer Mode Off
    Developer Mode On
  7. Drag the subfolder called dist from the folder you left open in step 5 onto the Chrome extensions page
  8. You should now see Hover installed in your extensions list
    Hover Extension Installed
  9. Navigate to the article you want to read, and click on this icon in the top right corner of your browser
    Hover Extension Icon
  10. Toggle "Bypass Paywalls" to on, and "Block Ads" as well if you want. Sometimes you will need to try different combinations of these settings to get the article to load
    Hover Paywall Toggle

Condescending Conclusion

Hopefully that was clear enough to get you through it. If not, I'm sorry but I'm not sure what else I can do to help you.

Maybe try your local newspaper stand, that should be a lot less confusing. 🙄

❗ Ethical Disclaimer ❗

I personally pay for several sites which I use the most, but refuse to buy a subscription for the occasional paywalled article from other organizations I rarely use.

As soon as sites create a pay-per-view option, I will use that. Until then, I will continue to use Hover to access paywalled articles for free.

Anyways, I'm not here to tell you how to live your life. If you want to pay for your news, that's your prerogative. I'm just here to help you get around it if you want to.