StopScroll

StopScroll closes the endless short-video feeds in the YouTube, Instagram, X and YouTube Music apps on your Android phone and leaves the rest of each app working. When the Shorts or Reels player opens, StopScroll presses Back for you. Search, subscriptions, normal videos, Stories, messages and profiles keep working. A Reel someone sends you in a message is closed too.

In X, the feed is the full-screen video viewer, where you swipe up for the next video. X opens it when you tap a video in the timeline, a post, search or a profile, so StopScroll closes it there too. Videos still play in the timeline, in posts and in search.

In YouTube Music, the feed is Samples, the short video clips of songs where you swipe up for the next one. StopScroll closes it on the Samples tab, from the Samples button on an album or artist page, and from a link. It leaves Samples by pressing the app's Home tab, or Back when the Home tab is already selected, so you stay in YouTube Music and the music you were playing can carry on. Songs, albums, playlists, music videos and the player keep working.

No ads, no account, no server calls. StopScroll has no internet permission at all, so it never contacts a server, ours or anyone else's. It shows no ads and needs no account.

For each app you choose: Off, or Always block.

This version works with YouTube, Instagram, X and YouTube Music. More apps will follow in later releases, each one once its screens have been checked on a phone.

How it works: StopScroll uses Android's Accessibility Service, the strongest access Android has, so it is built to be checked.

• It watches only the YouTube, Instagram, X and YouTube Music apps. Each time it checks the screen, it first reads which app is in front; if that is not one of those four, it stops there and reads nothing else.
• It reads the names and positions of the parts of the screen to see whether a short-video feed is open. It does not read the words on your screen: not your messages, captions, passwords or anything you type.
• It can press only Back (twice if needed), then one tab in the same app where there is one, then Home. In YouTube Music the app's Home tab comes first (or Back, when the Home tab is already selected), then Back, the tab again and Home only if needed.
• It asks first: before Android's Accessibility settings open, and before it watches an app that a later version adds, the app shows what it looks at, what it does and what it keeps, and waits for "I agree".
• It has no internet permission, so it cannot connect to anything itself. Links open in your browser or mail app, in front of you.
• It keeps your settings, the date you agreed and a few counts, such as when it last closed a feed, on your phone only, left out of backups.
• The code is open source (MIT): https://github.com/StormberryAS/StopScroll

No app permissions at all: Android's App info for StopScroll lists none. The Accessibility access is separate, and you turn it on yourself.

What it cannot do: a frame or a moment of sound can get through before the feed closes. When YouTube, Instagram, X or YouTube Music changes its screens, StopScroll may miss the feed until it is updated. On Android 17 with Advanced Protection turned on, Android does not allow apps like StopScroll to use Accessibility.

StopScroll is not an accessibility tool and not parental control: you can turn it off at any time, in the app or in Android's settings.

Its settings page runs from inside the app, offline, and every build checks that each bundled file is byte for byte the one in the source code, apart from one added line in index.html that loads the bridge to Android. The privacy page and the full disclaimer open from the app's footer. In English only.

Not affiliated with or endorsed by Google, YouTube, Meta, Snap or X.

A functioning prototype from Stormberry AS, Norway, MIT licensed, so expect gaps and changes.