StillfeedLinkedIn Without the Feed: Use It for Messages, Jobs and Your Network
Most people open LinkedIn for one of three reasons: a message from a recruiter or colleague, a job they want to look at, or a profile they need to check before a meeting. Then the home feed is the first thing on the screen, and ten minutes disappear into other people's promotions, polls and career milestones. This guide is about getting the three useful things out of LinkedIn and leaving the rest.
Key points:
- LinkedIn has no switch that turns the feed off. It does give you tools to shrink it: hide, unfollow, "Not interested" and a sort order.
- You can skip the feed entirely by going straight to Messaging, Jobs or search instead of the home screen.
- Stillfeed opens the real linkedin.com and removes the My Network suggestions page and LinkedIn games. It leaves the feed alone.
Why the LinkedIn feed pulls you in
LinkedIn does not feel like doomscrolling, which is why it works so well. Nobody is embarrassed to be caught on LinkedIn at their desk. It looks like work, so the usual alarm bells stay quiet. But the mechanics are the same as any other feed: new items arrive without end, each one is a small prompt to react or compare yourself, and a notification badge reminds you to come back.
Three things in particular keep people on the page longer than they planned. The first is the feed itself, a mix of posts from people you know and posts the platform thinks you will engage with. The second is the "people you may know" lists on the My Network tab, which never run out: connect with one person and a fresh row appears. The third is the small games and puzzles that give you a reason to open the site that has nothing to do with your career.
The cost is quiet. A few minutes here and there add up, and the comparison effect is real. Reading about everyone else's promotion at 11pm is rarely good for your mood or your sleep. If you want to see what it adds up to, the doomscrolling calculator turns a daily habit into hours per year, and the doomscrolling test gives you a quick read on how automatic it has become.
What LinkedIn lets you change
LinkedIn's own Help Center page on managing your feed lists the controls it offers. None of them remove the feed, but together they make it much shorter and duller, which is the point.
Hide, unfollow and mute
Every post has a menu. Use the X icon to hide a single post; you can say why, and LinkedIn uses that to adjust what it shows you. Use the three-dot menu to unfollow or mute a person or a company page. Unfollowing is the stronger tool. You stay connected, you can still message them, and their posts stop appearing. If one prolific poster accounts for a fifth of your feed, this is the quickest cut available.
Mark things "Not interested"
The same menu has a "Not interested" option for posts you do not want more of. It takes a few weeks of consistent use to change what you are shown, so treat it as a slow tidy-up, not an instant fix. Doing it every time you notice yourself reading something you did not want to read is a useful habit in its own right, because it makes you notice.
Change the sort order
You can sort the feed by most recent or most relevant, for a single session or as your default in Settings. "Most recent" is usually the better choice if you are trying to spend less time. Recent posts from your own network run out sooner than a relevance-ranked stream does, and running out is what you want. A feed that has an end is easier to leave.
Turn down the notifications
The feed does not need to be open to pull you back. LinkedIn can send push notifications and emails about feed activity. In Settings, you can keep the ones that matter, such as messages and job alerts you asked for, and turn off the ones that exist to bring you back to the feed: reactions to your posts, trending posts, and "someone you know posted" prompts.
The limit of all of this is that LinkedIn is designed to keep the feed in front of you. Hiding and unfollowing make it shorter. They do not stop the home screen opening on it.
Habits that skip the feed
The more reliable approach is to stop landing on the feed in the first place. A few changes that work for most people:
- Open Messaging directly. On the web, go to the messaging page. In a mobile browser, bookmark it. Your first tap is the inbox, not the feed.
- Search for jobs rather than browsing. Save the searches you care about and turn on alerts, so new roles come to you in your inbox and you check them on a schedule, not on a whim.
- Look people up on purpose. Profiles and search do not need the home screen. Type a name, check what you needed, close the tab.
- Batch your check-ins. Decide on one or two moments a day for LinkedIn, such as after lunch and before you finish work. Outside those windows it stays closed.
- Move the app. Take the LinkedIn app off your home screen. If it takes three swipes to open, you will open it less. Habits form around what is easy.
- Add a Screen Time limit. A short daily limit gives you a hard stop for the days the habits slip. See Stillfeed vs Screen Time for how a limit and a cleaner browser fit together.
None of this requires you to give up LinkedIn. The goal is a version of LinkedIn where you decide what you are there to do before you arrive.
What Stillfeed adds
Stillfeed is an iPhone app that opens the real linkedin.com inside its own browser, signed into your account. Your login goes straight to LinkedIn, and there is no Stillfeed account to create. On LinkedIn it removes the My Network suggestions page, the "people you may know" lists, and the LinkedIn games. Those are the two pieces of LinkedIn that give you the least in return for your time.
Everything you came for stays. Messaging, jobs, notifications, profiles, search and the invitation manager all work as normal, so you can reply to a recruiter, accept a connection request or apply for a role without the endless suggestions in the way. Stillfeed does not change your account, your connections or your posts. It hides parts of the page on your phone and nothing more.
It does not remove the LinkedIn feed. Many people use the feed for work, so Stillfeed leaves it in place. If the feed is the thing you scroll, combine the settings above with the habit changes: sort by most recent, unfollow the heavy posters, and make Messaging or Jobs your starting point. Open Stillfeed's settings to see which LinkedIn options are included free and which come with the optional Pro plan.
It is the mobile website, not the LinkedIn app, so a few app-only features may not be there. It also only works inside Stillfeed, so the official LinkedIn app is still one tap away unless you move it. If you are on a foldable, the iPhone-specific version of this advice is in LinkedIn on the iPhone Duo: use the big screen for work, not the feed.
Common questions
Can I turn off the LinkedIn feed completely?
No. LinkedIn's Help Center describes tools to hide posts, unfollow people, mark content "Not interested" and choose a sort order, but no setting that removes the home feed. Opening Messaging or Jobs directly is the practical way around it.
Does unfollowing someone on LinkedIn disconnect us?
No. Unfollowing stops their posts appearing in your feed. You stay connected and can still message each other.
Does Stillfeed hide the LinkedIn feed?
No. Stillfeed removes the My Network suggestions page and LinkedIn games and keeps the feed, messaging, jobs, notifications, profiles, search and the invitation manager.
Is it safe to log in to LinkedIn through Stillfeed?
You sign in on LinkedIn's own site, inside Stillfeed's browser. Your credentials go to LinkedIn, and Stillfeed does not need an account of its own.
Will "Most recent" sorting really save time?
For many people it does, because a chronological list of your own network has fewer items than a ranked stream built to keep you reading. It will not help much if you follow hundreds of busy accounts, so unfollow some as well.
Sources
- LinkedIn Help, Manage your LinkedIn feed.
- Stillfeed, Stillfeed on LinkedIn.
