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jean-voila/FeurStagram
Instagram without Reels, feed or ads: an open-source, updatable Instagram app for Android that keeps DMs and stories.
Feurstagram is a patched build of the official Instagram Android app that removes the Home feed, Reels, Explore, suggested accounts and ads while keeping DMs, stories, search and notifications working. It suits people who want Instagram for messaging and are willing to sideload an APK that did not come from the Play Store.
It patches the real app rather than wrapping a WebView or reacting to the accessibility tree. Matching requests get an IOException at the network layer, so the surface never loads, and the feed-item deserialiser has its type token rewritten so Instagram's own parser drops ad and suggested units inline. Patch injection points are located by fingerprint (class names, string constants, method shapes) rather than obfuscated identifiers, so one patch set can survive version bumps. Every block is a runtime toggle in SharedPreferences, and the README's blocked-path table maps each toggle to the endpoints it hits, which makes the behaviour auditable without reading the Kotlin. The following-feed option is a useful middle ground: it rewrites the pagination_source header to get a chronological feed of followed accounts instead of removing the feed outright.
The blocklist is a set of substrings matched with String.contains on the URI path, maintained by hand in Block.java. Instagram renames endpoints regularly, and a rule that stops matching fails open, so a surface quietly reappears with no error. The README's answer is to notice and edit the list. The deep-link patch forces Instagram's signing-certificate checks to pass, which is a security-relevant change to a proprietary app that users are asked to trust. The README covers credentials and data handling at length but says nothing about what that bypass weakens. The permanent lock is enforced by the app itself, so it works as a speed bump against impulse changes rather than a real commitment device, since reinstalling resets it, as the README notes. Releases track Instagram's release cadence and depend on one maintainer, and building from source requires a GitHub Packages token just to fetch the Morphe patcher, which is an unusual hurdle for a tool aimed at people trying to cut back.