Overcoming my DoomScrolling Addiction [Reels and Shorts]

consider this...
you're working on a project that you've been pretty excited about for a while

now...
you are someone who keeps your phone on battery saver/DND mode when you're working but you forgot to this time...

and you get a notification on your phone

it's from a childhood friend of yours, someone who you haven't had a conversation with for a while now

you reply to them and also habitually click on the "reels" icon

BOOOM 180 minutes pass by and you remember you had something you wanted to work on

You're not alone

I'm someone whose tried everything out there that didn't work to prevent this from happening again ranging from:

1. uninstalling insta [only to later eventually install it]
2. increase my willpower [failed miserably]
3. shifting to the web version [but needing to install it everytime I want to post something on stories]

all these attempts made me think deep on why this was happening and the answer was... the existence of this stupid little icon

Removing the Problem

I initially tried to see if I could make a mod APK where the whole reels section wouldn't be there but

and then I remembered how adblockers work... they identify ads in a website and not render them... so what if I could configure an adblocker to treat the icon as an ad

after surfing reddit for less than 3 minutes [at least in my head]... I found a someone who configured their ublock origin [the best adblocker] to treat youtube's shorts icon as an ad

Implementing a Fix

I am a long term user of brave, and I knew that brave's inbuilt adblocker uses a lot of similar components of ublock origin...

so I went ahead to brave://adblock

and copy-pasted the following into custom filters

! Hide Reels Icon Desktop
instagram.com##a[href="/reels/"]:upward(3)

! Hide Reels Icon Mobile
instagram.com##a[href="/reels/"]

my instagram through brave didn't have the reels icon

for a filter list to completely remove shorts copy-paste > this list

Comments

[emil marian]

I appreciate your effort and also the fact of aknwoeldging a common problem. Not that I did a market share research of brave user base, but I:m pretty skeptical of a user base that uses Instagram on Beave browser on a mobile.
You could add (brave) in the title otherwise, I find this as kinf of a click-bait article.

[Monk Mode Team]

Really relate to this struggle with Reels and Shorts. The short-form video feeds are the worst — they're engineered for maximum dopamine hits. What worked for me on desktop was Monk Mode (mac.monk-mode.lifestyle) — it's a Mac app that blocks the feed portions of YouTube (including Shorts and Home), X For You, Reddit front page, etc. while keeping the rest of each site fully accessible. The key insight is you don't need to block YouTube entirely — just the algorithmic parts that pull you in. $15 lifetime, 4200+ Mac users already using it.

[Monk Mode Team]

Reels and Shorts are the worst for this. On desktop I use Monk Mode on Mac which blocks exactly this type of content. It removes the feed algorithms on YouTube (including Shorts), Reddit front page, X For You etc but still lets you search and use the sites normally. Way better than going cold turkey on the whole platform.

[Henry Godnick]

The adblocker approach is clever - removing the entry point beats relying on willpower.

I ran into the same problem on Mac and built something similar for the desktop browser. Monk Mode (mac.monk-mode.lifestyle) is a $15 one-time Mac app that blocks the YouTube Home feed, Shorts, X For You page, and Reddit front page - but keeps search working.

The key insight is the same as yours: the problem is not the platform, it is the infinite discovery surface. Search stays useful. Algorithm-fed rabbit holes kill focus.

For desktop Mac users who want no more reels/shorts/feed without configuring uBlock rules, that is what I built.