Bypass Medium Paywall - Working late 2023 - Greasy Fork, Violentmonkey, Tampermonkey - Click the RAW button to install

medium.user.js

// ==UserScript==
// @name        Medium Paywall Bypass
// @namespace   Violentmonkey Scripts
// @run-at      document-start
// @match       *://*.medium.com/*
// @match       *://medium.com/*
// @match       *://*/*
// @grant       none
// @version     2.4
// @inject-into content
// @updateURL   https://gist.githubusercontent.com/mathix420/e0604ab0e916622972372711d2829555/raw/medium.user.js
// @downloadURL https://gist.githubusercontent.com/mathix420/e0604ab0e916622972372711d2829555/raw/medium.user.js
// @website     https://freedium.cfd
// @author      Mathix420, ZhymabekRoman
// @description Don't forget to remove `@match` filters you don't want.
// ==/UserScript==

// initCall is telling us if we need to inject the title observer
function mediumRedirecter(initCall = false) {
  if (
      // Allow seeing original articles that were already redirected to freedium.
      !window.location.href.endsWith('#bypass') &&
      // Do not redirect when editing on medium.
      !window.location.href.includes("/edit?source=") &&
      // Detect if we are on a medium website (regardless of the domain)
      document.head?.querySelector('meta[property="al:android:url"]')?.content?.includes('medium://p/')
    ) {
    window.location.href = 'https://freedium.cfd/' + window.location.href;
  } else if (initCall && /(.*\.|^)medium\.com$/.test(window.location.host)) {
    // Observe <title> changes
    new MutationObserver(function(mutations) {
      // If title change is detected, check if a freedium redirect is required
      if (mutations[0].target.textContent) mediumRedirecter();
    }).observe(
        document.querySelector('title'),
        { subtree: true, characterData: true, childList: true }
    );
  }
}

mediumRedirecter(true);

Can you remove? // @match *://*/*

do not make sense to be for all sites.

do not make sense to be for all sites.

Medium has too many sub-domains

Medium has too many sub-domains

// @match *://*.medium.com/* Should be enough for matching sub-domains.

Should be enough for matching sub-domains.

What about devopsquare.com, blog.devops.dev, blog.stackademic.com, ai.plainenglish.io, bettermarketing.pub and etc? It's impossible for us to say how many Medium sites there are.

You are right. I didn't know those type of sites exist. But they are just different domains, technically speaking.

To recap:
// @match *://*.medium.com/* Is enough for matching sub-domains.
// @match *://*/* Is needed for matching any possible domain who happens to be a Medium website.

freedium is offline so unfortunately this script doesn't work anymore for now

All works as expected. Yeah, we made some codebase refactor, to improve speed and some big bug fixes. And there were some minor downtimes.

Thanks @a-pav I wasn't aware that optional chaining was supported on tampermonkey. Yes, the mutationobserver is being registered, try commenting the section and click a link in this page for example https://medium.com/@francais you'll notice no redirect.

What a wonderful script. Thank you for sharing 🙇

In case freedium goes unstable, how about disabling redirects for free posts? This is the predicate to check if it is a premium content: document.querySelector('.meteredContent') != null

@zzJinux yes, I thought about that too a couple months ago, I will try to implement it once I have more free time

@mathix420 I have already locally patched the script to add the predicate. I hope your version will do so.

@zzJinux if you want you can fork this gist and update it so I can replicate your changes

@mathix420 Just a few lines change: https://gist.github.com/zzJinux/364725e7c61810719286d94e88a4e38c I haven't had any issues.

Guys, sorry, yeah I known that's my fault. I need your help: Freedium-cfd/web#16 (comment)

Not sure if I'm doing something wrong, but the above script doesn't work as of the time of writing (at least in Firefox). This works though:

// ==UserScript==
// @name        Medium Paywall Bypass
// @namespace   Violentmonkey Scripts
// @run-at      document-idle
// @match       *://*.medium.com/*
// @grant       none
// @version     2.5
// @author      Mathix420, ZhymabekRoman
// ==/UserScript==

(function() {
  function mediumRedirecter() {
    if (
      !window.location.hostname.includes('freedium.cfd') &&
      window.location.hostname.includes('medium.com') &&
      !window.location.href.endsWith('#bypass') &&
      !window.location.href.includes("/edit?source=")
    ) {
      window.location.href = 'https://freedium.cfd/' + window.location.href;
    }
  }

  mediumRedirecter();
})();

Thanks for your effort.

The original script works great for me. However, your solution has one small problem: it can't work on domains other than medium.com. Here is a small list of third-party domains:

• uxplanet.org
• osintteam.blog
• ahmedelfakharany.com
• drlee.io
• generativeai.pub
• towardsdev.com
• infosecwriteups.com
• thetaoist.online
• devopsquare.com
• bettermarketing.pub
• itnext.io
• betterprogramming.pub
• curiouse.co
• betterhumans.pub
• uxdesign.cc
• thebolditalic.com
• codeburst.io
• writingcooperative.com
• entrepreneurshandbook.co
• storiusmag.com
• javascript.plainenglish.io
• code.likeagirl.io
• medium.datadriveninvestor.com
• blog.det.life
• python.plainenglish.io
• blog.stackademic.com
• ai.gopubby.com
• blog.devops.dev
• levelup.gitconnected.com
• ai.plainenglish.io

And so on.