Who hides Reels and Shorts, and what happens next: first-month data from minulo (September–October 2026)
minulo is an iPhone app that hides Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts and TikTok's For You while DMs and the rest keep working. These are the first aggregated numbers from its users, published so that anyone writing about short-video habits can use them. Please cite "minulo, October 2026".
Written by the developer of minulo. Anonymous product analytics, aggregated; no individual can be identified. Samples are small (hundreds of people) and only cover people who installed minulo, so they are not a picture of all social media users.
1. Who wants to keep social media but lose the short videos
Mostly students. Of 577 people who answered the age question during setup (late September to mid-October 2026):
| 18–24 | 60% | |
| ≤17 | 27% | |
| 25–34 | 13% |
87% are 24 or younger.
2. Instagram is where it starts
The first network people open inside minulo, out of about 630 people:
| 70% | ||
| YouTube | 22% | |
| Snapchat | 4% | |
| TikTok | 4% |
3. Evenings and late nights
Most social media sessions inside minulo happen between 8 pm and 1 am (Japan time, where the largest share of the data is timestamped).
4. More than a quarter found it through an AI chatbot
Asked during setup "Where did you hear about minulo?" (627 answers, last three weeks):
| App Store search | 43% | |
| AI chatbot (ChatGPT etc.) | 28% | |
| No answer | 15% | |
| Other | 7% | |
| Social media | 4% | |
| Friends | 2% |
It depends heavily on language. English speakers answered "AI" more than twice as often as "App Store" (93 vs 41). French speakers also leaned to AI (36 vs 28). Korean speakers almost all came from App Store search (140 vs 9), as did Japanese speakers (30 vs 7).
5. Using the Reels-free feed on day one predicts whether people stay
378 people who first opened minulo between October 1 and 14, grouped by how many times they opened a network inside minulo on their first day, and the share who came back on a later day:
| 0 times | 10% | |
| 1–2 times | 13% | |
| 3–9 times | 21% | |
| 10+ times | 73% |
Of the 10+ group, 39% were still using it a week later. The people who stay are not the ones who block the most, but the ones who keep using social media, minus the endless feeds.
6. A second network matters
Same 378 people, by how many different networks they opened on day one:
| None | 10% | |
| One | 15% | |
| Two | 40% | |
| Three or more | 41% |
Hiding Shorts on YouTube as well as Reels on Instagram, rather than only one, goes with a much higher chance of coming back.
7. Korea is the largest group
In the last week of the period, one in three new users (118 of about 360) had their phone set to South Korea, followed by France, Japan and the United States.
How the numbers were collected
- Source: minulo's anonymous in-app analytics (PostHog), excluding test devices. Age and "where did you hear about minulo" are optional answers during setup.
- "Came back" means opened minulo again on a later day within the period.
- Periods: age and source, roughly Sept 28–Oct 18, 2026; day-one behavior, people who first opened the app Oct 1–14, 2026; countries, Oct 11–18, 2026.
- Percentages are rounded and may not add up to 100.
- Contact: support page at minulo.app/en/support.html.
