Launch: Wallflower
The second law of enshittification states that the total shittiness of a platform must always increase over time. First Reddit started nagging you to install the app. Then they killed the third-party clients. Then they added ads inside comment threads, then AI-generated summaries as “answers”, then a “Get the app to keep using Reddit” overlay you can’t dismiss. Now they’re putting old.reddit.com behind a login wall.
That last one was the anvil that broke the camel’s back. I can’t read Reddit on my phone anymore, so I made yet another Safari extension.
(You might ask, if Reddit is so shitty, why not just stop? Because I don’t use Reddit day to day. It just shows up in my search results. It’s either reddit.com or ai-content-farm.com.)
What It Does
Wallflower replaces Reddit’s web pages with a boring reader. Sound familiar? Because that’s kind of my whole shtick. After years of dealing with crappy websites, I’ve come to realize that it’s often easier to throw the whole thing away and rebuild it. It’s the only way to be sure.
When you land on a Reddit URL, Wallflower hides everything on the page and renders a reader in its place. Because why waste time breaking into a walled garden when you can just grow flowers on the wall.
What the Flowers Look Like
When I said “boring”, I meant it. You get a list of posts that you can scroll. Nested comments that you can collapse and expand. Image galleries that swipe and zoom like they should. All as expected.
There’s no video autoplay, no community highlights, no related posts, no trending anything, no “Join the most real place on the internet”. The whole thing is closer to 2000s Reddit than whatever Reddit is today.
What It Doesn’t Do
When I said “reader”, I also meant it. You can’t comment. You can’t even upvote/downvote.
It’s not meant to be a full-featured Reddit client. So don’t expect feature parity. It’s mostly about making inaccessible pages accessible, and it’s designed to be used without a Reddit account. I’m not a heavy Reddit user, so don’t email me asking me to implement your favorite feature. I probably won’t.
Wallflower Privacy Policy
Wallflower doesn’t collect, store, or transmit any personal information.
Wallflower Pricing
Wallflower is available for $2.99 on the App Store. There are no subscriptions, in-app purchases, ads, or tracking. It’s a universal purchase, so once you buy it, you can use it on all your Apple devices. Requires iOS 18+ or macOS 15+.
Caveat: Reddit has killed a lot of good things. If they decide to kill this one too, there’s nothing I can do about it.
Wallflower Support
If you have any questions, feel free to contact me via email or Mastodon. I read all my emails and Mastodon mentions, but sometimes I’m too socially awkward to reply. Sorry about that in advance.