Guide

How to save a webpage as a PDF (without the clutter)

You want to convert a webpage to PDF and hit Ctrl+P expecting a clean document. Instead you get a 12-page mess of ads, navigation bars, cookie banners, and a URL stamped across every page. Pretty PDF Printer fixes this. It extracts just the content you care about and turns any webpage to PDF as a professionally styled document in seconds.

Free — 3 PDFs per month. No credit card required.

Comparison

The old way vs the new way to save a webpage as PDF

Every browser has a built-in "Save as PDF" option. On paper, that sounds sufficient. In practice, the results are almost always disappointing. Here is exactly what happens when you use Ctrl+P compared to Pretty PDF Printer.

What you get Ctrl+P / Browser PDF Pretty PDF Printer
Ads and banners Included in the PDF Automatically removed
Navigation and menus Printed on every page Stripped before rendering
Cookie consent popups Overlaid on content Removed entirely
URL/date page headers Added by browser automatically Never added
Page layout Broken responsive layouts Clean single-column flow
Code blocks and tables Cut off or overflowing Properly formatted and wrapped
Typography System fonts, inconsistent Professional embedded fonts
Template choices None — one generic output 5 professional templates

The core problem with converting a webpage to PDF is straightforward: browsers print the entire page. They cannot tell the difference between the article you want and the sidebar you do not. Pretty PDF's server-side engine analyzes the HTML structure, identifies the main content using extraction algorithms similar to reader mode, and discards everything else before applying a professional template and rendering the final PDF with WeasyPrint.

Walkthrough

How to save a webpage as a PDF in 5 steps

The entire process takes about 30 seconds. Here is each step in detail.

1

Install the Chrome extension

Visit the Chrome Web Store and search for "Pretty PDF Printer," then click Add to Chrome. The extension is lightweight and requires minimal permissions. You do not need to create an account or enter any payment information to start using it.

2

Navigate to any webpage

Open the page you want to convert to PDF. This can be a news article, a blog post, technical documentation, a GitHub issue, a Stack Overflow answer, a Notion page, or any other website. Pretty PDF works with all of them.

3

Click the Pretty PDF icon

Click the Pretty PDF icon in your browser toolbar to open the extension popup. It will display the page title and give you access to all conversion settings. If the icon is hidden, click the puzzle piece icon in Chrome's toolbar and pin Pretty PDF for easy access.

4

Choose your template and settings

Select one of the five professional templates. Pick your page size (A4 or US Letter) and choose a capture mode: Article for auto-extracted content, Full Page for everything visible, or Selection for only highlighted text. Each option produces a different result depending on your needs.

5

Generate and download

Click Generate PDF. Your browser sends the page content to our server, where it is cleaned, styled with your chosen template, and rendered into a PDF using WeasyPrint. The finished file downloads automatically in a few seconds. No ads, no clutter, no URL headers stamped across every page.

Templates

Choosing the right template for your PDF

Every template is designed for a specific context. Picking the right one makes the difference between a document that looks acceptable and one that looks intentionally designed.

Clean

The default all-purpose template. Generous margins, clear heading hierarchy, and comfortable reading typography. Best for articles, blog posts, and general web content you want to read or share.

Minimal

Maximum white space, restrained styling, and a focus on the text itself. Ideal for personal notes, journal entries, and content where you want nothing to compete with the words on the page.

Corporate

Structured and professional with strong heading accents and clear section dividers. Built for business reports, meeting notes, internal documentation, and anything that will land on a manager's desk.

Academic

Serif typefaces, tight line spacing, and numbered section formatting. Designed for research papers, academic references, and technical documentation where density and formality matter.

Dark Mode

Light text on a dark background, optimized for on-screen reading. Perfect for developer documentation, code-heavy content, and late-night reference material. Saves toner if you print in grayscale.

Capture modes

Three ways to capture webpage content

Different situations call for different approaches. Pretty PDF gives you three distinct capture modes so you always get exactly the content you need in your PDF.

Article Mode

The smart default. Pretty PDF's extraction engine analyzes the page structure and identifies the main content area automatically. It pulls out the article text, images, code blocks, and tables while discarding everything else. This is the best choice for blog posts, news articles, documentation pages, and any page with a clear primary content area. You get a focused, distraction-free PDF every time.

Full Page Mode

Captures everything visible on the page, including sidebars, footers, and supplementary content. Use this when you need a complete snapshot of the entire page layout, such as archiving a landing page design, saving a dashboard view, or preserving a page exactly as it appears. The template styling still applies, but no content is filtered out.

Selection Mode

Converts only the text and content you have highlighted on the page. Before clicking the Pretty PDF icon, select the specific paragraphs, code blocks, or sections you want. Only your selection will appear in the final PDF, properly formatted with your chosen template. This is ideal for grabbing a single answer from a long thread, a key section from a lengthy report, or a specific code example from a documentation page.

Platform support

Works even better on these platforms

Pretty PDF converts any website, but these eight platforms get dedicated parsers with site-specific content extraction. That means better heading structure, cleaner formatting, and proper handling of platform-specific elements like code blocks, comment threads, and embedded content.

Notion GitHub Medium Stack Overflow Dev.to Substack Reddit Confluence

For example, the GitHub parser handles README files, issue threads, pull request discussions, wiki pages, and individual code files with proper syntax formatting. The Stack Overflow parser extracts the question, accepted answer, and vote counts while discarding the sidebar ads and related question links. The Notion parser expands toggle blocks and resolves dynamic class names that would otherwise produce blank output.

Sites without a dedicated parser still work well. Pretty PDF's generic extraction engine uses the same algorithms behind browser reader mode, tuned specifically for PDF output, to identify and extract the main content from any webpage.

Frequently asked questions about saving webpages as PDF

When you use your browser's built-in "Save as PDF" function (Ctrl+P on Windows, Cmd+P on Mac), the browser prints the entire page exactly as rendered. It has no way to distinguish advertising from your actual content, so every banner ad, sponsored post, popup remnant, and interstitial makes it into the PDF. Pretty PDF Printer solves this by using server-side content extraction. Our engine analyzes the HTML structure, identifies the main article or content area, and strips away all advertising, navigation, cookie banners, and sidebar widgets before generating the PDF.
Chrome and other browsers automatically stamp the page URL, date, and page title as headers and footers on every page of your PDF. To remove them in Chrome, open the print dialog (Ctrl+P), click "More settings," and uncheck the "Headers and footers" checkbox. In Firefox, go to File > Page Setup and clear the header/footer fields. However, this only removes the browser-added metadata. The site's own navigation header and footer will still appear. Pretty PDF never adds browser-style headers or footers, and its content extraction removes the website's navigation elements automatically, giving you a completely clean document.
Pretty PDF Printer is currently a Chrome desktop extension and does not run on mobile browsers like Chrome for Android or Safari on iOS. On mobile, your best option is to use the browser's built-in share menu (Share > Print > Save as PDF), but the output will include all page clutter. For clean results from mobile, you can copy the webpage URL and use the Pretty PDF API to generate a server-side PDF from any device. The API accepts a URL and returns a professionally formatted PDF.
Yes. Pretty PDF properly handles inline images, figures with captions, and lazy-loaded images by resolving all URLs before rendering. SVG graphics are preserved as vectors. Code blocks are formatted with monospace fonts and proper line wrapping so nothing gets cut off at the page edge. Tables maintain their column alignment, borders, and cell spacing. The Academic and Dark Mode templates include additional styling specifically designed for code-heavy content.
Yes. The free tier gives you 3 PDFs per month with access to all 5 professional templates and full content extraction. No credit card and no account are required to get started. For heavier use, Pro plans start at $5 per month and include 50 PDFs/month, custom branding, and print profiles. Pro+ at $12 per month adds unlimited PDFs, a 25 GB cloud library, and API access. See all plan details on the pricing page.

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