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Printing full webpages consumes both paper and ink. The more you print from the web, the more it will cost you in terms of ink refills and paper. That’s especially the case when webpages are full of clutter you don’t need in printed output.

PrintWhatYouLike and PrintFriendly are two online tools that will help you save paper & ink when printing web content. You can strip unwanted text, ads, and images from website pages with those online tools to print only what’s needed on pages. This is how you can save paper and ink with PrintWhatYouLike and PrintFriendly.

How to Save Paper and Ink With PrintWhatYouLike

PrintWhatYouLike is an old web app that remains one of the best for cleaning up webpages with minimal fuss. Web developers Cassie Schmitz and Jonathan Koomjian designed PrintWhatYouLike to give users a tool with which they could save paper when printing online content. This web app is freely available to utilize with or without an optional account.

To try out this web app, open the PrintWhatYouLike page in your browser; open another webpage from which to print some content in a different tab. Click in your browser’s address bar, select the URL of the page to print, and press Ctrl + C to copy. Then paste the copied page address into the Enter a URL box on PrintWhatYouLike by pressing Ctrl + V and clicking the web app’s Start button.

Now you’ll have an editable view of the webpage you want to print in PrintWhatYouLike. You can immediately reformat the page for printing by clicking the Format option in PrintWhatYouLike’s sidebar. That will remove all images and site navigation bars, leaving just the main body of text content to print.

If you prefer manual editing, click Undo to restore the full-page layout. Then click the Hide radio buttons for the Background, Images, and Margin options. For example, clicking Hide for Images removes all the pictures on a webpage, which will save you quite a bit of ink when there are many of them.

Reducing text size is another good way to save paper and ink. You can do that by clicking the minus (-) button for the Text Size option. There’s no limit to how small you can make the text, but keep it big enough to be readable. If a page doesn’t have a particularly clear font, you can also fix that by selecting an alternative on the Font drop-down menu.

Or you can edit the page for printing by selecting parts of it. For example, click a paragraph or subheading on the page to select it. Then you’ll see a toolbar that includes editing options for your selection. Click Remove to erase the selected element on the page. Or select the Isolate option to remove everything from the webpage you haven't selected.

When you’re done with editing, click Print in the PrintWhatYouLike sidebar. That will bring up your browser’s printing options. Click your browser’s Print option to finish.

If an “Oops, something went wrong” error occurs in the PrintWhatYouLike app for a page you want to print, try utilizing the app’s bookmarklet instead. To do so, you’ll need to enable your browser’s bookmarks bar. Then open the page you want to edit for printing and click the PrintWhatYouLike bookmarklet on your bookmarks bar.

You can also edit pages with hotkeys for PrintWhatYouLike’s options. For example, pressing the Del key removes selected page elements. Click Help in the web app’s sidebar to view a list of PrintWhatYouLike’s commands and the keyboard shortcuts for them.

Setting up a free PrintWhatYouLike account will unlock extra features like saving clips and change sets. To set up an account, click the Login link at the top of PrintWhatYouLike and select the Sign up option. Then input account details, click the I agree checkbox, and press the Sign Up button.

How to Save Paper and Ink With PrintFriendly

PrintFriendly is another old online tool that remains very useful for printing website pages. This tool also includes an option for converting webpages into PDF documents. So, you can utilize PrintFriendly to trim down a page for PDF conversion or printing.

First, open a webpage you need to edit for printing and copy its URL. Bring up the PrintFriendly web app in your browser and paste the copied page address into the Enter a URL box. Click Preview to view the page in the app’s print editor.

You can remove all the parts of a page you don’t want in your printed output just by moving your mouse’s cursor over them and clicking the yellow highlighting. One thing to note about PrintFriendly is that it will automatically remove many of the surrounding page elements, such as site navigation bars. This will usually leave you with just the article on the page, from which you can delete text and images.

PrintFriendly doesn’t have as many editing options as PrintWhatYouLike. However, it includes an option for resizing images, which is something PrintWhatYouLike doesn’t have. You can make images smaller by clicking inside the picture box and selecting 75%, 50%, or 25%. For example, selecting 50% will reduce ink consumption for printing images by half.

PrintFriendly also has an option for making text smaller and bigger. Click in the T (text) box to select a size option. Selecting the smallest 70% option will reduce text size by 30 percent. Or, you can increase the font size by selecting the 130% option.

Click Print in PrintFriendly after adjusting the page for printing. That will bring up a page preview in your browser, where you’ll need to select Print again.

Or you can convert the page into a PDF instead. To do so, click the PDF button on PrintFriendly’s toolbar. Then press the Download Your PDF option to save the file. You’ll find the PDF document in whatever folder your web browser usually downloads files.

PrintFriendly also has a browser extension for Firefox, Google Chrome, and Edge that you can utilize instead of the online app. That extension is much the same as the web app. However, you can click the extension button in your browser to access the page editor without copying and pasting URLs.

Download: Print Friendly & PDF for Google Chrome | Firefox | Edge (Free)

Reduce Your Printing Costs With PrintWhatYouLike or PrintFriendly

PrintWhatYouLike and PrintFriendly are two online apps that will save you money by cutting printing costs. You can utilize both apps to cut out pretty much everything you don’t need on website pages when printing them. This reduces the amount of ink and paper you use when printing webpages, which amounts to more economical printing.

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