Reddit Is Blocking Its Mobile Site for Some Users, but There's a Fix

If you mostly use Reddit on a desktop browser, you probably have no issue jumping from subreddit to subreddit. On mobile, it's a different story: Reddit really wants you to use its mobile app, and it makes that clear with pop-ups whenever you access the site in your browser. If you'd rather not download another app onto your phone, dismissing the pop-ups is easy enough—until it isn't.

That's the situation this week. Some users accessing the Reddit home page or jumping directly to individual posts on the mobile site are running into a new roadblock that stops their browsing in its tracks. Things seem normal when first loading up a thread, but as you start scrolling, a large pop-up appears at the bottom of the page. It shows the Reddit app, with its App Store rating, along with a bolded alert: "Get the app to keep using Reddit." The pop-up says the app lets you "search better, personalize your feed, and never miss an update on your [favorite] communities," all things the mobile site was perfectly capable of too.

Credit: Lifehacker

If you've experienced Reddit's previous mobile app pop-ups, this might not seem like such a big deal. Just dismiss it and move on, right? But there is no (X) here, or any obvious way to clear the pop-up. Plus, it's not just the pop-up—once it appears, the entire page stops responding to inputs.

Why is Reddit blocking its mobile site?

This is the most aggressive I've ever seen Reddit be in pushing people to its mobile app, but I don't quite understand the logic. Why stop users from accessing the mobile site? When Futurism reached out to the company for comment, it said, “We’ve found users who are logged in have a more personalized experience and can more easily find communities that match their interests...So, we’re running a test for a small number of logged-out mobile users that prompts them to download the app after visiting the Reddit site.” The company added that it was also targeting "a small subset of frequent mobile web users" because it feels they are already familiar with how Reddit works and would still have a better experience in the app.

I can attest that the times I've run into this issue, I was indeed logged out of the mobile site. But I didn't even mean to be: I don't typically intentionally browse Reddit on my phone, I just check out links that appear in a Google search. As such, it's wildly frustrating to hit this pop-up when I'm casually looking up the answer to a question. I'm certainly not going to download the Reddit app for those random moments; in fact, this experience makes me even less likely to do so.

Based on the App Store privacy notes, the Reddit app collects a bunch of data points, including purchases, contact info, search history, usage data, location, identifiers, and diagnostics. Sure, it doesn't link most of that data to your identity, save for identifiers and usage data, but still, browsing in something like Safari blocks a lot of that tracking. In short: Thanks but no thanks on the app recommendation, Reddit.

How to get around Reddit's mobile site pop-up

Luckily, you don't have to choose between downloading the app or forgoing using Reddit on your phone, as there are a few workarounds you can try to keep using the mobile site uninterrupted.

Sign in. If Reddit is indeed only targeting users who are logged out, sign in with your account. I just signed in to mine in the browser, and so far, I haven't hit this pop-up again. That's promising.

Clear your cache. If you don't have a Reddit account or you'd rather not sign in, you still have some options. As Futurism notes, some Redditors have found success when clearing their browser's cache and cookies, which might trick Reddit into thinking you're a different user, allowing you to shake off the targeted pop-ups. (We have guides for clearing the cache on both iPhone and Android, if you don't know how.)

Use "Old Reddit." Finally, before I realized the scope of the issue, I was simply switching to "Old Reddit" anytime I ran into the pop-up. Reddit still lets you use its original design, which strips away many of the bloated "new" features—or, in this case, the pop-up that stops you from accessing the mobile site. To switch to this stripped-down interface while using the mobile site, tap the address bar, then replace the "www" in the URL with "old" (e.g. old.reddit.com), without adjusting the rest of the link. The page will open in Reddit's old design, and you'll be free to browse at your leisure—but you'll miss out on the current site's more optimized UI.