Scroll through your Facebook, Instagram or Twitter feed for minutes. Even though you don’t even really like it anymore, you just keep scrolling. Recognizable? Then Feedless might be the solution for you.
Feedless: Social media, minus the feeds
This app blocks the feeds, or timelines, of the above apps. So you don’t see anything anymore: no recent messages from friends, no advertisements from companies and no automatically playing videos. You can still use all other features, such as Facebook’s Events page and Instagram’s messaging section. You can also still write messages, and check your notifications, for example.
Feedless blocks the feeds of the above social media networks in Safari. So you can still ‘smuggle’ by installing the apps yourself: something that Feedless actively discourages. This is how you install the timeline blocker:
- Download the app;
- Go to the settings menu;
- Tap Safari and go to Content Locks;
- Activate Feedless and open the app again: you’re done!
Also interesting: 5 practical tips to make your iPhone less addictive
‘More and more attention for the disadvantages of technology’
The developer behind the app claims to be inspired by News Feed Eradicator, a plugin for Google’s Chrome browser. The app comes at an appropriate time, as there is currently a social debate about the influences of smartphones, and in particular social media, on our behavior.
Arianna Huffington, inventor and founder of the newspaper of the same name, recently launched Thrive. This is an app that ensures that you are distracted by your smartphone as little as possible. Tristan Harris, a former Google employee, is also on a mission to combat the negative side effects of technology with his organization Time Well Spent.
Feedless is, as it were, the middle ground in this debate. You can still use social media, albeit with some limitations. If you still want to scroll through the feed, you have to do it on another device.
Download Feedless
The app is now available for download. The app is free if you only want to block your Facebook feed. Do you also want to block the activity overview of Instagram and Twitter? Then you pay $ 9.99 per year, which is about 8.10 euros. Billing is through iTunes. The same applies to Canceling Feedless.
→ Download Feedless from the App Store (free)