With multiple streaming services to choose from and the entire history of cinema and television to dig into, you’d be forgiven for not being quite up-to-date with the latest films and shows. That’s where spoilers can hit you.
Whether it’s a twisty Netflix thriller or the season finale of a show on Apple TV, there will be times when you haven’t gotten around to watching something and yet you don’t want the plot spoiled for you. When you’re in that scenario, going online is fraught with risk.
You can’t ever eliminate that risk entirely, but there are ways to minimize the chances of something being spoiled for you.
Mute Your Socials
Many of the biggest social media platforms come with ways for muting posts that contain certain words, giving you a way of hiding content mentioning specific movies and shows. For this to really work, you have to pick your muted words carefully, and you might want to include acronyms and abbreviations for the content in question, just to be sure.
On X, for example, you can open up Settings and privacy from the left-hand menu on desktop or mobile, then choose Privacy and safety > Mute and block > Muted words. Any posts containing the words you specify here won’t show up on your timeline and won’t trigger any notifications inside the app. For each word or phrase, you can also set a time period for the muting to be in effect.
If Bluesky is your social platform of choice, open up Settings from the navigation menu on the left, then pick Moderation > Muted words & tags. As with X, you can choose to have words muted for a certain time period or until you unmute them again. Threads has something similar under Hidden Words in the Privacy menu.
Use Browser Extensions
One of the key benefits of using browser extensions to avoid spoilers is that they can cover every website you visit, including social media sites. They’re not infallible when it comes to hiding everything that needs to be hidden, but they can certainly help.
If you have a look for spoiler blockers for your browser of choice, you should find at least a couple of helpful options. One of the best for Google Chrome (and other Chromium-based browsers like Microsoft Edge) is Spoiler Protection. Select your keywords, and they’ll be blocked on any website you visit.
Shut Up is an extension that works in all of the most widely used browsers. It blocks comment sections across multiple sites, including YouTube and Facebook. If any spoilers are being shared in the comments, installing Shut Up means you won’t see them. Your overall mental health also may benefit from blocking the comments.
Browse With Care
To a certain extent, you may have to adjust your browsing behavior when you know that you might stumble upon plot secrets online. Even if it’s just for a few hours or a few days, it might involve spending less time on social media or just spending less time on the internet in general.
Sites such as Reddit and YouTube are dangerous places if you’re trying to avoid spoilers for something specific—especially if related content is likely to show up in recommended posts or videos, since the algorithm knows what you’re interested in.
For those times when you absolutely have to go online, your browser’s incognito mode can help: It means you’ll be logged out of your various accounts, and might not see something related to your interests or your past browsing history that you wanted to avoid. YouTube on mobile has its own incognito mode: Tap your profile icon (bottom right), then Turn on incognito.
Manage Your Messages
Sometimes movies and TV shows can be spoiled inadvertently by a friend or family member—especially if you’ve got group chats set up for general discussion. While messenger apps don’t have mute features in the same way that social media apps do, you can mute notifications for your group chats.
This stops alerts for new messages from popping up on your phone screen—and perhaps revealing a potential plot twist. Like the other methods we’ve looked at here, it’s not particularly precise in helping you avoid spoilers, but it’s worth considering temporarily if you think your contacts might let something slip.
The muting options shouldn’t be too difficult to find in your various chat apps. In WhatsApp for example, you can mute a conversation you’ve got open by tapping the three dots (top right) then Mute notifications: You’re able to mute notifications for eight hours, for a week, or indefinitely (until you manually unmute them again).
The post How to Avoid Spoilers Online and in Chats appeared first on Wired.
