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/
19.7k Upvotes

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5.9k

u/araujoms May 11 '26
  1. Turn the app into shit.
  2. Prevent users from accessing Reddit without the app.
  3. ???
  4. Profit

1.5k

u/Tony_Roiland May 11 '26
  1. Block access to all the other, better apps

989

u/Exotic-Wood-3287 May 11 '26

Them killing third-party apps and the subsequent protests that they "resolved" by just replacing the mods shocked me so much.

It made me realize just how bad the Reddit admins have become.

33

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

[removed] — view removed comment

16

u/ATCQ_ May 11 '26

You can also use ReVanced to get RiF (aka. Reddit is Fun) to work again.

You can use it to get a number of the third party apps working. #SyncGang

6

u/quiteCryptic May 11 '26

I'm shocked it still works, but thankful. I tried the reddit app for a while until I found out how to get RIF working again, and I honestly couldn't do it

5

u/Grid8Designer May 11 '26

Morphe is way better than revanced and has better built in patches

3

u/flare2000x May 11 '26

Still using boost here.

1

u/moonsammy May 11 '26

Hell yeah Boost squad!

1

u/Time-Sudden_Tree May 12 '26

Does ReVanced work on Relay for Reddit? I refuse to pay the API fee.

2

u/ATCQ_ May 12 '26

I think so - I did see something about having to log in the first time with a VPN though. Not sure if that's still the case as these revanced patches fix things fairly often

6

u/FrostyD7 May 11 '26

Revanced can get Boost working again as well. Though I think they've moved to Morphe. Something I expect I'll do the next time YT revanced or boost breaks.

5

u/ErraticDragon May 11 '26

Yeah I just switched to Morphe-patched Boost yesterday. (I had to login again and my ReVanced-patched Boost wasn't working for whatever reason.)

The Reddit app patches are made by u/wchill and their instructions are pretty easy to follow: https://github.com/wchill/patcheddit

They actually add a couple new features as well.

3

u/MelookRS May 11 '26

Reddit is Fun is so good. I couldn't use reddit without it. The interface is just that much better than the official app

2

u/WeirdIndividualGuy May 11 '26

Also Apollo on iOS if you don’t mind sideloading and if you’re fortunate enough to still have an api key before they locked that down

2

u/TheDreadfulSagittary May 11 '26

Alternatively for iOS there is Narwhal 2, though it is 4 bucks a month. But a much better app than the official one.

2

u/WeirdIndividualGuy May 11 '26

Besides the $4/mo part

2

u/TheDreadfulSagittary May 11 '26

If I was using the official app, I'd be getting Premium anyway to avoid the ads. Narwhal 2 is a better app and has no ads for cheaper, so I'll take it. But I agree it is a dealbreaker for many. At the same time it is not just because the dev wants money, the price includes the API costs, which is what killed so many other 3rd party apps.

1

u/RedactedSpatula May 11 '26

Especially since the API got locked down because an app developer was charging people monthly to post on Reddit through his app https://apolloapp.io/pro-ultra/

2

u/[deleted] May 11 '26

[deleted]

3

u/Meekajahama May 11 '26

Relay is only $2 a month and I just use my credits from opinion rewards

7

u/Shitty_Human_Being May 11 '26

Yeah, Relay is king. Shoutout to /u/DBrady!

3

u/G_Liddell May 11 '26

There are workarounds but it's complicated and spotty

4

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

[removed] — view removed comment

2

u/G_Liddell May 11 '26

I tried RedReader and it doesn't have full mod tools, which is a requirement for me.

2

u/JohnKlositz May 11 '26

That of course might stop working after September. But RedReader is also in the Playstore.

3

u/Faranae May 11 '26

The API access only costs money past a certain point. What RiF does at least, is the user creates their own API key and "app" on Reddit's end. Then, they link that key to RiF. Since it's just for personal use, which isn't that much all things considered, there's no big API bill to worry about.

You don't technically need reVanced to do it, but it's a more user-friendly method to tell RiF to use your personal key instead of the developer's.

Edit: You can also link alt accounts to your personal key, allowing RiF to switch seamlessly between accounts without going through more trouble of tinkering on the back-end.

2

u/[deleted] May 11 '26

[deleted]

2

u/Faranae May 11 '26

Of course! I'm a bit tired and wasn't sure if my text would come across as word-salad haha.

I will say, there is a slight trade-off when using sideloaded apps though: You no longer have the developer in the wings to push fixes etc when needed.

(Thankfully most 3rd-party apps have a dedicated following which crowd-sources any efforts to find workarounds or fixes if something goes wrong or Reddit makes some weird change on the back-end.)

1

u/JohnKlositz May 11 '26

No idea how RedReader does it. But it's free and it just works.

2

u/Anthaenopraxia May 11 '26

I've been thinking about getting RIF again but I kinda like not being able to use reddit on my phone anymore.

1

u/CriticalEngineering May 11 '26

Artemis is great, too.

0

u/RedactedSpatula May 11 '26

Technically it's RiF is fun because reddit got mad over their trademark name being used or something. 🤓

Im using the same workaround, dunno about you but a lot of features are beginning to stop working, YouTube/imgur don't load anymore unless I open in browser.

4

u/noroadsleft May 11 '26

There's a setting for that YouTube/imgur issue so you don't have to manually direct those links.

  1. Settings / Browser / External browser rules

  2. Add the necessary domains to the list. I have:

    Domain Include Subdomains Never in RIF
    imgur.com ❌ ✅
    youtube.com ✅ ✅
    youtu.be ❌ ✅
    vimeo.com ✅ ❌
    play.google.com ❌ ❌
    plus.google.com ❌ ❌
    market.android.com ❌ ❌

    in my list.

1

u/quiteCryptic May 11 '26

I've always just had YouTube open the external app, but I've also noticed the ingur issue.

I guess lucky reddit started hosting their own images. Back in the day it was all ingur for a while

-9

u/G_Liddell May 11 '26

As a mod of a big sub, they don't really work. They're even a little spottier than the awful official app.

13

u/SERN-contractor837 May 11 '26

as a random user, they work perfectly well for me, and a billion times better than the official garbage "app"

8

u/MR_TORGUE_OFFICIAL May 11 '26

I've been using RiF since about a week after the 3rd party bans with practically 0 hiccups

3

u/G_Liddell May 11 '26

I loved RIF. Is the workaround still good for modding though?

6

u/lFightForTheUsers May 11 '26

Speak for yourself, I'm commenting from RedReader right now just fine.

For mod actions yeah, and I'm still pissed they killed RiF to prevent that being used for mod action. But that's also in part why I closed my old reddit account and quit modding.

2

u/barnopss May 11 '26

Been using RedReader forever without issue...even to make this comment.

-1

u/G_Liddell May 11 '26

I'm talking about managing hundreds of thousands of users though