heykaan.dev

Soft Blackout

Chrome extension

Mask text on any page, your way.

Cover the text you select, compose blackout poems from articles, or mask email addresses, links and phone numbers. Masks are visual, local and only appear when you ask for them.

Soft Blackout on a sample essay, Notes from a lighthouse keeper: the first paragraphs are covered by dark bars except for kept phrases such as “the lamp was lit” and “the sea answered”, beside the popup in Poetry mode with Apply composition, the Solid and Marker styles, five colours, Undo, Redo and Reset page.

What it does

  • Manual

    Select text on the page and choose Mask. Select inside a mask and choose Reveal to remove just that part, or turn on Mask on select to skip the confirmation.

  • Poetry

    Choose the words to keep and apply the composition to hide the rest of each paragraph. Soft Blackout never picks words for you, and an applied poem can be edited.

  • Pattern Mask

    Scan the page for email addresses, URLs and, optionally, phone numbers, check the counts, then apply masks. Scanning never masks anything on its own.

  • Styles and colours

    Solid covers text with a block of colour and Marker draws a thick band through it, in ink black, warm white, terracotta, taupe or sage. Changing either restyles every mask on the page.

  • Undo, Redo and Reset

    One history covers all three modes, and Reset page removes every mask at once. The popup and on-page controls follow a System, Light or Dark theme.

How it works

  1. Open Soft Blackout

    Click the Soft Blackout icon on the page you want to mask. It runs on a page only after you use it there.

  2. Choose a mode

    Pick Manual, Poetry or Pattern Mask, then a style and colour. Masks appear on the page right away.

  3. Adjust or reset

    Undo, Redo or Reset page at any time. Masks disappear when you reload the page or navigate away.

Before you install

  • Browser support

    Chrome 116 or newer.

  • Visual only

    Masks are drawn over the page and do not remove the original text. It stays in the page, and copying masked text copies the original, so do not rely on masks to redact sensitive information.

  • Pattern matching

    Pattern Mask is deliberately conservative and is not full personal-data detection. Phone numbers without separators and other formats are not matched.

  • Supported pages

    Works on regular websites, but not on Chrome’s own pages, local files or in the Chrome Web Store. Text in form fields, buttons and frames is not masked.

  • Privacy

    Soft Blackout has no accounts, servers, analytics or tracking, and makes no network requests. Page text is processed in the tab and never stored or sent anywhere; only your settings are saved, on this device. Privacy policy

Install Soft Blackout and choose what stays visible on any page.

Add Soft Blackout to Chrome