Nice work! Using the Accessibility Service for scroll detection is a clever approach.
I imagine keeping it lightweight while monitoring multiple apps could be tricky — did you run into performance or battery usage issues while testing?
Show HN: I built an app to block Shorts and Reels
211–220 of 322 posts
Re: Show HN: I built an app to block Shorts and Reels
#212If only there was an app that can prevent me from doomscrolling hackernews and tech/programming subreddits, I would already be a 10xer.
Re: Show HN: I built an app to block Shorts and Reels
#213Nice,
Re: Show HN: I built an app to block Shorts and Reels
#214Better suggestion: block these sites entirely. Reddit and YouTube are wastes of time if you are just 'checking in'. Use YouTube-DL to download videos from specific creators and watch independently. I haven't figured out how to view the actually useful subreddits without having access to the frontpage feeds. Feeds are one of the worst things to be invented in the Internet age. I can't imagine how far behind we are bec…
I keep Instagram to keep in touch with friends abroad. I keep Facebook because certain communities and events only happen there. For some of us, it is plain better to only block short form video.
Just use whatsapp
Re: Show HN: I built an app to block Shorts and Reels
#215Shorts and Reels are designed to be incredibly addictive. I really wish there were an option to turn them off, especially on Instagram and Snapchat. What I want is to see my friends' photos — but instead, Shorts and Reels quickly funnel me into an endless discovery feed. It feels toxic, distracting, and completely misaligned with the core purpose of these apps. This functionality isn’t necessary, and I’d much rather have the choice to block it.
Re: Show HN: I built an app to block Shorts and Reels
#216This is one of those things that should be unnecessary if we all had perfect self-control, but the reality is these apps are engineered explicitly to bypass that. It feels a bit silly to need guardrails for something as trivial as scrolling. Shameless personal plug: I wrote about it here. https://nabraj.com/blog/swipe-scroll-repeat-addiction/
> This is one of those things that should be unnecessary if we all had perfect self-control
I'm thankful that I'm weird enough to be actively annoyed by the mere existence of Shorts. No chance of getting addicted.
Don't use Instagram either so.
Re: Show HN: I built an app to block Shorts and Reels
#217I would love to be able to do this at the router level (to block on all my kid's devices). and/or block just youtube traffic (via app, websites, etc)
This might be useful for you: https://pi-hole.net/. You can set your own DNS server at home and block specific domains
Re: Show HN: I built an app to block Shorts and Reels
#218If only there was an app that can prevent me from doomscrolling hackernews and tech/programming subreddits, I would already be a 10xer.
With ScrollGuard, besides the AntiReels feature, there is the "AntiScroll mode" where you can set scrolling limits on any app. So technically, it would work for HN and any subreddit as well.
Re: Show HN: I built an app to block Shorts and Reels
#219This is one of those things that should be unnecessary if we all had perfect self-control, but the reality is these apps are engineered explicitly to bypass that. It feels a bit silly to need guardrails for something as trivial as scrolling. Shameless personal plug: I wrote about it here. https://nabraj.com/blog/swipe-scroll-repeat-addiction/
It's also not some "oopsie". It's almost certainly not news but these sites want these 'one more' behaviors. Years ago, I designed a minimalist YouTube player that removed video suggestions and autoplays but used their player, didn't evade ads, etc. I got banned by Google because they disallow any alternative site for YouTube, only embeds are allowed. Pretty sure I am still banned on all Google APIs too.
The insidious nature of ad-supported “free” media where end user is the product delivered to advertisers means that even if you reverse engineer some service and develop a third-party client that totally respects ads and all and simply reduces the addictiveness, tweaks the algo, etc., you are still reducing their revenue because people will see fewer ads if they spend less time on the service and probably have more fulfilling lives.
This business model is poison. Service operator’s interests will never be aligned with the interests of the users unless they are paying customers.
(By contrast, if the users were paying customers, Google would have no problem with your client—it would in fact be saving money on compute & traffic.)
Re: Show HN: I built an app to block Shorts and Reels
#220In my opinion tech is not the solution to issues of self-discipline.
Your solution is for everyone in the world to foster a degree of self-discipline they've never shown any inclination for in the past?
That doesn't sound like a scalable solution. These apps are so pervasive and their use adopted at such a young age (with a large degree of social pressure) it seems like legislation is the only way to curb these dark patterns.
Like other commentators have said these are extremely well resourced companies looking for ways to exploit human psychology at scale. It's in a walled garden, compiled app so it's you have very limited ability to modify what you're shown. End-users of apps need to be given more power over what they can be shown and if that kills companies then to me that's an acceptable tradeoff.