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How to Hide Reels on Facebook on a Computer

By Gokhan TosunPublished 7 min read

A laptop on a kitchen table in morning light beside a bowl of fruit

You open Facebook on your computer to check a group, an event or a message, and within a minute a shelf of Reels is sitting in the middle of your feed. Facebook has a Reels tab in the header, Reels entries in the left menu and a Watch page besides. As far as we can tell there is no setting that hides any of them. This guide covers what you can do about Reels on the desktop site: a free browser extension that sends them away, what it changes and what it deliberately leaves alone.

Short answer: Stillfeed's free browser extension sends Reels and Watch pages to your Facebook home page and hides the Reels tab, the Reels menu entries and the Reels shelf in your feed. Groups, Marketplace, Pages, messages and search are left alone. It needs no account and nothing leaves your browser. Get the extension.

Why Reels are hard to avoid on desktop

Facebook has changed shape a lot. Where it used to be mostly posts from friends, groups and Pages, it now pushes video: Reels in a shelf between posts, a Reels tab at the top, Reels entries in the left-hand Shortcuts menu, and a Watch section for longer clips. Each of these is a door, and they all lead to the same place, an endless run of recommended video that has nothing to do with the people and groups you follow.

The controls Facebook does give you work on individual videos. You can mark a Reel as not interested or hide it, and Facebook says it will show less of that kind of thing over time. That is useful if the topic is the problem. It does nothing if the problem is that the next Reel is always one click away. We go through those controls in detail in our Facebook addiction guide. A different approach is to remove the doors, which is what the extension does.

What the extension hides

Stillfeed is a free extension for desktop browsers. Its Facebook rules are on by default after you install it, and you can turn Facebook off in the popup when you want the stock site back. On facebook.com it does this:

  • Reels and Watch pages are sent to your home page. Open a Reel link, or a Watch page, and you land on your Facebook home page. That includes a Page's own Reels tab.
  • The Reels tab in the header is hidden. It is matched by the Reels links it contains, so it goes without touching the other header tabs.
  • The Reels entries in the left menu are hidden. The Shortcuts menu loses its Reels links.
  • The Reels shelf in your feed is hidden. That is the grid of Reel links that Facebook inserts between ordinary posts, and the Reels cards in the Stories and Reels row go with it.

The Create reel button sits inside that Reels tab, so it disappears along with the tab. If you make Reels yourself, switch Facebook off in the popup for that moment.

The extension finds these elements by the links and structure of the page, not by guessing at text, so the Reels blocking does not depend on your Facebook being in English.

Installing it

The install starts at stillfeed.pro/extension.

Firefox

Firefox has a one-click install on Firefox Add-ons, linked from the extension page. Click it, confirm the prompt and you are finished.

Chrome, Brave, Edge, Opera and Arc

These browsers install from the Chrome Web Store, where Stillfeed is listed. It takes a minute:

  1. Open the Stillfeed page on the Chrome Web Store, or start from the extension page.
  2. Click the add button and confirm your browser's prompt.

Edge and Opera may ask you to allow extensions from other stores first; follow the prompt your browser shows.

What Facebook keeps doing normally

This is not a blocker for Facebook as a whole, and it is not meant to be. The extension leaves your home feed of posts, profiles, Pages, groups, Marketplace, search, notifications, Messages and sign-in alone. If you use Facebook for a neighbourhood buy-and-sell group or to follow a local club, everything you rely on still works. What goes is the video shelf and the routes that lead to it.

That also means the feed itself is still a feed. Facebook's main timeline remains, with posts from people and Pages, and the extension does not remove it. If the endless feed of ordinary posts is your concern, the time tools below are the better lever.

Extras you can switch on

Beyond the default Reels rules, a few optional controls are off until you turn them on. On Facebook these are:

  • Hide likes and counts: hides the numbers on the like, comment and share buttons under feed posts. The buttons stay.
  • Hide notifications: hides the Notifications button in the header and blocks the notifications page. Messenger and Messages are never touched. It finds the button by its English label, so in another language it stays visible.
  • Media filter: choose No videos to hide the video player in feed posts, or Text only to hide photo links as well.

Controls that are not ready on a given site show "Not available yet" in the popup instead of a switch that does nothing.

Honest limits

  • Where Reels appear. The extension hides the Reels surfaces it has been built to find: the pages, the header tab, the menu entries and the feed shelf. Reels that appear inside ordinary posts or in other places on the site are not hidden yet.
  • Facebook changes its layout. Different accounts see different layouts, and Facebook redesigns often. If a rule stops matching after a change, it needs an extension update.
  • This browser only. The extension works where you install it. Your phone and other browsers are separate.

Time tools

Hiding Reels removes the stickiest part, but Facebook still offers plenty of ways to lose an afternoon. The extension's time tools work on Facebook and the seven other supported sites (Instagram, YouTube, X, Reddit, TikTok, LinkedIn and Snapchat):

  • Daily limit: a total for the day. When it is spent, the sites close until midnight, with one extra five minutes once per visit.
  • Session timer: two, five, ten or fifteen minutes per visit.
  • Quiet hours: named schedules that close chosen sites on chosen days, overnight included.
  • Pause before opening: a five or ten second pause before the site loads.
  • Grayscale: removes the color from the page.

These limits apply in this browser only.

The phone side

If the Reels problem is mostly on your phone, Stillfeed also has an iPhone app that blocks Facebook Reels in a distraction-free browser. Blocking in the app is free. We cover the details in our Facebook guide for the iPhone or on the Facebook platform page. On iPhone, Stillfeed has a Block Reels switch for Facebook, and it does not remove the rest of the feed.

Common questions

Is there a Facebook setting to hide Reels?

As far as we can tell, no. Facebook lets you mark individual Reels as not interested or hide them, but it does not offer a switch for the whole format.

Does it hide Facebook Watch?

Watch pages are sent to your home page. The header on the account we checked had no Watch tab, so a Watch tab, if your account has one, is not hidden until it has been seen.

Will I still be able to use Messenger and Marketplace?

Yes. Messages, Marketplace, groups, Pages, profiles and search are all left alone.

Does the extension send my data anywhere?

No. It runs inside your browser, has no account, no analytics and no tracking, and makes no network requests of its own.

Is it free?

Yes. The browser extension is free.

Can I install it from the Chrome Web Store?

Yes. The Chrome Web Store listing is live, and Chrome, Brave, Edge, Opera and Arc install from it. Firefox users get it from Firefox Add-ons.

More guides

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More browser extension guides

Keep the app. Lose the endless feed.

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