Dull – Instagram Without Reels, YouTube Without Shorts (iOS)
I kept deleting and redownloading Instagram because I couldn't stop watching Reels but needed the app for DMs. Tried screen time limits, just overrode them. So I built this.Dull loads Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, and X and filters out short-form content with a mix of CSS and JS injection. MutationObserver handles anything that lazy-loads after the page renders, which is most of the annoying stuff since these platforms love to load content dynamically.The ongoing work is maintaining the filters. Platforms change their DOM all the time, Instagram obfuscates class names, YouTube restructures how Shorts appear in the feed, etc. It's a cat-and-mouse thing that never really ends.Also has grayscale mode, time limits, and usage tracking.Happy to answer questions.
FL score
out of 100
Verdict
high confidence
Competition
14
competitors found, emerging market
Trend
No signal yet
An iOS app that selectively removes Reels, Shorts, and other addictive short-form content from social media feeds, allowing users to retain essential app functionality.
The pain
The gap
Build angle
Strengths
- Addresses a deeply felt, specific pain point (addiction to short-form content while needing other app features).
- Clear differentiation from existing general-purpose app/website blockers.
- Founder has already built and shipped an MVP, proving feasibility and passion.
- Strong demand and willingness to pay signaled by competitor revenue and user frustrations.
- Market for digital well-being and attention management is growing.
Risks
- Ongoing technical maintenance burden due to frequent DOM changes by social media platforms (cat-and-mouse game).
- Potential for platform owners to intentionally block such content filtering methods.
- User acquisition could be challenging in a crowded digital well-being space, despite the niche.
- The value proposition hinges on continuous, flawless content filtering, which requires constant vigilance.
Next steps
- Gather user feedback on the existing MVP to refine filtering effectiveness and identify additional platforms/content types.
- Validate pricing tiers and subscription models with target users.
- Explore community building and content marketing around 'digital detox' and 'focused social media use' to reach target audience.
- Document maintenance processes and consider automation strategies for adapting to platform changes.
Fly Labs Method
Is the pain real, is there a gap, is it the right time, can one person build it.
- Problem clarity
- 27
- Solution gap
- 21
- Willingness to pay
- 19
- Buildability
- 15
Strong validation for a niche problem with clear user demand and a distinct solution gap, although ongoing maintenance could be a challenge.
Value Equation
Dream outcome and how likely it feels, against the time and effort it costs.
Strong potential for making money due to clear market pain, a compelling value proposition, and an emerging, growing market.
One-Person Business
Curiosity pull, identity fit, and a path from free value to paid for a solo creator.
A highly clear problem with strong creator fit and solid monetization, but audience reach and ongoing complexity need consideration.
Viral Frameworks
Hook strength, shareability, and how cheaply it can be tested.
Strong viability as a micro-SaaS due to highly specific targeting, clear value, and a proven business model, though maintenance is a risk.
Builder Lens
Evidence the problem exists, timing, defensibility, and a model that fits on a napkin.
Highly demanded, targeted solution for a persistent problem that will only grow, with a clear and narrow initial offering.
Why this verdict
Five lenses, one composite. How scoring works
The angle
This weekend
- Gather user feedback on the existing MVP to refine filtering effectiveness and identify additional platforms/content types.
- Validate pricing tiers and subscription models with target users.
- Explore community building and content marketing around 'digital detox' and 'focused social media use' to reach target audience.
- Document maintenance processes and consider automation strategies for adapting to platform changes.
Who is already there, emerging market
- One SecVisit
An app that introduces a mandatory pause when you open distracting apps, prompting you to take a breath before proceeding.
Pricing: Free version available with limited features. Pro version: $2.99/month, $19.99/year, or $49.99 lifetime. Family Plan: $24.99/year or $69.00 lifetime. Student discount of 50% on annual subscription ($10/year).
- FreedomVisit
A comprehensive app and website blocker that works across multiple devices to help users focus.
Pricing: Monthly: $8.99, Yearly: $3.33/month (billed annually at $39.99), Lifetime: $99.50 (may vary, check site for current pricing) or $160 one-time purchase.
- OpalVisit
A screen time app for iPhone and Mac that blocks apps and websites, tracks usage, and provides tools to focus.
Pricing: Free version with basic features. Premium: $8.29/month (billed annually at $99.99), $19.99/month (billed annually at $239), or $399 lifetime.
- Cold Turkey BlockerVisit
A robust website and application blocker known for its unbreakable blocks, helping users to eliminate distractions.
Pricing: Free Basic version with limited features. Pro version: $39 one-time payment for a single device, or $49 for unlimited personal computers (includes lifetime updates).
- RescueTimeVisit
A productivity app that tracks time spent on applications and websites, providing detailed reports and blocking features to improve focus.
Pricing: Free Lite plan. Solo Premium plan: $6.50/month (billed annually) or $12/month (billed monthly). Team Plan: $6 per user/month (billed annually) or $9 per user/month (billed monthly).
- FocusMeVisit
A customizable content blocker that limits or rations the use of distracting websites and apps with powerful 'force' modes.
Pricing: Monthly: ~₹668.4 (~$8 USD), Yearly: ~₹335.95/month (~$4 USD/month), 2 Years: ~₹227.53/month (~$2.75 USD/month). Lifetime purchase also available for $119.99.
- ForestVisit
A gamified timer app that helps users stay focused by growing a virtual tree; the tree dies if the user leaves the app.
Pricing: Free to download with in-app purchases. Full version is a one-time cost of $2.79 (CAD) or $1.99 USD. Pro features (like planting real trees, custom tags) are available via in-app purchases ranging from $0.99 to $35.99.
- UnpluqVisit
An app that adds 'friction' to accessing distracting apps by requiring users to complete challenges or use a physical NFC tag.
Pricing: App subscription: Monthly: $4.49, Yearly: $44.99, Lifetime: $194.99. Bundles with NFC tag also available: Tag + 6 Months Subscription: $44.95, Tag + 1 Year Subscription: $59.95, Tag + Lifetime Subscription: $199.95.
- ScrollGuardVisit
An Android app that specifically blocks short-form video feeds like Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts, and Facebook Reels, without blocking the entire app.
Pricing: Core features are free, with some extra features available in a Pro version.
- WallHabitVisit
An Android app that disables Reels on Instagram and Shorts on YouTube, along with blocking entire apps or specific features to limit screen time.
Pricing: Not specified, but focuses on a 'commitment device' mechanism.
- NoScrollVisit
An Android app designed to block Shorts and Reels sections of apps while allowing other features, and also offers full app and site blocking.
Pricing: Not specified.
- AppBlockVisit
A tool to block distracting apps and websites, including specific sections like Instagram Reels or YouTube Shorts on Android devices.
Pricing: Not specified, but offers Quick Block, Schedules, Strict Mode, and Insights as key features.
What they charge
Recent news
- Cold Turkey Review (2026): Is It the Best Website Blocker?
Cisdem, March 16 2026
- RescueTime Pricing 2026
RescueTime, March 05 2025
- Block Reels, Shorts, Stories and Spotlight on Android with AppBlock
AppBlock, May 13 2025
- Forest: Focus for Productivity - Overview - Apple App Store - US
Sensor Tower, March 27 2026
- An App to block Reels & Shorts : r/Android - Reddit
Reddit, March 11 2026
Market signals
The market for digital well-being and attention management apps is growing, driven by increasing awareness of social media addiction and the desire for focused work/life. There's a clear demand for solutions that specifically target addictive short-form video content like Reels and Shorts, as evidenced by newer apps focusing on this niche. While specific funding rounds for this exact problem space weren't immediately found, the consistent development and iteration of apps in this area, many of which are bootstrapped, indicate a strong and active market.
What frustrates people
- Users frequently override screen time limits set on their devices, indicating a need for more robust and difficult-to-bypass solutions.
- Some blocking apps, especially in 'locked mode,' can be too restrictive, blocking access to essential information.
- A desire for solutions that specifically block short-form video content (Reels, Shorts) while still allowing access to other features of social media apps (like DMs, stories).
- Difficulty in setting up and configuring some apps, particularly those that rely on system-level integrations like iOS Shortcuts.
- Frustration with the cost of premium digital well-being apps, with some users seeking free or more affordable alternatives.
Semble – Code search for agents that uses 98% fewer tokens than grep
Hey HN! We (Stephan and Thomas) recently open-sourced Semble. We kept running into the same problem while using Claude Code on large codebases: when the agent can't find something directly, it falls back to grep, reading full files or launching subagents. This uses a lot of tokens, and often still misses the relevant code. There are existing tools for this, but they were either too slow to index on demand, needed API keys, or had poor retrieval quality.Semble is our solution for this. It combines static Model2Vec embeddings (using our latest static model: potion-code-16M) with BM25, fused via RRF and reranked with code-aware signals. Everything runs on CPU since there's no transformers involved. On our benchmark of ~1250 query/document pairs across 63 repos and 19 languages, it uses 98% fewer tokens than grep+read and reaches 99% of the retrieval quality of a 137M-parameter code-trained transformer, while being ~200x faster.Main features:- Token-efficient: 98% fewer tokens than grep+read- Fast: ~250ms to index a typical repo on our benchmark, ~1.5ms per query on CPU (very large repos may take longer)- Accurate: 0.854 NDCG@10, 99% of the best transformer setup we tested- MCP server: drop-in for Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, OpenCode- Zero config: no API keys, no GPU, no external servicesInstall in Claude Code with: claude mcp add semble -s user -- uvx --from "semble[mcp]" sembleOr check our README for other installation instructions, benchmarks, and methodology:Semble: https://github.com/MinishLab/sembleBenchmarks: https://github.com/MinishLab/semble/tree/main/benchmarksModel: https://huggingface.co/minishlab/potion-code-16MLet us know if you have any feedback or questions!
AI
Postgres extension for BM25 relevance-ranked full-text search
Last summer we faced a conundrum at my company, Tiger Data, a Postgres cloud vendor whose main business is in timeseries data. We were trying to grow our business towards emerging AI-centric workloads and wanted to provide a state-of-the-art hybrid search stack in Postgres. We'd already built pgvectorscale in house with the goal of scaling semantic search beyond pgvector's main memory limitations. We just needed a scalable ranked keyword search solution too.The problem: core Postgres doesn't provide this; the leading Postgres BM25 extension, ParadeDB, is guarded behind AGPL; developing our own extension appeared daunting. We'd need a small team of sharp engineers and 6-12 months, I figured. And we'd probably still fall short of the performance of a mature system like Parade/Tantivy.Or would we? I'd be experimenting long enough with AI-boosted development at that point to realize that with the latest tools (Claude Code + Opus) and an experienced hand (I've been working in database systems internals for 25 years now), the old time estimates pretty much go out the window.I told our CTO I thought I could solo the project in one quarter. This raised some eyebrows.It did take a little more time than that (two quarters), and we got some real help from the community (amazing!) after open-sourcing the pre-release. But I'm thrilled/exhausted today to share that pg_textsearch v1.0 is freely available via open source (Postgres license), on Tiger Data cloud, and hopefully soon, a hyperscalar near you:https://github.com/timescale/pg_textsearchIn the blog post accompanying the release, I overview the architecture and present benchmark results using MS-MARCO. To my surprise, we were not only able to meet Parade/Tantivy's query performance, but exceed it substantially, measuring a 4.7x advantage on query throughput at scale:https://www.tigerdata.com/blog/pg-textsearch-bm25-fu
AI
Consus (YC F24) – LLM gateway for companies handling sensitive data
Hey Hacker News! I'm Eric, the founder of Consus. We route all AI requests to ITAR restricted and controlled unclassified information (CUI) compliant infrastructure. Consus itself satisfies ITAR restrictions, and we recently completed our FedRAMP equivalency audit against the 410 FedRAMP High controls. FedRAMP High is the U.S. government’s strictest security baseline for cloud services handling sensitive unclassified data. A breach of this data could cause severe or catastrophic harm. Achieving FedRAMP equivalency, or authorization, is required before processing CUI information.Demo: https://youtu.be/6MYxJe6P4oYAerospace and defense is experiencing rapid growth. Unfortunately, most companies are struggling to use AI because of necessary data protections & compliance risk. These companies can move even faster if they could use the AI tools that most other industries take for granted.I spent most of my career prior to Consus in aerospace & defense. I launched national security payloads at SpaceX, and was an early employee at Castelion. I’ve watched first hand how compliance red-tape makes it difficult for companies to adopt new technologies and trust vendors that touch their sensitive data. For example, I worked with a satellite manufacturer that doesn’t allow any AI tools, even for non-sensitive work.Even as AI has become extremely useful over the past 9-12 months, I was surprised by how many aerospace & defense companies refused to touch it. They could see how it could be helpful, but they were scared about model providers training on their data, violating an ITAR rule, or risk losing new business because of a failed cyber assessment. These are all rational fears.There were a lot of ways to solve some/all of these problems, but we focused on building a compliant AI inference layer that can "plug" into any AI tool or workflow. Just as OpenRouter integrates with most tools, Consus can connect to tools like ChatGPT or Clau
AI
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