Block Reels and Shorts on iPhone, in every app at once

Toggle (toggle.social) is an iPhone app that opens Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, X, Threads, Reddit, LinkedIn, Facebook and Snapchat inside one app, with the parts built to keep you scrolling switched off: Reels, Shorts, For You feeds, Explore, suggested posts, like counts and more, chosen app by app. Messages, posting, profiles, search and notifications keep working. This page is about the short-video feeds only: what each app lets you do about its own, and what Toggle does instead. If you want one app's feed in detail, the per-app pages are linked from the table.

Every short-video feed and what turns it off

Checked against each company's help pages on October 24, 2026. "None" means the help pages describe no setting that removes the feed; the controls listed shape it or hide single videos.

"Locked" is Toggle's word for a switch that is on from the first load and can't be turned off for good. It can be shown for five minutes at a time from the options sheet or Settings, and it turns itself back on at the deadline.

What Instagram lets you do about Reels

Instagram's help page on the reels you may see lists where they appear (the Reels tab, Explore and your feed) and how they're recommended, and names no setting that turns them off. The one control with a time on it belongs to the feed, not to Reels: tapping Options on a suggested post offers Not interested, Don't suggest posts from this account, and Snooze, which pauses suggested posts in your Feed for 30 days. Reels keep their tab and keep arriving in Explore. The Instagram without Reels page lists every place they reach you.

What Facebook lets you do about Reels

Facebook's help page for the Reels feed offers Interested, Not Interested and Hide reel from the More menu while watching, and says the effect on your feed "will diminish over time". It also notes that since September 2025 all videos on Facebook are shared as reels, whatever their length or orientation, so a Facebook without reels is a Facebook without video. Nothing turns the feed off. Facebook without Reels covers the tab, Feed and the Video tab one by one.

What YouTube lets you do about Shorts

YouTube's recommendations help page is the closest to a setting: on the Home feed, at the top of a grid of Shorts, tap More, then Show fewer Shorts. The page says this applies to pages "such as your Home and Watch Next" and gives no length for the choice; to undo it you delete the entry under Other activity in My Activity. YouTube's own Shorts page lists where viewers find them: the Shorts tab, search results, the homepage, channel pages, Subscriptions and notifications. The shelf control touches one of those. YouTube without Shorts goes through each entry point.

What TikTok lets you do about For You

TikTok's support page says For You "is the first feed you'll see when you open TikTok". Its controls shape the feed: Not interested on a post, keyword filters for For You and Following, topic preferences, and Refresh your For You feed (Profile, Menu, Settings and privacy, Content Preferences), which resets recommendations to popular content and "can't be undone". None of them changes which feed opens. Toggle opens TikTok on Following; TikTok with only the people you follow describes what that is like.

What X and Snapchat let you do

X's help page on videos describes an autoplay setting under Settings and privacy, and X's timeline page describes switching between For you and Following. Neither mentions a way to remove the video feed. In Toggle, X's Hide Videos switch is locked on.

Snapchat's page on how Spotlight ranks content says that if you "skip, report or hide content" it learns from that; the only broader control is a parent's, in Family Center, where Hide Sensitive Content "limits sensitive or suggestive content in places like Stories and Spotlight" for a teen. Snapchat in Toggle is Snapchat for Web, which is chats and calls only, so Spotlight, Stories and the Map never show.

How to block Reels and Shorts in every app with Toggle

1. Install Toggle from the App Store (iPhone, iOS 17 or later) and go through onboarding, which explains the locked switches.
2. Open an app from the launcher and sign in with your own account. The cookies stay on your iPhone; Toggle has no account system.
3. Nothing to switch: Hide Reels, Hide Shorts, Hide For You, Hide Videos and Hide Watch are on from the first load. Hold the Toggle switch at the bottom of any app to see the options sheet, where the rest (Explore, suggested posts, like counts, comments, Stories) are set per app.
4. Optional: in Settings, Choose apps, pick the real apps under Social and Entertainment. A chosen app then shows a Screen Time shield with "Open in Toggle". It's self-control, not parental control; "Unblock for 5 minutes" is one tap away.
5. Optional: Settings, Add to Home Screen puts an icon per app on your Home Screen, so the clean version sits where the old one did.

Where Toggle is not the answer

Toggle is iPhone only; there is no Android app. The iPhone app is free to download and paid after the 7-day trial ($6.99 a week or $99 a year in the US, checked October 24, 2026; see pricing). Each app opens as its own mobile website inside Toggle, so a few app-only features may be missing, and when a site changes a switch can stop working until Toggle updates. Toggle doesn't change the real apps; it replaces them. If what you want is a timer on the real apps rather than a version without the feeds, Apple's Screen Time App Limits do that on their own.

On a computer, the free Toggle for Chrome has the same switches per site, two that cover every site (hide like counts everywhere, hide every endless feed), and a Toggle switch at the top of the popup that brings everything back for 20 minutes. A Safari version is coming to the Mac App Store.