It’s an interesting time to use social media. On the one hand, AI “slop” is making it hard to tell what’s real and what’s not. On the other hand, companies like Meta are being fined billions of dollars for creating deliberately addictive spaces.
This addictive nature of apps is mostly thanks to the doomscrolling phenomenon. I open Instagram, see an interesting post, and 30 minutes later I’m still there.
There are plenty of ways to combat doomscrolling, but the best is built into the apps. While I’ve mostly stopped using Instagram, I discovered a powerful way to bypass the worst of the app.
But most apps don’t really want you to use it
Remember the early days of Facebook or Twitter? When your feed showed only posts from your friends and those you followed? Well, that option is still there.
On Instagram, there’s a hidden drop-down menu on the home screen. Tap the Instagram logo at the top, and a small drop-down menu appears.
This menu has two options: Following and Favorites. The first changes the Instagram feed to mostly show posts from accounts you follow in chronological order. The feed still shows ads (about one in ten posts is an ad), but there are no recommendations or suggested posts.
Sounds like a return to the golden days, right? But there’s a better way.
When you add every person you follow to Favorites (go to the Favorites tab to edit the list), opening the Favorites tab shows the same feed as Following, but with no ads.
That’s right. A chronological social media feed composed exclusively of posts from followed accounts with no ads.
But there’s a catch; there’s always a catch.
Instagram doesn’t want you to skip its recommendations
There’s no option to change the default home screen
The catch is that Instagram wants to distract you before you can open these tabs. It doesn’t let you set either the Following or Favorites feed as the default screen when you open the app.
On iOS and One UI devices, you can skip straight to the Messages screen with a built-in method. SmartThings Routines can trigger an automation to open the Instagram Messages page when you open the app.
Shortcuts on iOS can also perform the same task using the URL Instagram://direct-inbox as a shortcut.
However, there is no built-in shortcut to go to the Following or Favorites feed. To do so, we need to use MacroDroid.
MacroDroid can skip the home screen when you open Instagram
It’s simple to set up
MacroDroid is an Android automation app that can perform touch actions. I can use it to open the Following tab whenever I open Instagram.
To do so, first find the X and Y coordinates for the Instagram logo and Favorites option. The tool to find this option is hidden in Android’s developer options.
To enable developer options, open the Settings app, scroll down and tap About Phone, then scroll down and tap Build number seven times until you see the pop-up message.
In Developer options, the Pointer location switch identifies the X and Y coordinates of your finger when you tap the screen.
With this tool enabled, I opened Instagram and identified the X and Y coordinates of the Instagram logo and the Favorites tab. These coordinates depend on the kind of device you use.
If you also use a Pixel 10 Pro, you can use these coordinates:
- Instagram Logo: X:500, Y:250
- Following button: X: 500, Y:390
- Favorites button: X: 500, Y:540
Then, follow these steps to create an automation in MacroDroid:
- Tap Add Macro.
- Tap Triggers.
- Set the trigger to Application Launched: Instagram.
- Add action: Wait 1 second.
- Add action: UI Interaction (X, Y coordinates of Instagram logo).
- Add action: Wait 1 second.
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Add action: UI Interaction (X, Y coordinates of Favorites/Following button).
Configure MacroDroid to make it work better
There are limits to what MacroDroid can do
After checking that the macro works, go back to MacroDroid and lower the Wait period as much as possible. The exact value will depend on how fast your phone opens apps. Increase the animation speed of your phone to speed up the macro even more.
As MacroDroid requires the app to fully load for it to work, there will always be a brief flash of the home screen and drop-down menu before the Following or Favorites tab loads.
There’s also another catch. The macro triggers every time the app opens, so it interacts with the most recent page, which can cause unexpected actions.
To fix this problem, add a Constraint to the macro that prevents it from triggering if it was already triggered in the past hour. Then, always make sure to fully close the app.
But what about Messages? We talked about creating shortcuts before, but only Samsung and iOS devices can use those. On my Google Pixel, I created a shortcut to Instagram Messages by tapping and holding the Instagram icon.
The result is one app icon that opens my Favorites feed, and another that opens my conversations. I now never have to look at a recommended post or ad again.
We shouldn’t have to use such clunky workarounds
Whether it’s creating a SmartThings routine or a MacroDroid automation, there’s a way to bypass the worst of social media. However, it’s frustrating that this is necessary in the first place.
