Feed Blur
Instagram is really two things in one app. The messages are worth keeping. The feed and Reels are built to hold your attention for as long as possible.
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Hours a year, if Reels take about three hours of your day. Imagine what else you could do with that time.
Feed Blur is a free Android app. It hides your feed, Reels, and Explore, and mutes them while they are covered. You can still message people, watch Stories, check profiles, and search exactly as before.
- Hides your feed, Reels, and Explore
- Leaves messages, Stories, profiles, and search working as normal
- Mutes sound while something is hidden, then puts your volume back
- Turning a block off takes an annoying puzzle, which is slower than just closing the app
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Multi-Copy
Gathering information from several places is slower than it should be. Copy, switch window, paste, switch back, then do it again for every single piece.
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Less time spent moving text around, so you reach the actual work sooner.
Multi-Copy is a free Chrome extension. Select any area you want to copy, as many times as you want, then paste the whole lot in one go. It also reads text out of images and locked PDFs, the kind that normally leave you retyping everything by hand.
- Copy text you normally cannot select, like words inside a picture
- Pull text out of screenshots and locked PDFs instead of typing it by hand
- Collect from as many pages and tabs as you like, then paste it all at once
- Undo the last one without losing the rest
- Nothing leaves your computer. No account, nothing tracked
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Before
Copying the normal way
9 steps, for every single question
- Highlight the question
- Press copy
- Switch to the other tab
- Click into the box
- Press paste
- Switch back
- Find your place again
- Scroll to the next question
- Retype anything stuck inside a picture or PDF by hand
After
Copying with Multi-Copy
3 steps, once, for all of them
- Press Capture area and drag a box over each question, pictures included
- Press Copy everything
- Paste once, wherever you are working
Twenty questions take the same three steps as one.
Install Feed Blur
A free app for Android phones. Works on Android 12 to 16, and it never asks you to sign up.
Android shows a warning for any app that did not come from the Play Store. You will see two of them here. Both are normal, and the steps below say exactly when each one appears.
Install it
Open this page on your phone
Tap the download button above using Chrome, on the phone you want to use it on.
Accept the first warning
Chrome will say this kind of file can harm your device. Tap Download anyway.
Open the file
Tap it in your notifications, or find it in your Downloads.
Let Chrome install it
Android will say Chrome is not allowed to install apps. Tap Settings, turn on Allow from this source, then press back.
Accept the second warning
Tap Install. If a scan warning appears, tap Install anyway. This shows up for every app that skips the Play Store.
Turn it on
Open Feed Blur
It opens on a setup screen and walks you through the two permissions it needs.
Let it see which screen you are on
Tap the prompt, find Feed Blur in the list, and switch it on. This is how the app knows whether you are looking at your messages or the feed.
Let it draw on top
This is what puts the blur over the feed. Without it, nothing gets covered.
Choose what to block
The feed, Reels, and Explore each have their own switch. Turning one on is instant. Turning one off means finishing the puzzle first, which is the whole point.
Feed Blur is not connected to Instagram or Meta. It runs entirely on your phone and never sends anything anywhere.
Install Multi-Copy
A free add-on for the Chrome browser. It also works in Edge, Brave, and anything else built on Chrome. Everything it needs is inside the download, so there is nothing to set up afterwards.
Multi-Copy is not in the Chrome store, so you add the folder to Chrome yourself. It takes four extra clicks the first time and nothing after that.
Install it
Download and unzip it
You get a folder called multi-copy. Put it somewhere you will not move it, like Documents. Chrome runs the extension straight from that folder, so deleting or moving it later stops it working.
Open Chrome's extensions page
Type chrome://extensions in the address bar and press enter.
Turn on Developer mode
The switch is in the top right corner.
Add the folder
Click Load unpacked in the top left, choose the multi-copy folder, and confirm.
Pin it to your toolbar
Click the puzzle piece icon in Chrome's toolbar, then the pin next to Multi-Copy. The whole tool runs from that one button.
Use it
Click the toolbar button
A small panel appears in the bottom right. Drag it anywhere by its top edge.
Pick Text or Image
Text grabs the real words under your box and is exact. Image reads the picture instead, for screenshots, diagrams, and scanned PDFs.
Grab as much as you want
Press Capture area, drag a box, let go. Then scroll, switch tabs, and do it again. The counter keeps track, and your stack survives page loads.
Copy it all at once
Press Copy everything. The whole stack lands on your clipboard as one block with a blank line between each piece, and the counter resets.
Chrome may ask on startup whether to turn off developer mode extensions. Click Keep and Multi-Copy carries on working.
Two problems worth solving.
Who I am
I'm Dawud, a student. I build tools when I run into a problem that seems worth fixing properly rather than working around.
Feed Blur
Instagram is really two things in one app. The messages are useful, and being able to reach classmates, teammates, and people whose work you want to be near is worth keeping.
The feed and Reels are a different story. They are built to hold attention for as long as possible, which is the opposite of what anyone needs when they are trying to get something done.
Deleting the app costs you the messages. Feed Blur hides the feed, Reels, and Explore instead, and leaves everything else exactly as it was.
Multi-Copy
Gathering information from several places is slower than it should be. Copying one thing, switching windows, pasting, switching back, and doing it again for every piece adds up fast, and none of that is actual work.
Multi-Copy lets you grab as much as you want in one pass and paste it all at once. It also reads text out of images and locked PDFs, the kind that normally leave you retyping everything by hand.
Why they are free
Both are free and open source. There is no pricing page and there will not be one.
The code is public, so anyone can read it, change it, or take it apart. If either tool gives you back an hour, that is the point.
Dawud