Aurora's Reading Time: How It Works and Where It Appears

Last updated: May 18, 2026

Aurora includes a built-in reading time estimate that appears on single post pages. It is calculated automatically from the post’s word count. No plugin or manual input required.

How It’s Calculated

Aurora divides the post’s total word count by 200 (an average adult reading speed in words per minute). The result is rounded to the nearest minute, with a minimum of 1 minute for very short posts.

For example, a 600-word post displays as a 3 minute read.

Where It Appears

Reading time is displayed in the post meta section on single post pages, alongside the publish date and author name. It does not appear on archive pages, the homepage, or search results. The exact position within the meta row is determined by your active layout in single post settings.

Single post header showing title, author, date and 4 min read in the meta row

No Toggle Required

Reading time is output automatically on single posts. There is no Customizer setting to enable or disable it globally. If you want to hide it on specific layouts or posts, you can do so with a CSS rule in Appearance → Customize → Additional CSS, or in your child theme’s stylesheet:

Child theme folder structure showing style.css, functions.php and other child theme files

.aurora-reading-time { display: none; }

The .aurora-reading-time class is specific to the reading time element. It also carries the shared .meta-text class alongside other meta items, so use .aurora-reading-time to target only the reading time without affecting the date or author byline.

#single-post #no-code

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Aurora’s Reading Time: How It Works and Where It Appears

How It’s Calculated

Where It Appears

No Toggle Required

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