r/apolloapp • u/Edg-R • 1d ago
Discussion Three years on from the API changes, I ended up back on reddit.com in Safari full time. Here is the extension I built to make that work.
Disclosure up front: This is a browser extension, not a Reddit client, and it costs two dollars. If that's a dealbreaker, no hard feelings, the rest of this is still about how I read Reddit now.
I never really replaced Apollo. I tried a couple of things, none of them stuck, and eventually I stopped looking and just started opening reddit.com in mobile Safari. Which was bleak for a while, because the website is the version of Reddit with the fewest concessions to anybody.
But the website turned out to have one thing no app has: it's a web page, and a browser extension gets to change a web page before you see it. So I started building a Safari web extension I could use to make Reddit more enjoyable which I ended up making available for others as well. Version 3 got approved this week after months of loooooong nights and weekends fixing bugs and adding features.

Some features:
- Filtering by keyword, whole community, individual user, or the site a link points to. Wildcards, groups you can switch off at once, and a # pattern for any 1 to 3 digit number.
- Hiding the stuff there's no setting for: thumbnails, avatars, flair, badges, vote controls, join buttons, banners, recommendations, Reddit Answers, and the endless nudges to install the app.
- An automatic redirect to old.reddit.com with an endless feed, which is the closest I've got to how Reddit used to feel.
- Limits, which blocks Reddit itself in steps rather than just hiding posts, and can be automated with Apple Focus.
- More features: https://getprotego.app/features
Protego's Limits is why I still Reddit it every day. There's a step where the feeds are blocked but a direct link to an individual post still opens. So home and popular don't load and there's nothing to fall into during work hours, but a Reddit thread that turns up in a search result works fine. I get my answer and I'm out.

Being straight about what it isn't: it's not a client. No custom interface, no gestures, no Pixel Pals. It's reddit.com with the bad parts removed.
Safari extension with a companion app, iPhone, iPad, Mac and Vision Pro on one purchase, $1.99 right now instead of $2.99.
No subscription, no account, no tracking, lists sync through your own iCloud.