Ads and trackers are blocked from the first page you open. Reading mode shows an article on its own, without the sidebars and sign-up boxes. Focus mode clears everything but the page. Nothing to install, nothing to set up.
I would open a page to read one article and get a cookie banner, a video that starts on its own, a sidebar I never opened, a prompt to sign in, a prompt to sync, a new AI button. The article was in there somewhere, under all of it.
So I built Nook. A row of tabs, an address bar, four buttons, and that is the whole window. Everything else stays out of sight until you ask for it.
Nook checks every request a page makes and stops the ones that belong to ads and trackers, before they leave your Mac. A blocked ad never downloads, so pages arrive lighter and load sooner. There is nothing to install and nothing to configure.
A long article becomes one readable column of text and pictures. No sidebars, no sign-up box, no carousel of related links. Turn it off and the original page comes back.
Everything around the page slides away, so even a 13-inch screen shows a full article with no distractions. Move the mouse to the top edge and the controls come back for a moment.
The menu button opens a single panel for all three. Bookmarks are written to a plain JSON file in your Application Support folder, so they are yours to back up or read. History lives in memory and is gone when you quit.
Drag tabs to reorder them. A tab playing sound shows a speaker you can click to mute it. ⌘⇧T brings back the tab you just closed, and ⌘1 to ⌘9 jump to a tab by position.
Nook runs on the same engine as Chrome, so pages render the way you expect them to. Video, web apps and sign-ins all work, and sites that need a modern browser get one.
Cookies and cache are deleted when Nook closes, with no private window to remember to open. There is no account, no sync, no telemetry, and no crash reporting. The only things Nook fetches on its own are filter-list updates and the city shown on the new-tab page.
Ad and tracker blocking is built in, so there is no extension to find and nothing to configure. Reading mode shows an article on its own, and there is no account to create. Free, for Apple silicon and Intel Macs.