Feed Free - Unbiased Feed (FF - UF) by Anish Aryal

🚀 WHAT'S NEW (Updates up to v1.2.1)

📺 YOUTUBE UPDATES
• Full Watch-Page Sidebar Nuke: Completely collapse the watch-next sidebar to stretch the main video player into a clean, full-width view.
• Channel-Wide Shorts Block: "Hide Shorts Everywhere" now wipes out Shorts tabs and video thumbnails straight from creator channel pages.
• End-Screen Toggle Fix: Resolved a bug where video card overlays remained hidden after toggling the option off; styles now reset cleanly.
• Sidebar Line Fix: Fixed an issue where hiding the "Report history" link left behind an awkward divider line.

📸 INSTAGRAM UPDATES
• Hide Professional Dashboard: New option to strip creator/business dashboard links and icons completely out of the sidebar navigation.
• Stories Tray Overhaul: Choose to hide the stories tray only on your Home feed, or go nuclear with "Stories Everywhere" to wipe out trays, highlights, and profile story rings globally.
• Dynamic Comments Restoration: Hidden comments are now tagged directly on-page, allowing instant un-hiding/restoration when toggled off without requiring full page reloads.
• Navigation Integrity Fixes: Re-scoped core blocking filters so they no longer accidentally hide grids on user profiles, channel pages, or your personal "Saved" section.

⚙️ GLOBAL & SYSTEM IMPROVEMENTS
• Global Grayscale Mode: Drop a high-contrast black & white filter over both platforms to crush visual dopamine triggers without causing any interface layout shifts.
• Core Engine Optimization: Enhanced the synchronous Anti-Flicker scripts to guarantee instant, zero-delay filtering on single-page application (SPA) transitions.

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Take control of your social media experience and break the dopamine loops.

Feed Free - Unbiased Feed (FF-UF) is a lightweight, privacy-focused digital detox browser extension designed to completely eliminate addictive algorithmic timelines, shorts, reels, and manipulative recommendations on YouTube and Instagram. Reclaim your focus, protect your mental space, and browse entirely on your own terms without getting sucked into endless scrolling.

Unlike basic blockers that break when platforms update, Feed Free targets stable semantic structures, accessibility roles, and native URL paths to ensure uninterrupted focus through client-side single-page application (SPA) navigations—no page reloads required.

🌟 KEY FEATURES

📺 YOUTUBE FOCUS MODE
• Hide Home Feed: Instantly clears the central video recommendation grid from the homepage to stop passive scrolling before it starts.
• Hide Shorts & Shorts Everywhere: Removes Shorts shelves from the homepage/sidebar, and targets channel profile grids to scrub short-form loops entirely.
• Hide Recommendations & End Screens: Clears suggested watch-next video panels and handles clean style resets to wipe out video card overlays when a clip concludes.
• Hide Entire Sidebar: Fully collapses the watch-page sidebar context, expanding the video player layout to a clean, symmetrical full-width presentation.
• Hide Comments: Removes the entire interactive comments platform to keep you away from time-wasting comment threads.
• Deep Sidebar Customization: Individually toggle off noisy sidebar items including Subscriptions, Explore/Trending, Report History (with adjacent line-clearing fixes), and "More from YouTube" blocks.
• Dynamic Music Mode: Blacks out the video rendering layer while keeping the audio streaming smoothly. Includes a synchronized wave-bar animator that halts when the video pauses.
• Grayscale Mode: Desaturates the entire platform into high-contrast black and white to lower visual dopamine triggers.

📸 INSTAGRAM FOCUS MODE
• Following Feed Enforcement: Automatically intercepts navigation to instagram.com and forces a structural redirect directly to your chronological "Following" timeline, bypassing the algorithmic "For You" feed.
• Redirect to DMs / Conflict Resolution: Land straight on your message inbox upon launching the site, with built-in fallback redirect options if routing configurations conflict.
• Hide Professional Dashboard: Strips away creator/business metric links and icons from the sidebar navigation panel.
• Hide Stories (Home & Everywhere): Hide the home timeline tray, or entirely erase story highlights, tray containers, profile rings, and direct /stories/ paths platform-wide.
• Hide Comments with Smart Capture: Completely removes comment lines, comment counts, item icons, and text entry forms while safely preserving the post author's original caption.
• Square Profile Photos: Renders all profile pictures and story indicators as soft, clean squares for a highly structured, non-distracting interface layout.
• Hide Notes & Likes: Erases status note bubbles from inbox lists and strips away vanity metric counts across posts, reels, hover cards, and profile follower metrics.
• Hide Reels & Explore: Blocks entry menus and enforces instant URL redirections away from the main Explore matrix and Reels grids (while safely keeping profile asset tabs intact).

⚙️ GLOBAL DETOX CONTROLS
• Master Switch: Pause or arm the entire extension's filter parameters simultaneously with one single click from the dashboard panel.
• Real-Time Synchronization: Toggle options apply across all your active browser windows and open tabs instantaneously.
• SPA-Proof Architecture: Works natively with dynamic Single-Page-Application client routers, maintaining instant filtering states without requiring slow webpage reloads.

🚀 OUR 3-PHASE ROADMAP
• Phase 1: Feed Free (Current Phase) — Take back absolute control over your feed layouts. Block recommendations, feeds, likes, comments, and visual triggers on YouTube and Instagram to clear out distracting dopamine loops entirely.
• Phase 2: The Unbiased Feed (Upcoming) — Introduce a custom-curated, non-manipulative feed engine. Safely inject neutral, educational, or random content to provide a healthy alternative timeline.
• Phase 3: The Focus Lock (Future) — Add intentional behavioral friction and lock-in options, preventing you from overriding your detox settings when you need to focus most.

💻 HOW IT WORKS (UNDER THE HOOD)
• Stable Semantic Tracking: Avoids brittle CSS class configurations that change with platform updates. Feed Free targets core tags, explicit navigation arguments, and static accessibility tags (like svg[aria-label="Reels"]).
• Synchronous Anti-Flicker Engine: Runs a localized script at document_start to check configurations and instantly lock down algorithmic nodes before the visual document even renders on your screen.
• Multi-Layer State Sync: Coordinates state across a dedicated messaging bus, chrome.storage.onChanged local listeners, and a 2-second background polling fallback to capture mismatched state events.
• Heartbeat Recovery System: A localized 3-second script sweep continuously validates that the custom blocking rules remain attached, automatically re-injecting elements if host page engines attempt to flush the styles.

🔒 PRIVACY FIRST
Feed Free - Unbiased Feed functions entirely locally inside your browser sandbox. It does not track, collect, store, or transmit your browsing patterns, configuration settings, or private account data anywhere. All state choices remain securely stored right on your local device. Quick repository shortcut links are baked into the dashboard's security shield for instant open-source verification.