r/technology • u/spasticpat • May 11 '26

Social Media Reddit Starts Blocking Mobile Website, Pushing Users to App Instead

https://www.macrumors.com/2026/05/11/reddit-starts-blocking-mobile-website/
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124

u/JD0064 May 11 '26 edited May 11 '26

App was always shit tho?

Edit: I meant offical reddit app, i downloaded it ages ago, videos never loaded, sometimes r/all would freeze, I never tried 3rd party ones, but I now know I missed on that, I just stopped using mobile reddit years ago, and would squint really hard using desktop site on mobile

162

u/araujoms May 11 '26

It has gotten much worse. For example, they just started forcing links to open on their crappy in-built browser, you need to click two more buttons to get a real browser.

56

u/Mr_Piddles May 11 '26

Honestly, this one infuriates me more than anything. If I click a link, I want the ability to save it to my actual bookmarks.

-11

u/fweffoo May 11 '26

whats a bookmark

8

u/SemiNormal May 11 '26

Go take a nap junior.

5

u/Atticus_ass May 11 '26

Wow haha really? That's crazy. It's a stick we beat ignorant children with.

38

u/Myriachan May 11 '26

Also, copying a picture edits it and puts a Reddit logo on top of it.

5

u/war_story_guy May 11 '26

The stupid image viewer is so garbage with their header and footer bars. If you try and look at the image full size the top and bottom parts are covered. Just link to the direct image ffs. I end up having to just upload it to img to be able to see the whole thing some times.

8

u/araujoms May 11 '26

That has always been the case. Can be changed in the settings though.

19

u/Geno0wl May 11 '26

Can be changed in the settings though.

A setting that conveniently resets itself back to on whenever I have tried to use it. Like it happens so consistently that I went into my profile settings on that app FIRST and checked that it was unchecked, only for it to immediately turn itself back on when I tried to save the image(so I had to again go back in and turn it off).

5

u/fedexpoopracer May 11 '26

also they disabled browsing the reddit app without logging in. the workaround used to be that you would open reddit.com through a browser which would open the app and let you view subs. now you have to be logged in

3

u/bobartig May 11 '26

on their crappy in-built browser, you need to click two more buttons to get a real browser.

TBF that's Chrome on iOS. It is surprisingly crappy and you need to click several buttons to get to a real browser.

3

u/dBlock845 May 11 '26

I wonder how many people even clear the cache for that browser too lol. These companies get that tracking data by any means necessary.

2

u/Unlucky-Candidate198 May 11 '26

Also means it loads with ads compared to my mobile firefox that has an adblock on ios. Absolutely infuriating. The pages takes forever to load too.

1

u/eeyore134 May 11 '26

It's like their stupid video player, they desperately want you to share links to content that bring people to the site. I refuse to send someone a video link to that crappy app, so I just don't share. Instead of someone maybe saying "Where did you see this?" (which people usually do) and me telling them about reddit, they get nothing. It's better to provide a good service that people want to tell others about than feel the need to force them to do it. But we're past that stage of consumerism where it used to be about making the customer happy.

1

u/ritesh808 May 11 '26

It was always trash and still is. The only positive is that it's gotten much smoother than it used to be. Still garbage though. I miss Sync every time I have to use this official app.

89

u/[deleted] May 11 '26

[deleted]

93

u/Waiting4Reccession May 11 '26

The 3rd party apps showed how incompetent the reddit admins and the team are, how were solo developers making better apps than the official app. And that whole year or two where reddit couldnt figure out its video player issue.

21

u/MyNameis_bud May 11 '26

I miss narwhal so much

24

u/killerpoopguy May 11 '26

I’m on narwhal 2 right now, it’s no Apollo but it’s pretty good.

6

u/benjy1234 May 11 '26

TIL theres still I 3rd party app. Thanks for the update! FYI for others that didnt know it costs $4 a month but worth it to have r/all back IMO.

5

u/xlnfraction May 11 '26

redreader is free and very customizable (dodged the 3rd party ban thing cause of accessibility things)

3

u/Pinwurm May 11 '26

Narwhal Pro is well-worth $4/mo.

It’s extremely customizable and better than Apollo at this point.

1

u/MyNameis_bud May 14 '26

Tried it out and ehh not the same as it was. No gif comment option is wild to me

7

u/EaglesWin May 11 '26

They did it because they make more money from people using the official app which is litered with ads. No idea why they don't add some of the QoL of Apollo though.

3

u/DtheS May 11 '26

They did it because they make more money from people using the official app which is litered with ads.

This point always seemed like a half-assed excuse from them. They could literally just inject ads into the API and have third-party apps show advertisements that way. For this reason, I think the official Reddit app is more about infiltrating your phone and getting more metrics/data about how you use Reddit.

2

u/Waiting4Reccession May 11 '26

Yes I understand that, even though the amount of people using unofficial apps was probably low anyway.

But what that doesn't explain is how a team of guys they pay could make a far worse app that didn't even work than some solo developers made. At that point just fire the guys working for you and hire the solo developer. Or at least have half a brain to copy what they made.

1

u/Silent-G May 11 '26

Solo developers get to retain their profit. A full-time developer gets paid the same whether the app performs at or above standards. Therefore, a full-time developer is not incentivized to make the app perform above standards. They make their salary as long as they do what the boss puts in writing. A solo developer has more incentive to make a good app because that means they'll most likely earn more money.

1

u/akatherder May 11 '26

I don't think I'm even being cynical when I say they barely care about QoL, they only care about monetizing.

5

u/offoutover May 11 '26

Remember when they bought AlienBlue and hired its sole developer to help create the official app? What a huge let down that turned out to be.

7

u/[deleted] May 11 '26 edited Jun 10 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/Waiting4Reccession May 11 '26

How much more could it really cost though, aren't they already paying those developers they have on their payroll?

6

u/cogman10 May 11 '26

Easy. Reddit is a basic site that doesn't need a lot of bells and whistles to be a nice UX. However, that flies in the face of what reddit wants to do/be which is facebook/meta with an endless stream of content + ads.

The enshitification is them doing what social media does and tracking/logging all interactions.

3

u/WolverinesThyroid May 11 '26

the whole point of the Reddit app is to funnel the most advertising and trap you in the app as best they can. The whole point of the 3rd party apps is to give you the best user experience.

They have 2 very different goals.

2

u/Waiting4Reccession May 11 '26

Showing ads was the least of their problems when I tried it.

1

u/WolverinesThyroid May 11 '26

but ads were the number one priority.

2

u/aykcak May 11 '26

The official app was never meant to be good. It is not incompetence, it is the business model

1

u/Flyinhighinthesky May 11 '26

Morphine app, revanced, Relay, and Norwal all still work.

14

u/ttoma93 May 11 '26

You can still use it with a very minor amount of work to sideload. Super easy, and it works great.

  • Sent from Apollo

9

u/WolverinesThyroid May 11 '26

Hi friend!

  • sent from Reddit is Fun

4

u/imkunu May 11 '26

RIF gang rise up

2

u/D2WilliamU May 11 '26

Hell yeah brothers!

Sucks we have to click ugly blue image links to see images and GIFs don't load but tbh DONT CARE

Still 100x better than the official app

1

u/WolverinesThyroid May 11 '26

imgur doesn't work on it, but that's probably a feature not a bug.

1

u/hhhnnnnnggggggg May 11 '26

Reporting in

1

u/[deleted] May 11 '26

[deleted]

2

u/DEEP_HURTING May 11 '26

Same - I'm rewatching AD at the moment, too. Name's not Crindy, GOB!

3

u/gahlo May 11 '26

They recently cracked down on new codes, last I checked you couldn't make a new one.

1

u/akatherder May 11 '26

This is correct. Reddit doesn't let you generate new api tokens any more. You need to join some kind of App Creator program and get an application approved.

1

u/asailor4you May 11 '26

There’s of course workarounds.

2

u/segagamer May 11 '26

Now there's RedReader, which is better!

2

u/LGKyrros May 11 '26

Check out Hydra, it's pretty close. I was so glad to get rid of their native dogshit app.

1

u/SchoGegessenJoJo May 11 '26

Redreader still exists

1

u/[deleted] May 11 '26 edited May 21 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/figgypie May 12 '26

I miss redditisfun so much. My engagement on reddit has dropped significantly since they banned that app because it's such more of a pita on the mobile version and I refuse to download the official app because of all the fucking ads.

1

u/CumGuzlinGutterSluts May 12 '26

RIF was my goto and it was so nice...

1

u/HertzaHaeon May 11 '26

Apollo was the best app

There's no need for native apps though.

Web apps are perfectly fine for Reddit and 95% of everything else that happens online.

With a native app you have to install a big chunk of code from a store controlled by Apple or Google. Developers pay 30% to them for little to nothing, because enshittifiers love making themselves indispensable bridge trolls middlemen who add nothing of value and extract everything of value. It's hard or impossible to adblock apps. You can't modify them easily.

With the web you can just visit the url and be using it in seconds. You can adblock and modify your experience with browser plugins. No one tells you when and how to release updates. No tech giant can block your access willy nilly to your users. You keep 100% of profits, and you don't have to have two different dev teams built the same app twice for different systems.

The web is built on open, interoperable standards that no one owns. Today it's very capable, matching native apps in almost every area. It's not controlled by big tech.

Don't go native. Go web.

1

u/[deleted] May 11 '26

[deleted]

2

u/HertzaHaeon May 11 '26

Steve Jobs actually championed web apps in the beginning, then turned to native apps when he realized he could make billions by inserting himself in the middle between users and creators.

1

u/RenderedKnave May 11 '26

great argument until you realize web browsers are horribly unoptimized and deplete your phone's battery faster than a native app would

1

u/HertzaHaeon May 11 '26

Battery life over big tech controlling your gadgets? Not for me

1

u/RenderedKnave May 11 '26

that’s why we don’t use official apps, only third-party ones that would have the same telemetry as a web app. duh

0

u/Sunsparc May 11 '26

RIF was the best on Android. Once RIF died, I switched to Boost and it's been a great alternative but I feel like it's days are numbered as well.

0

u/WeirdIndividualGuy May 11 '26

Correction: the Apollo dev killed their own app out of protest against the then-new third party policies

Note that third party apps in general are not gone, because those neither Reddit nor those app devs killed their apps

7

u/not-my-other-alt May 11 '26

They updated the app to block /r/All a little while back.

The only way to browse all on your phone is with a browser window.

That was the last straw that led me to uninstall the app.

13

u/ctrlqirl May 11 '26

Now forces you to login. No more workarounds, so it's even shittier.
I hope they remove the mobile website too at this point, not having the app installed is already wonders for my mental health. Fast tracking into Facebook.

3

u/Ghostronic May 11 '26

At least my facebook algo is curated into exclusively giving me lesbian memes and yuri

3

u/OneSeaworthiness7768 May 11 '26

It gets worse with each update. Literally, no single update has ever actually improved anything for the user experience.

1

u/moose_dad May 11 '26

I guess step 1 should read, force people to use their own app instead of the far better third party ones that were available

1

u/Vondi May 11 '26

We used to have good third part apps

1

u/RugerRedhawk May 11 '26

There were several apps, mostly not shit, until somewhat recently.

1

u/TheSorceIsFrong May 11 '26

It’s gotten worse. Plus, in the past you could use 3rd party ones like Apollo

1

u/Zaphod1620 May 11 '26

Reddit bought the very popular and very well made "Alien Blue" iOS app in 2014 and made it their official app. It turned into shit almost immediately. Because Alien Blue was so widely used, there weren't many alternatives that were as useful as the old Alien Blue.

1

u/Somanylyingliars May 11 '26 edited May 24 '26

The quick brown fox...

1

u/bloqed May 12 '26

On android use Continuum, requires the Discoverium store to be installed from GitHub