00 Public beta · macOS
The web is full of things you didn't ask for.
Crank Browser takes your side.
Crank Browser is a reading browser for Mac that you use alongside your main one. Open it to read: it removes popups, autoplay, sticky junk, consent theatre and other page machinery while keeping the content you came for.
Apple silicon · macOS 13+ · Signed & notarized by Apple · Free public beta
As published
With Crank
Illustrative. The page stays the page — Crank is not Reader Mode.
01 The problem
Most webpages aren't just pages anymore.
You open an article.
The page opens an ad auction, a consent negotiation, a newsletter campaign, a sticky video, a recommendation engine, three trackers and something that would very much like your email address.
Your browser renders all of it faithfully.
Crank doesn't.
It looks at the page, decides what is content and what is machinery, and pushes back on the parts that get between you and what you came to read.
02 What Crank does
Less page machinery. More page.
01
Removes interruptions
Newsletter modals, sticky bars, autoplay video, related-content bait and other obstructions can disappear before they become your problem.
02
Pushes back on tracking
Crank sends Global Privacy Control, handles supported consent systems, and can remove tracking identifiers from links you follow.
03
Keeps the actual page
Headlines, prose, images, tables, charts, code and citations stay where they belong. Crank is not trying to flatten every website into Reader Mode.
04
Respects the boundary
A paywall is a paywall. Crank can identify it. It won't bypass it.
05
Lets you put things back
Crank's decisions are reversible. If it takes something out that you wanted, restore it.
Built for news, blogs, recipes, documentation, essays and research — the pages you open to read.
03 Explainable
See what Crank changed.
Crank doesn't quietly rewrite the page and ask you to trust it.
Open the change log (⌘I) to see what Crank thought each part of the page was and what it did. Behind every row: the rule, its confidence and the evidence.
If Crank isn't confident enough, it can label rather than remove.
Visible. Explainable. Reversible.
And if you want the original page back: Show page as published.
Illustrative example, using the change log's own wording.
04 Not Reader Mode
Crank doesn't replace the page. It argues with it.
Reader modes extract an article into a separate simplified view.
Ad blockers stop known network requests.
Crank works on the page itself.
It can remove an obstruction while keeping the design, preserve a table while collapsing a distraction, or treat the same kind of element differently depending on the rules in force.
The aim is not “turn every website into plain text.” It is: let the useful website through.
05 Proof
We test Crank on real pages.
Crank is scored against a versioned corpus of real webpages, so changes to the engine can be measured rather than guessed at.
280
real pages in the current test corpus
95.8%
of essential page parts (headline, body, figures, tables) still on the page
0.14%
of essential page parts hidden by Crank
88%
of tested pages change when Crank's rules change
Crank is in public beta. It will get some pages wrong. Each number is defined below with its caveats, and gets published good or bad, because a browser that makes judgements should be accountable for them.
06 Rules
Crank has rules.
Crank's engine is built around explicit constitutions: written rules for how a webpage may treat you.
That architecture lets Crank make different decisions for different kinds of reading without handing the entire page to a cloud model.
Today Crank ships with a small set of built-in rule systems. As the product matures, these will become easier to choose and customise directly in the app.
Crank's behaviour should come from rules you can understand, not unexplained magic.
07 Privacy
Your browsing stays on your Mac.
Crank is not an ad business.
It does not need to know which articles you read in order to clean them.
Crank decides what each part of a page is on your Mac. Page content and browsing history are not sent to Crank or to any cloud AI service.
Pages load as they do in any browser: your Mac talks to the sites you open. Crank makes one request of its own, a check for updates that fetches the same public file from GitHub for everyone, with no installation or account identifier.
A default list of about 40 banking, health, government, webmail and password-manager sites is left alone entirely. You can add to it.
Diagnostic logs stay on your Mac unless you export them and send them yourself.
— No browsing-data business.
Your reading behaviour is not inventory.
— No paid exceptions.
A publisher cannot pay Crank to leave its junk alone.
— No content rewriting.
Crank changes page behaviour, not what the author said.
— No paywall bypass.
Crank can object to an interruption without stealing the article behind it.
08 Principles
What Crank believes.
Browsers went neutral at exactly the wrong moment. A useful article and a fake download button do not deserve equal respect — Crank represents the person sitting in front of the screen.
01
Your attention belongs to you.
Websites may compete for it. They do not own it.
02
A click is not consent to harassment.
Opening a page is not accepting popups, autoplay and tracking.
03
Neutrality is a side.
Treating a hostile page like an honest one is already a choice.
04
Ranking is not quality.
Popular, optimized and useful are three different things.
05
Software should sometimes say no.
A browser doesn't have to behave like a neutral pipe.
06
Judgment shows its working.
Visible, explainable, reversible. Every time.
07
The open web is worth protecting.
Small publishers, weird corners, useful obscurities.
08
The browser represents the user.
That is the side Crank is on.
Crank started as a measurement of how sites treat readers. That scoreboard is PageYank.
09 Public beta
Crank Browser is free.
Crank is in public beta: anyone can download it while the engine, rules and everyday browser experience are hardened.
The core of Crank is free. An optional paid tier may come later; nothing is for sale today.
Why pay for it at all? Because the web does not stand still. Consent systems change. Ad systems change. Pages change. New obstructions appear. Old rules break.
Keeping Crank good is ongoing work.
No advertising. No selling your browsing behaviour. You are the customer.
No account. No card.
10 FAQ
Questions worth answering once.
Is Crank an ad blocker?
Not exactly. Crank can block some network requests, but its main job is broader: it judges the page itself.
That means it can deal with things traditional filter lists cannot fully express, such as overlays, sticky interruptions, late-loading page machinery, content rails and context-dependent elements.
Is Crank Reader Mode?
No. Reader Mode extracts the article into a simplified template. Crank tries to keep the useful website while removing the parts working against you.
Does Crank replace Safari, Chrome or Firefox?
No. Crank is a companion browser for reading and research: news, blogs, documentation, recipes, essays and similar pages. Keep your main browser and open Crank when a page fights you.
For banking, webmail and other account-heavy workflows, your main browser is still the right place.
Does Crank use AI on the pages I read?
Crank's page judgement runs locally. Your page content is not sent to a cloud model for interpretation.
Does Crank bypass paywalls?
No. Crank can detect and flag a paywall. It does not climb it.
What happens if Crank removes something I wanted?
Open the change log (⌘I) and put it back, or show the page as published. Crank's decisions are meant to be visible and reversible.
Does Crank collect my browsing history?
No. Your history, bookmarks and settings are stored on your Mac and are not sent to Crank. The only request Crank makes on its own is the update check, which carries no installation or account identifier.
Diagnostic information stays on your Mac unless you export it and send it yourself.
Will Crank cost money?
The core of Crank is free. An optional paid tier may come later to fund the ongoing rules, fixes and compatibility work that keep Crank current, because websites, consent systems and ad systems change constantly. Nothing is for sale today.
Crank will not fund itself by advertising to you or selling what you read.
Which Macs are supported?
Apple silicon Macs (M1 or later) running macOS 13 Ventura or later. Intel Macs are not supported. Crank has been tested most on recent macOS releases; if something doesn't work on an older one, email connect@getcrank.co.
11 Download
Give the page fewer ways to bother you.
Crank Browser is in public beta for Apple silicon Macs.
Signed and notarized by Apple · Automatic updates · macOS 13+ · Free public beta
12 Numbers
How we test.
Crank is scored on a versioned corpus of 280 real pages. Every release is scored again, alongside Reader View and an ad blocker on the same pages.
The table measures how often the parts of a page you came for survive, how often Crank hides them, and whether changing Crank's rules changes the page.
If the numbers come back bad, they get published too.
280 real pages · corpus of 27 Oct 2026 · both baselines re-run every release
| Crank | Reader View¹ | Ad blocker² | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Essential parts⁴ — still present | 95.8% | 26.4% | 79.3% |
| Essential parts⁴ — hidden | 0.14% | 63.7% | 4.7% |
| Labelled elements³ — kept | 88.3% | 42.8%⁵ | 100%⁵ |
| Labelled elements³ — wrongly removed | 0.75% | 57.2%⁵ | 0%⁵ |
| Page changes when the rules change | 88% | — | — |
¹ Mozilla's Readability, the extractor behind Firefox Reader View. ² EasyList and EasyPrivacy through a filter-matching engine. ³ Element by element, on 1,242 hand labels across 38 pages, not all 280. Kept and removed needn't add to 100%: the remainder couldn't be located on the page. ⁴ Counted by role, not element: a role such as “body text” counts as present if any of its elements survives, so this is looser than the labelled rows. “Hidden” counts only parts Crank explicitly hid. ⁵ Not like-for-like: the baselines are scored on 414 of those labels, Crank on all 1,242.