Erryn Reading Progress & Table of Contents

Erryn Reading Progress & Table of Contents helps readers understand where they are in a long page and move directly to the section they need.

It automatically builds a table of contents from your headings, shows reading progress as the visitor scrolls, and highlights the current section.

It works immediately after activation, follows your theme’s colours in light and dark mode, and provides sensible defaults without requiring shortcodes or manual setup.

Two responsive layouts

Choose between:

• Horizontal bar: a progress bar with section links, fixed at the top or bottom of the viewport.
• Side rail: a compact column of section markers that expands into the full contents list on hover or keyboard focus.

On smaller screens, the side rail automatically switches to the horizontal bar.

Automatic or manual control

By default, the plugin detects headings and displays itself automatically when a post contains enough sections.

You can also:

• Add the TOC & Progress block to enable it explicitly on a page.
• Use the [rptoc_reading_progress_toc] or [rptoc] shortcode.
• Add TOC Anchor blocks to define your own sections and labels.
• Force the component on or off for an individual post.
• Select which post types and heading levels should be included.
• Exclude individual posts.
• Provide a custom content-area selector for unusual themes.

When a page contains a TOC Anchor block, the plugin uses the manual anchors instead of generating its contents from headings.

Designed to fit your theme

The plugin can inherit colours from your active theme, including sites that switch between light and dark mode.

You may also choose colours from the theme palette or enter custom colours and opacity values.

A live contrast check warns when custom text and background colours may be difficult to read.

Appearance options include:

• Rounded pills or plain-text links.
• Start, centre or end alignment.
• Desktop and mobile font sizes.
• Adjustable pill spacing.
• Progress fill above or below the links.
• Top or bottom placement.
• Automatic or custom sticky-header offset.
• An optional drop shadow, off by default.

Fast by design

The plugin avoids repeatedly measuring the page during an ordinary scroll.

It measures section positions when required, stores those measurements, and updates the progress indicator through requestAnimationFrame. The active section is tracked with IntersectionObserver, keeping that work out of the scroll handler.

There is no jQuery dependency and no frontend build framework.

Accessibility

The component uses ordinary anchor links, supports keyboard interaction and identifies the active section with aria-current.

Section links continue to work without JavaScript. JavaScript is required for the progress indicator, active-section highlighting and expandable side rail.

Right-to-left layouts are supported.

Structured data and SEO plugins

Optional ItemList structured data can provide a machine-readable description of the page sections.

The plugin also registers as a recognised table of contents for Rank Math’s content analysis, and can run alongside Yoast SEO and All in One SEO.

Privacy

Erryn Reading Progress & Table of Contents does not collect, store or send visitor data.

There are no accounts, external API requests or tracking scripts.

Features

• Automatic table of contents from H2 to H6 headings.
• Reading progress indicator.
• Current-section highlighting.
• Horizontal bar and side-rail layouts.
• Responsive mobile behaviour.
• Automatic theme colour inheritance.
• Light- and dark-mode support.
• Theme-palette and custom colour options.
• Per-colour opacity controls.
• Live colour-contrast warnings.
• Top or bottom viewport placement.
• Automatic or custom header offset.
• Pill or plain-text links.
• Responsive font-size controls.
• Optional drop shadow, off by default.
• TOC Anchor block for manually defined sections.
• TOC & Progress block.
• Shortcode support.
• Per-post display controls.
• Optional ItemList structured data.
• Rank Math table-of-contents recognition.
• WPML and Polylang support.
• Translation template included.
• Right-to-left support.
• aria-current on the active link.
• No jQuery.
• No tracking.

For screenshots, a live demonstration and further technical details, visit the plugin page:

https://erryn.io/products/erryn-reading-progress-table-of-contents/