i.
Full removal
Shorts shelves, autoplay sidebars, recommendation rails, deleted from the DOM, not hidden with CSS. They never render.
YouTube
decaf
Decaf, for
social media.
A browser extension that strips the addictive mechanics from the platforms you keep open all day. The good stays. The slot machine leaves.
Firefox · Chrome · iOS beta · Android beta
01, The problem
Your apps are designed
Short-form feeds, autoplay queues, infinite scroll, these aren’t features. They’re retention mechanics. The point isn’t the content. The point is that you don’t close the tab.
2:21 / day
Average daily time on social media, globally. That’s over 35 full days a year. (DataReportal, 2025)
205×
Times the average American checks their phone per day, once every 5 waking minutes. (Reviews.org, 2024)
81%
Of users check their phone within 10 minutes of waking up. Before they’re even out of bed. (Reviews.org, 2024)
02, How it works
ii.
Soft stop
The bottomless feed quietly runs out. After a while it stops handing you new posts, so the doom-scroll has a natural end instead of pulling you on, and it happens right inside the page with nothing to dismiss. You can still read what's there, open comments, search, or jump to a profile.
Instagram · X · Reddit
iii.
Theater mode
Every video opens full-width. Combined with the nuked sidebar, you get a clean focused viewer, closer to a film than a feed.
YouTube
iv.
Anti-tamper
Opt in once. The slowdown re-applies itself if you try to strip it out via DevTools, and the blocking comes right back if you delete a rule. You signed up for this. We hold the line.
All platforms · optional
03, Before & after
This is YouTube,
decaffeinated.
Same browser, same account, same videos. Two captures, the watch page and the home feed, with Decaf off, then on. No retouching.
i · Watch page
The video,
no chaperones.
Default YouTube hands you a video and a sidebar of three more, plus a live chat panel, plus end cards, plus comments below the fold. Decaf strips that down to the thing you came for. You watch it, then you decide what’s next, instead of the algorithm deciding for you.
- Suggested-videos sidebar removed
- Live chat panel hidden
- End-card overlays disabled
ii · Home feed
No Shorts.
No bait. Still YouTube.
The home feed is YouTube’s most engineered surface, a Shorts shelf pinned in the middle, recommendation cards tuned to your watch history, ads dressed up as videos. Decaf removes the shelf entirely and quiets the rails, leaving a feed of regular videos you can scan instead of being scanned by.
- Shorts shelf nuked from the DOM
- “For you” recommendation rails muted
- Promoted-content cards filtered out
The same model applies to TikTok, Instagram, X, and Reddit, different surfaces, same surgical removal.
04, The science
This isn’t a vibe.
It’s a slot machine.
The mechanics that keep you scrolling aren’t a coincidence and they aren’t your lack of willpower. They draw on the same intermittent-reward principles B.F. Skinner documented in the 1950s, ported to your phone and tuned by teams of behavioral scientists. Decaf removes the levers. Here’s what the research says.
i.
Variable rewards hijack dopamine
Scrolling under uncertainty taps the brain’s reward system. Dopamine responds less to the good thing itself than to the anticipation of it, and that anticipation is strongest when the reward is unpredictable, the same mechanism that makes slot machines compulsive. Infinite scroll, autoplay, and pull-to-refresh are textbook variable-ratio reinforcement.
ii.
Attention spans collapsed
Dr. Gloria Mark at UC Irvine has measured how long people stay on a single screen since 2004 using objective computer logging. The average then was 2½ minutes. Since around 2016 it has held near 47 seconds, with a median of 40 seconds, meaning half of all observations were shorter than that. Her research also links faster attention switching to higher measured stress.
Mark, UC Irvine · 20+ years of logging data
iii.
The dose makes the poison
A 2022 dose–response meta-analysis of 55,340 participants found a linear relationship: each additional hour of daily social media use was associated with a 13% higher risk of depression symptoms in adolescents. The U.S. Surgeon General’s 2023 advisory reports that teens exceeding 3 hours a day face double the risk of poor mental health outcomes, including depression and anxiety. A 2021 survey put the average for U.S. teens at about 3.5 hours a day.
iv.
Short-form is its own category
Neuroimaging studies of heavy short-form video users (TikTok, Reels, Shorts) have linked personalized feeds to altered activity in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and anterior cingulate, regions tied to executive control and impulse regulation, along with reduced sensitivity to losses and faster, more impulsive choices. Findings vary in direction across studies, but the consistent signal is that the format engages reward and self-control circuitry differently from long-form video. The 6-second loop isn’t neutral.
47 sec
Average time on a single screen since around 2016, down from 2½ minutes in 2004. (Mark, UC Irvine)
205×
The average American checked their phone 205 times a day in 2024, once every 5 waking minutes.
+13%
Higher adolescent depression risk per additional daily hour of social media use. (Liu et al., 2022)
None of this is news to the platforms. They have the same data, plus a great deal more. The slot machine is the product. Decaf takes it out.
05, Keeping your word
Try to
remove it.
When you start a cooldown, you mean it. Decaf takes you at your word and won’t let you wriggle out, even if future-you really wants to. The pause stays the pause. The promise sticks.
- i. The lock is off by default. You turn it on once, when you’re sure you mean it.
- ii. Once it’s on, the slowdown won’t go away. Deleting it from DevTools brings it right back. Refreshing the page doesn’t end it. Closing the tab doesn’t end it.
- iii. The clever workarounds people use on other “block this site” tools don’t work here. Decaf is built to keep your word for you.
Feed paused
You’ve seen what you earned.
try it →
06, FAQ
Frequently asked.
Honestly answered.
On desktop and laptop, yes, completely free, no accounts, no ads, no upsells. Mobile (iOS and Android) is a paid subscription when it ships, that’s what keeps the lights on so the desktop version can stay free forever.
Screen-time apps wait until you’ve already spent the time, then tell you about it. Decaf takes the addictive parts out of the page before you ever see them, so there’s less to resist in the first place.
Yes. You decide what changes. Some platforms can be cleaned up entirely, others can have a short cooldown after a few posts, and you can leave any of them alone if you want.
No. On Reddit, X, and Instagram the cooldown just stops the feed from handing you new posts, with no popup or countdown sitting on top of the page. The page stays usable, you can scroll what’s already there, open a comment thread, follow a search, visit a profile. We don’t take the site away, we just close the tap on new content. Decaf is a wall, not a cage.
A mobile version is in private beta. Join the list and we’ll send you an invite when we open it up. Mobile will be a paid subscription, you can try it free for the first two weeks.
You might. That’s why there’s an optional lock, once you turn it on, the cooldown sticks and you can’t wriggle out of it early. Think of it as a promise you make to yourself when you’re thinking clearly, that gets honored when you’re not.
No. Pages load just as fast, often faster, since there’s less to render.
Ready to decaffeinate?
Free on desktop and laptop. Mobile coming soon, by subscription. No account required to start.