how do I get rid of the Reader View icon on the address bar?
Changes appeared on the address bar in my Firefox out of the blue. There appeared what they call a Reader View icon (that I learned about through my searches) that turns blue when clicked on. Also when I click on the address bar and/or the search bar it illuminates outlined in red. Did Firefox do this? Or have I been hacked? I am really scared as this appears when I use my Yahoo mail when I click on an email. This icon appears for some emails, but not for all. Does that mean somebody out there can read my emails? Please help clarify this for me.
Chosen solution
As for why the address bar might have a red outline, it probably is related to your system theme somehow. Firefox is more and more trying to pick up theme colors. However, as a Windows person, it's pretty much always shades of blue for me.
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Hi mickey2603, the Reader View is a built-in feature. The icon only appears on pages that have a format similar to an article. Lots of pages confuse the Reader and you won't see the icon for those.
If you aren't interested in using Reader View, you can disable the feature and prevent Firefox from showing the icon by changing a setting. It's a little obscure:
(1) In a new tab, type or paste about:config in the address bar and press Enter/Return. Click the button accepting the risk.
(2) In the search box in the page, type or paste reader and pause while the list is filtered
(3) Double-click the reader.parse-on-load.enabled preference to switch the value from true to false
If you change your mind, you can double-click again to flip the value back to true, or click the reset "arrow" button at the far right of that row.
Chosen Solution
As for why the address bar might have a red outline, it probably is related to your system theme somehow. Firefox is more and more trying to pick up theme colors. However, as a Windows person, it's pretty much always shades of blue for me.
Hi jscher2000,
Thank you so much for clarifying the issue. I'm not tech savvy enough to try your solution. I'd probably end up breaking Firefox somehow. I wish it was simpler. In other answers that I had found, it said you could press and hold the icon and a menu would appear and choose remove, but I don't get that option. The red or pink that appears is a thin line that lights up when I click on the address bar and search bar. I didn't choose any themes, so I hope I'm not being hacked. I'll take your word for it that it's Firefox. You gave quite a professional answer to my query. Thank you so very much for alleviating my fears.