This is a very simple & non-geeky trick to help you read the latest issue of popular magazines like PC Magazine, MIT Technology Review, Popular Mechanics, MacWorld, Lonely Planet, Reader’s Digest, etc without paying any subscription charges.
You will also get to read adult magazines like Playboy and Penthouse. Best of all, these digital magazines are exact replicas of print and served as high-resolution images that you can also download on to the computer for offline reading.
How to Read Online Magazines for Free
Step 1: If you are on a Windows PC, go to apple.com and download the Safari browser. Mac users already have Safari on their system.
Step 2: Once you install Safari, go to Edit -> Preferences -> Advanced and check the option that says "Show Develop menu in menu bar."
Step 3: Open the "Develop" option in the browser menu bar and choose Mobile Safari 1.1.3 - iPhone as the User Agent.
Step 4: You’re all set. Open zinio.com/iphone inside Safari browser and start reading your favorite magazines for free. Use the navigation arrows at the top to turn pages.
For people in countries like India who are already subscribed to Zinio Digital Magazines, this hack is still useful because you get access to certain magazines which are otherwise not available for subscription via Zinio (e.g., Penthouse and Playboy).
Geeks may write a AutoHotKey script or create a "scrolling capture" profile in SnagIt that will auto-flip magazine pages and save all the images locally. Thanks Scott. And here’s a related trick on how to read Wall Street for free.
Find this article at: http://www.labnol.org/software/tutorials/read-download-zinio-online-magazines-free-on-desktop/3410/
web: http://www.labnol.org/ email: amit@labnol.org
Reader Comments
No Safari download required.
In Firefox: enter “about:config” in the location bar, enter “useragent” in the filter and change the value for “general.useragent.extra.firefox” to “Mobile Safari 1.1.3″.
After reading, set it back to “Firefox/2.0.0.14″.
Written by caul on 05.26.08
Dear Caul, This trick worked. But tell me, why is it necessary to set the value back to Firefox/3.0 (in my case)? What will happen if i leave it as it is?
Amit Tekale
Written by amittekale on 05.27.08
Thanks for the excellent tip. Able to read my favorite PC Magazie.
But I don’t think that we need to install safari. I accessed the site using Firefox by changing the configuration key “general.useragent.override” value to “Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU like Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/420+ (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.0 Mobile/1A543a Safari/419.3″. It worked perfectly.
Written by Gopinath M on 05.27.08
i use the User agent switcher extension within firefox 3.
works like a charm.
I defined a new iphone user agent using these settings
* Description: iPhone
* User Agent: Mobile Safari 1.1.3 (iPhone; U; CPU like Mac OS X; en)
* App Name: AppleWebKit/420+ (KHTML, like Gecko)
* App Version: Version/3.0
* Platform: Mobile/1A542a Safari/419.3
ii added the user agent button to the toolbar and when i want to read i switch it from there
Written by remus on 05.27.08
Yes, we can do this in Firefox by changing the User agent but please read the first para - this trick is for non-geeks as well.
Written by Amit Agarwal on 05.27.08
Great tip! I like the use of Safari (in this case) vs. Firefox.
Written by Nik on 05.27.08
Thanks - great tip. And thanks to Caul for the firefox way of doing this.
Written by Binny V A on 05.27.08
Just wanted to confirm that using the User Agent Switcher in Firefox works great. Thanx remus!
Written by Flatlinebb on 05.27.08
Amit,
Earlier I did not read your first paragraph properly. For non-geeks changing the user agent profile of Firefox is not an easy task. Safari browser trick is very useful to them.
Written by Gopinath M on 05.27.08
It’s a great tip and thanks to @caul who extended it.
Now I can read Photography 101 magazine every month… :)
Written by Anjul Sahu on 05.27.08
Great, and wat about Opera. Can we do it like Firefox?
Written by Regis on 05.27.08
@amittekale if you leave it as it is, every Web page will think your browser is the iphone browser. They might adapt the way they present the Web site accordingly. So, pages might look strange.
Written by caul on 05.27.08
very useful tip, can someone clarify is it required to change useragent back to Firefox/2.0.0.14 or can we leave it as Safari? any problem if not changed(as per caul’s suggestion)…thanks in advance
Written by Dinesh on 05.27.08
How to download the magazine for offline reading?
Written by tank82 on 05.27.08
I have devised a method to download the magazines and view them offline. You can find it on my blog link . As for the question on why you should change the user agent back to the default Firefox, one important reason is that some Firefox extensions would not work at all or not work properly if you set the useragent as Safari.
Written by Suresh on 05.28.08
@tank
To read off-line:
1 - Install PDFCreator and make it your default printer
2 - print, to PDFCreator, the 1 page and chose “Wait - Collect”
3 - now simply do Ctrl+P in all the other pages, one by one
4 - in the end, in the “PDF Print Monitor” combine all de .PS files and “print” to PDF
Written by Regis on 05.28.08
Isn’t this a sort of piracy?
Written by Aziz on 05.29.08
Viewing them online? No, it is totally legal.
As for off line reading that may be legal or illegal depending on your local laws. It’s pretty legal in Greece as long as you keep it for yourself and not redistribute the saved content.
Written by MasterMind on 05.29.08
I tried all the steps that you mention, but when I try to view certain magazines it shows only 8-10 pages and then says that “That was just a preview”. I am not able to go beyond the preview pages.
Is there something wrong with the website?or Am I doing some wrong? Can you please let me know about it.
Thank you
Written by sam on 05.30.08
Thanks dude for this hack. I won’t be missing any of the issues now ;)
Written by Nishit Shah on 05.31.08
Amit,
Is this online free reading of magazines legal?
Is there a possibility of these kind of tricks inviting legal action from the Magazine owners?
Dont you think magazines will do something to block this trick?
Written by Jayakrishnan on 06.11.08
holy crap this is awesome. The firefox way is not that “geeky.” it is pretty easy to do, not that much more complicated than the safari way. The first post has very good directions on how to do this, thanks caul
Written by james on 06.17.08
I am a Mac user and have Safari as the default browser. But I am unable to find preferences under the Edit tab. This is available only under the Safari tab. Advanced tab is also here but then when I click it I dont see the option “show develop menu under the menu bar”
What am I doing wrong?
Grateful for any help from our readers.
Thanks
Written by Jayaram on 06.17.08
Jayaram - Mac users with Safari would find the Preferences under the ‘Safari’ tab between the Apple icon tab and the File tab.
Written by Jim on 06.20.08
I tried using it for some time now (cant remember how long) some magazines show the April edition, some May. I am sure they are monthly magazines.
Are these update problems with Zinio.com or the way I am accessing it through firefox.
I used the firefox addon.
Written by Ramesh on 06.24.08
@Ramesh
It’s really a shame they don’t update those Playboy and Penthouse contents more often! Still working!!!
Cheers
Written by fsr on 07.15.08
“Unable to find component Body in component list ”
getting this error… help!!
Written by Kunal on 09.02.08
Got it working on Chrome as well.
Just use this trick :
Open Chrome.dll in the Application Data\Google\Chrome\Application\[VERSION NUMBER]
Using a hex editor search for “Chrome/ Version/3.1 Mozilla/5.0 (Windows, U; …. something like this
Over write that one with
Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU like Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/420+ (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.0 Mobile
Make sure you over right it and do not exceed the allocated string size.
Works like a charm. Enjoy
Written by Ramzalot on 09.16.08