Disable New York Times Paywall on All Browsers

Print View Mobile View

The New York Times is going to introduce “paywall”, a system which limits visitors to 20 articles per month, globally on March 28. After the free articles a message appears (as below) that asks users to sign up for unlimited access to the contents on the site.

NYTimes Paywall

When you reach the 20-article limit and try to read more, the article loads just fine and is also visible in the page source, however it quickly gets covered by the overlay.

So here are three simple ways to block that overlay in all browsers and continue reading.

Update: The NYTimes has updated their paywall. The content is no longer hidden behind a big transparent div, but instead is now actually removed from the page entirely. It’s still simple to defeat, though. Using your favorite adblocker, block the following URLs:

*://*.nytimes.com/*/gwy.js*
*://*.nytimes.com/*/gw.js*

And you’re done.

Google Chrome

For Google Chrome users, there’s an extension called New York Times Paywall Smasher available. Just install it and you will have unlimited access.

Here’s a demo video created by the developer:

Install: New York Times Paywall Smasher

All other browsers

Use a bookmarklet called NYTClean NYClean. Simply visit the site and drag the bookmarklet onto your bookmarks toolbar. Whenever NYTimes block you from reading an article, click on it.

There’s  another userscript available called the NY Times Paywall. This script works similar to the Chrome extension by automatically blocking the overlay. Thus allowing you to continue reading articles without having to click anything.

Those two methods will work on all browsers.

Instant Methods

If you don’t want to install anything and are looking for a quick to way to read an article, then simply remove “?gwh=numbers” from the URL.

The site uses cookies to keep count of your read articles, so you can also clear the browser cache, or switch browsers to start afresh. If you are on Google Chrome, you can use an extension called Forget Me to delete cookies and cache of only the New York Times website.

One thought on “Disable New York Times Paywall on All Browsers”

Comments are closed.