How to Get Rid of Reddit’s Persistent Mobile Popup

You would think, given its recent $US6 ($8) billion valuation, Reddit would have the confidence to get rid of the pop-up the site serves up whenever you try to visit anything on its domain in your mobile browser (when you’re not logged in), begging you to use the app instead. Alas.

While I usually stick with a third-party app to browse Reddit (the wonderful Apollo for iOS), there are plenty of times I get thrown to a Reddit link while using my mobile browser and I don’t want to deal with pulling up my app. I just want to view it on Chrome — end of story.

Happily, you can free yourself of this annoying barrier between you and the content. Whether you’re on Android or iOS, simply launch Chrome, pull up Reddit, and tap on the three-line menu in the site’s upper-right corner. Note, this is not the three-dot Chrome menu, which is also in the upper-right. See the difference:

You’ll want to tap the icon to the right of the “Use App” button, not the icon to the right of your tab counter. When Reddit’s menu loads, tap on Settings and then look for the “Ask To Open In App” option. Uncheck it, and in most instances you will no longer be bothered by Reddit bugging you about its app:

I say “most” because the pop-up will still appear if you come to Reddit via an AMP link on Google. AMP is short for “Accelerated Mobile Page.” You’ll know this is happening if you see “AMP” before the reddit domain in your browser window. There’s no great way to disable these pages in Chrome, but you can use an alternate browser with the power to strip AMP links from search results. You can also try using AdGuard and changing your user agent string to get around AMP pages.

I’ve found that tapping on links to main Reddit threads tends to load them as AMP pages, whereas tapping on highlighted links to comments/answers doesn’t, so there’s also that option. Similarly, if you’re not seeing a drop-down button to kick off your quest for Reddit’s Settings, odds are good you’re on an AMP page. Keep tapping around, and eventually you’ll make it to the normal Reddit mobile experience. You’ll then be able to disable that pop-up on iOS or Android.

(Hat tip to Android Police for reminding me this existed.)