The best Chrome extensions to clean up your feed, compared honestly

News Feed Eradicator: no feed at all

What it does: replaces the feed with a quote, while the rest of the site keeps working. It covers Facebook, X, Instagram, YouTube, Reddit, LinkedIn, Threads, Bluesky and a few others. You can snooze it when you want the feed back for a while.

Pick it if you only go to these sites for something specific, like messages, a group or a profile, and the feed is the part you’d rather never see. It’s simple, free and open source.

Skip it if you like your feed and just want some things out of it. It’s all or nothing.

Unhook: YouTube without the rabbit holes

What it does: hides YouTube’s distractions, one switch at a time: the Home feed, sidebar recommendations, end screens, Shorts, comments, live chat, autoplay and more. It works on YouTube only, and it’s free to install.

Pick it if you want YouTube as a tool, for search and the channels you subscribe to, without recommendations pulling you in. It’s also the clean way to get rid of the Shorts shelf entirely.

Skip it if your problem is on other sites, or you still want recommendations, just not about certain topics or from certain channels. Unhook hides a whole section, not particular videos.

BlockSite: block the whole site

What it does: blocks the sites you list, on a schedule or after a daily time limit, with a Pomodoro-style focus mode, password protection and adult-site blocking switched on by default. It has a free version and a paid Premium plan, and it syncs with BlockSite’s phone apps. LeechBlock NG is a free alternative with similar scheduling and time limits.

Pick it if you want a site gone, or rationed, rather than tidied up. It’s the right tool for “no Reddit during work hours”.

Skip it if you need the site and just want parts of it gone. A blocked site is blocked in full, the useful bits too.

Remedy: filter posts by what they’re about

Remedy is ours, so bear that in mind.

What it does: checks each post as it loads against a filter you set, and removes the matches as you scroll: posts, comments, video titles and news stories. You switch on categories (Explicit, Violent, Rage-bait, Political, Sad or depressing), topics like spoilers or crypto hype, or write your own (“no golf”, “nothing from this channel”). It goes by meaning, not exact words. It works on X, Reddit, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, Threads and TikTok, plus any site you add, and the popup lists everything it removed.

Pick it if you want to keep using a site but lose a topic, wherever it turns up. That’s the job the other three can’t do.

Skip it if you want a site blocked or your time limited (use BlockSite or LeechBlock NG), or the Shorts shelf removed as a format (use Unhook). Remedy filters what’s in Shorts by topic but doesn’t remove the shelf. Its free plan checks text on one site only; images, video and every site need a plan.

Which one to pick

• “I never want to see a feed again”: News Feed Eradicator.
• “YouTube keeps eating my evening”: Unhook.
• “I need this site gone, or limited”: BlockSite or LeechBlock NG.
• “I like the site, not the politics, gore or outrage”: Remedy.

For side-by-side looks, see Unhook vs Remedy and, for BlockTube, a free YouTube blocker that hides videos by keyword, BlockTube vs Remedy.

Every one of these reads the pages you visit, because that’s how they work. Before you add any extension, check the privacy section of its Chrome Web Store listing. For more ways to tidy up without installing anything, see how to clean up your social media feed, and for blocking without an extension, how to block websites on Chrome.

Questions