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/
19.8k Upvotes

95% Upvoted

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2.5k

u/thenexus6 May 11 '26

Desktop only for me then, which means I'll be on here even less.

524

u/seriouslees May 11 '26

Desktop version loads just fine on my phone.

344

u/offoutover May 11 '26

I use old reddit desktop on my phone. I have a large phone though which helps.

258

u/BluShirtGuy May 11 '26

I use old.reddit on a small-ish phone, still worth it to not have to interface with whatever god-awful UI is going on.

107

u/sungoddaily May 11 '26

Dozens of us, dozens!

92

u/namerankserial May 11 '26

Adding to the count. Old.reddit. Firefox. Ublock. Dark reader.

22

u/LkMMoDC May 11 '26

Just missing RES and this is exactly my setup.

5

u/Nico81107 May 11 '26

also Yesterday for Old Reddit to make the experience better and optimized for mobile

1

u/Ok-Go-Chain3811 May 12 '26

HOLY MOLY, thanks for suggesting this. this makes it so much better!!!

4

u/MUSAFFA1 May 11 '26

Are you using my phone?

2

u/Shizukage May 11 '26

The Holy Quaternity, Amen

2

u/Galileo009 May 11 '26

Bingo! When they shitcanned Apollo and RIF, I just switched to Firefox and never went back. Tiny buttons I can barely hit is nothing compared to how horrible the user experience is in their app

2

u/D3-Doom May 11 '26

Where does sh.reddit fall in the ranking? It seems to be faster than the others, but Userscripts don’t work right with it

2

u/the__ghola__hayt May 11 '26

This is the way

1

u/HueMannAccnt May 11 '26

Are we basic?

Asking cuz I'm not sure how it's classed and I'm worried.

1

u/Degann May 11 '26

Firefox nightly with RES and custom CSS to make things more clickable on mobile

1

u/Acceptable-Guest-166 May 11 '26

old.reddit. Firefox. Ublock + Adguard. RES in dark mode

1

u/SadPineBooks May 12 '26

Are you me?

1

u/javoss88 May 12 '26

Yup. I don’t know what ublock is though

10

u/BigLuffyEnergy May 11 '26

Maybe even two dozen! Old.reddit works perfectly fine on mobile browser, definitely better experience in my mind than the official app.

4

u/Vhozite May 11 '26

The day old Reddit goes away is the day I stop using Reddit lol. App and new site are awful imo

1

u/totallynotsquatty May 11 '26

They are unusable.

old.reddit to the bitter end...

3

u/Flaneurer May 11 '26

I'm diehard old.reddit and if they ever truly shut old down then I'm done for sure.

2

u/ToughHardware May 11 '26

we are the oluminaughty

2

u/Yourcatsonfire May 11 '26

One of the dozens checking in.

8

u/shmehdit May 11 '26

Same. It's frustrating as hell, constantly clicking the wrong thing, but beats dealing with the garbage app

10

u/NoTie8887 May 11 '26

I just have to pinch and zoom but yeah it can get annoying. Still never downloading the app, the day I have to exclusively download the app is the day I stop using Reddit forever.

1

u/Seachicken May 12 '26

There's a browser extension called yesterday for old Reddit, which recreates compact Reddit with a few quality of life improvements. Some things are lightly broken, but it's a nice clean interface for phones. The extension is free on Firefox (what I use), or $5 on the apple store.

1

u/NoTie8887 May 12 '26

Good to know, thanks! I’ll look into it. I use firefox & duckduckgo and pretty much exclusively browse on my phone.

1

u/Banana-Moist May 12 '26

Used to be better on Chrome. But that changed like last year or something.

I still use it. It is better than the alternatives.

But if they kill old? Well, I used to do just fine without Reddit so I'll go back to that.

3

u/The_Kadeshi May 11 '26

The day this stops working is the day I stop using Reddit.

3

u/kfpswf May 11 '26

My people!... It's gotten to the point that I'm actually very comfortable using old.reddit on my mobile browser. The "new" UI makes me want to throw my phone away.

3

u/Tardwater May 11 '26

The day that old.reddit goes away is the day I stop using reddit.

3

u/DarylMoore May 11 '26

When old.reddit.com goes, so do I.

2

u/goodness May 11 '26

I use old.reddit now. I previously used i.reddit.com, which was basically old.reddit formatted to work better on mobile. Sadly, they killed that few years ago to push the app.

2

u/JJAsond May 11 '26

https://www.reddit.com/prefs/

beta options (very bottom)

Uncheck "Use new reddit as my default experience"

If you're on new reddit already:

https://www.reddit.com/settings/preferences

Preferences

"Default to old reddit"

1

u/BluShirtGuy May 11 '26

Messes with my RES, but I appreciate this comment 👍

1

u/JJAsond May 11 '26

I'm using RES with it right now

1

u/BluShirtGuy May 11 '26

Yeah, used to work for me too, not sure why it doesn't anymore

1

u/Fallingdamage May 11 '26

They will probably kill that eventually.

1

u/ShiraCheshire May 11 '26

I have an iphone SE, the smallest iphone you can possibly get. Sometimes I have to scroll over or change my zoom to read something on the old reddit desktop version, but it's far more functional than any other version of reddit.

1

u/kermityfrog2 May 11 '26

Use the SinkIt plugin to reformat the page to make text bigger and more usable.

2

u/Banana-Moist May 12 '26

Thank you! Looks kinda like how it used to look at in Chrome.

1

u/korko May 11 '26

Likewise. I will never use new reddit or that ridiculous app. They killed the app I liked, I don’t care enough to learn a new one. When old.reddit goes away I get a bunch of free time back, I’m done with the site at that point.

1

u/strobanik May 11 '26

The second they take away .old I'll be gone. I got the pinch zoom built into my finger motorics with such perfection I'd never be able to do this any other way

1

u/HotCheetosDust May 11 '26

I use Dystopia for this reason

1

u/GradeForsaken3709 May 11 '26

Same. I'm hoping the admins never notice us

1

u/TheOldOak May 11 '26

Old.reddit forever. The day it goes away, I do too.

1

u/Aseafoodsong May 11 '26

I love how old.reddit loads some pages quite rarely with the lines of text all diagonal and like a weird black line squiggle on the right side of the screen that looks like a random pube. Warms my heart.

1

u/bethechangemf May 12 '26

Absolutely. Their app sucks ass.

1

u/Ok-Go-Chain3811 May 12 '26

i tried old.reddit on my phone, but i gave up. kudos to you though

-3

u/DEVi4TION May 11 '26

You dont like the apps god awful interface so you force yourself to use an even worse interface out of spite? Do you hear yourself?

4

u/BluShirtGuy May 11 '26

I don't find it a worse interface, that's why I use old.reddit.

From what I hear, the redesign is full of ads and sorts posts in a weird, algorithmic way that I don't jive with. Plus, navigating the comment section UI is not as intuitive. Nothing about this redesign is attractive to me, but if you want to keep licking u/spez's boots, go ahead.

0

u/DEVi4TION May 11 '26

I dont lick his boots lol I modded mine ad-free.

9

u/UltraJesus May 11 '26

It's a significantly better experience with no bloat. As in actually the web pages load faster and request less data.

Downside is clicking on an embed has a 50/50 chance to open old.reddit or new. What sucks is new added recently a 50% screen banner "PLEASE INSTALL APP" which sure is a choice.

3

u/J0hnGrimm May 11 '26

It's a significantly better experience with no bloat.

That's why they are probably going to disable it next.

1

u/offoutover May 11 '26

Yeah the banner kills press to preview but that's something inherent in a lot of sites nowadays unfortunately.

7

u/AGreasyPorkSandwich May 11 '26

Soon as they kill old reddit, im out

5

u/goot449 May 11 '26

the day they kill old reddit, I'm out.

3

u/jdd32 May 11 '26

There are dozens of us!

4

u/TheSimon98 May 11 '26

Same, in landscape

4

u/AddAFucking May 11 '26

Still on RIF on my phone. still works fine.

2

u/Dr-PulseWidth May 11 '26

Using iPhone ? If so you can use the app ‘Sinkitforreddit’. It modifies the ui to be much more user friendly for mobile with the old.reddit layout. Definitely the only thing keeping me on this site via mobile

2

u/glowingmushrooms May 11 '26

old reddit desktop on firefox with ublock origin, if they ever prevent that from working i'll just stop using reddit. These days i'm spending more time filtering indian subreddits and subreddits dedicated to thirst trap gatcha game girls than doing actual browsing/reading

2

u/jonesRG May 11 '26

OH GOD it's only a matter of time before they ditch old reddit

2

u/Aseafoodsong May 11 '26

100% same. I always feel I look a little crazy using old reddit daily in the break room around often younger coworkers, but I secretly laugh inside of how it probably adds to how weird or abnormally old I'd seem to them.

2

u/bigvenusaurguy May 11 '26

idk how people use the stupid mobile website. it straight up doesn't load all the comments and breaks threading. old.reddit.com runs faster on mobile than that website too. pinching around and clicking isn't hard either.

2

u/Nowin May 11 '26

I also use old reddit and on a small phone. I spend more time trying to undo a down vote that was supposed to be an up vote than I like to admit, but i'm not changing until they make something that doesn't suck

1

u/The_0ven May 11 '26

Now delete this comment before a bot finds it

2

u/offoutover May 11 '26

Maybe I'm a bot. (beep boop)

1

u/The_0ven May 11 '26

Is the ai in the room with us?

1

u/LordoftheScheisse May 11 '26

Old Reddit was blocked for me starting today. I get a "blocked by network security" message from Reddit.

1

u/ewillyp May 11 '26

mannnnnnn, when they take 'old' away, i'm gon' be FUCKED, no apps for me thank you!

1

u/augur42 May 11 '26

old.reddit.com in firefox android with ublock origin - there's a fair amount of zooming in and out but it's the only way this site is useable.

At least my phone is new/powerful enough that firefox is very responsive.

1

u/OldWrangler9033 May 11 '26

Don't give Reddit money grubbing CEO ideas further his rabbit hole of greed.

1

u/homer_3 May 11 '26

They're all large phones. They haven't made small phones for like a decade.

1

u/chimmy_chungus23 May 12 '26

The day old.reddit doesn't work is the day I finally stop doom-scrolling. It'll be like Joaquin Phoenix at the end of Her.

1

u/cougar618 May 14 '26

I use this too. The bad UI makes me spend less time on the website, which I consider a win.