Selective Short-Form Feed Blocker
164 Signals

Selective Short-Form Feed Blocker

Remove Reels, Shorts, and other infinite feeds while preserving the useful parts of social and video apps.

Added Aug 14, 2026

digital wellbeing
focus tools
behavior change
Opportunity score

High opportunity (75%)

The Problem

People want to stop compulsive short-form scrolling but still need Instagram, YouTube, and similar apps for messages, relationships, news, and intentional videos. Existing screen-time tools often block the entire app, fail to enforce limits consistently, or accidentally lock users out of allowed functions. These failures make an otherwise valuable behavior-change tool easy to abandon.

Potential Solution

Build a privacy-first mobile product that selectively hides or interrupts designated feeds inside supported apps while leaving messaging, search, subscriptions, calls, and chosen content available. Pair granular controls with named schedules, notification suppression, local-only configuration, and a tightly limited emergency-access workflow. Start with a small set of high-demand feeds and publish device-specific reliability guarantees rather than offering broad but fragile blocking.

Why Now?

Short-form feeds are spreading across otherwise useful communication and media apps, making whole-app blocking increasingly impractical. Multiple recent reviews request selective blocking, while reports of unreliable timers and broken allowlists reveal room for a focused product built around enforcement reliability.

Market validation
Search demand

Trend snapshot pending

Competition (0)

No matched competitors yet

Showing 1-20 of 164 signals

Apple App StoreSep 2, 2026
Opal: Screen Time Control

Great app No complaints! The most effective app blocker I’ve found so far. Very customizable, cute redirects, works great! My only suggestion would be to maybe have a feature where you write out specific things you would like to be redirected to do it can remind you to go to another task! Updated after two years: Still a great app however when it updates or when my phone updates or sometimes just randomly it shifts all of my rules that I put in and makes it

Apple App StoreSep 3, 2026
ScreenZen- Screen Time Control

Very customizable I love how customizable the blocking can be. It can be very specific or very general and all in between. And the ability to schedule the blocking to certain times of the day is really useful. Can be a little buggy sometimes, especially when my phone restarts, but it's better than it used to be and I'm sure it will continue to improve over time.

Apple App StoreSep 2, 2026
ScreenZen- Screen Time Control

very helpful! I wish there was a way where u can pause the time u have left because i’ll open instagram just to show my friend something and then i feel pressured to use all my time up at that moment which feels against the app’s mission. It has helped immensely tho to end my doomscrolling

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