How to Block Facebook Reels and Keep the Rest of Facebook

Most people keep Facebook for a short list of reasons: groups, Marketplace, events, and family who never moved anywhere else. Reels is not on that list. It arrived later, it sits in the middle of the feed, and it turns a quick check on a group into twenty minutes of videos from strangers.

Facebook does let you hide the Reels tab, and that is worth doing first. It just does not stop reels: they still fill your feed and open when you tap one. To block Facebook Reels properly and keep the parts you use, the rest of the fix has to come from outside the app, and it takes a couple of minutes on either phone.

What changes once it is set up:

• Stays: your friends' posts, groups, Marketplace, events, and Messenger.
• Goes: the Reels feed, and on iPhone also Watch and suggested posts if you want.
• Optional: friction on every swipe, so the home feed stops being free to scroll as well.

First, hide the Reels tab in Facebook's settings

Open the menu, then Settings and privacy, Settings, Preferences, and Tab bar (sometimes shown as Customize the bar). Set Reels to hidden. The tab disappears from the bottom bar. Menus move between Facebook versions, so if you cannot find it, search Settings for "tab bar".

What it does not do: reels still appear in your main feed, in a "Reels and short videos" row and as posts, and any reel you tap still opens the full screen player that swipes to the next one. That is the part the steps below close.

Block Facebook Reels on Android in four steps

On Android, a blocker can tell the Reels player apart from a group or a Marketplace listing, so it closes only Reels and leaves the rest of Facebook alone.

1. Install Fluid Friction and allow the permission it asks for

   Get it free on Google Play. There is no account. Android shows a warning when you allow it, and Fluid Friction never reads your messages.

2. Open Tools, then Feature Blocking, then Facebook

   Reels is its own switch, next to the ones for Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts. Turn it on.

3. Turn on the Reels switch

   Feature Blocking sends you straight back out of Reels the moment it opens, so the rest of Facebook stays usable. If you would rather keep Reels but slow it down, leave this off and turn on scroll friction for Facebook instead.

4. Add a schedule if evenings are the problem

   A schedule can keep Reels gentle in the day and blocked after 10pm, which matches when most people lose time to it.

Block it or slow it down? If you only open Facebook for groups or Marketplace, block Reels; you will rarely notice it is gone. If you have uninstalled blockers before, try friction first: a hard block gets switched off on a bad evening, while friction leaves nothing to resent, so it tends to stay on.

Block Facebook Reels on iPhone in four steps

iOS forbids one app from changing another, so the route on iPhone is Facebook's website inside an app that is allowed to restyle it.

1. Install Fluid Friction from the App Store

   Get it on the App Store. No account for Fluid Friction, and the blocking tools are free.

2. Open Facebook inside Fluid Friction and sign in

   Facebook's own login page loads in the in-app browser. You sign in to Facebook, not to us, and the session stays on your device.

3. Turn on Block Reels

   Reels disappears. Block Watch removes the algorithmic video feed too, and Block Suggestions hides suggested posts and pages, leaving posts from friends and pages you follow.

4. Use Marketplace Mode when that is all you need

   Marketplace Mode restricts Facebook to Marketplace, which is the setting people use when they are buying or selling and do not want the feed at all.

Why a block alone usually fails, and what friction adds

A block on Reels removes one surface. The home feed is still an infinite column that moves for free with one thumb flick, and on Facebook that feed is full of video too. Scroll friction changes the swipe itself: each scroll drags through on screen fluid, and past a threshold a bubble has to rise off the screen before the feed moves. A fast flick bursts the bubble, and a burst does not count.

You can still scroll, deliberately, and you stop scrolling by accident. On Facebook that matters more than on most apps, because video is mixed into the main feed, the group feeds and Marketplace listings, so a Reels block alone still leaves plenty of free scrolling behind. The reasons a hard block on its own tends to get switched off are in why app blockers don't work.

What Facebook's own settings can and cannot do

Beyond hiding the tab, Facebook lets you hide a reel, tap Show less, hide the "Reels and short videos" row for now, or snooze people and pages whose videos you keep seeing. All of that tunes what appears; none of it closes the Reels player, and the mix drifts back within weeks. Deleting the app removes groups and Marketplace with it.