00 Private beta · macOS
The web is full of things you didn't ask for.
Crank is the browser that takes your side.
Crank is a reading browser for Mac that 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 during private 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 intervention log to see what Crank thought an element was, what it did, and which rule made the decision.
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.
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 evaluated against a frozen corpus of real webpages so changes to the engine can be measured rather than guessed at.
268
real pages in the current test corpus
95.8%
of content that should stay is retained
0.14%
of content that should stay is wrongly removed
87%
of tested pages change when Crank's rules change
Crank is still in private beta. It will get some pages wrong. The benchmark, its caveats and known gaps are public 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.
Page judgement happens locally. Crank does not send your page content or browsing history to a cloud AI service.
Diagnostic logs stay on your Mac unless you explicitly export and send them.
Some sensitive categories, including banking, health, government and webmail, are excluded from filtering by default.
— 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 Private beta
Crank is free during private beta.
Right now Crank is being used by a small group of early testers while the engine, rules and everyday browser experience are hardened.
Public Crank is intended to become a small paid subscription product.
Why a subscription? 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 card required during private beta.
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?
Not yet. Crank is currently focused on reading and research: news, blogs, documentation, recipes, essays and similar pages.
For banking, webmail and other account-heavy workflows, keep your normal browser for now.
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 intervention log and restore it, or show the page as published. Crank's decisions are meant to be visible and reversible.
Does Crank collect my browsing history?
Crank does not need a cloud record of your browsing history to clean pages. Diagnostic information remains local unless you explicitly export and send it.
Why will Crank be paid?
Because keeping Crank effective is continuous work. Websites, consent systems, ad systems and page behaviour change constantly.
A subscription funds the ongoing rules, fixes, compatibility work and product development required to keep Crank current. Crank does not plan to fund itself by advertising to you or selling what you read.
Which Macs are supported?
Apple silicon Macs running macOS 13 Ventura or later.
11 Download
Give the page fewer ways to bother you.
Crank is currently in private beta for Apple silicon Macs.
Signed and notarized by Apple · Automatic updates · macOS 13+ · Free during private beta
12 Numbers
How we test.
Crank is scored on a frozen corpus of 268 real pages. Every build is compared with Reader View and an ad blocker on the same pages.
The table measures how often wanted content is kept, how often it is wrongly removed, and whether changing Crank's rules changes the page.
If the numbers come back bad, they get published too.
268 real pages, frozen · both baselines re-run on every build
| Crank | Reader View¹ | Ad blocker² | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Parts that should stay — kept | 95.8% | 26.4% | 79.3% |
| Parts that should stay — wrongly removed | 0.14% | 63.7% | 4.7% |
| Labelled elements³ — kept | 88.1% | 42.8% | 100% |
| Labelled elements³ — wrongly removed | 0.75% | 57.2% | 0% |
| Page changes when the rules change | 87% | — | — |
¹ Mozilla's Readability, the extractor behind Firefox Reader View. ² uBlock-class filter lists. ³ 38 hand-labelled pages, not all 268. Kept and removed needn't add to 100%: the remainder couldn't be located on the page.