Evergreen LabsEvergreen Labs

Introducing Robin

· Billy Lo

TL;DR

X is useful for staying current. Unfortunately, its default experience includes a lot of distractions — promoted posts and pile-ons from people or non-human accounts you never followed.

Robin is a native Android and iOS client for a quieter timeline: news from people you follow, with no sponsored content mixed in to influence you, and no algorithmic inserts. Ordering is purely chronological.

Sign-in is your normal X cookie session inside the app. There is no separate Robin backend.

Robin on iPhone and Android showing a chronological Following feed
Robin on iOS and Android

Why?

These distractions are not good for us. Some posts are half-truths. Some replies are designed to trigger strong emotions intentionally. I think we can do better.

Robin is built around three things that matter:

  1. Up-to-date news — without the distractions from people you never chose to listen to
  2. A promotion-free experience — no sponsored content mixed into your timeline to influence
  3. No algorithmic feed — nothing added by an algorithm; the ordering is purely chronological

Because we use our information stream to form opinions, it’s very valuable to have a neutral feed.

How much of For You is actually from people you follow?

To put a number on the noise: we scrolled one logged-in For You home timeline (~87 posts), labeled each item as an ad (explicit “Ad”), checked each author against that account’s follow graph, and tallied the mix:

  • People you follow — ~10%
  • Algorithmic inserts (accounts you do not follow) — ~70%
  • Network inserts (e.g. “X reposted”) — ~1%
  • Ads — ~18%

In other words, only about one in ten posts on For You came from someone that account chose to follow. Roughly nine in ten were algorithm add-ons, ads, or similar. One scroll session — your mix will vary — but the shape of the problem is hard to miss.

Enter Robin

Robin is a native Android and iOS client: an x.com WebView with filters that force the Following timeline and hide promoted noise.

Features:

  • Following-first feed via injected filters on x.com (force Following / Latest, hide For You)
  • Hide promoted posts, page chrome, compose prompts, and related clutter
  • Text size controls
  • Sign out clears the X WebView cookie session

It is open source (MIT). Feed filters include adaptations from Minimal Theme for Twitter / X (MIT).

Install

Get it from evergreen-labs.org/products/robin, or go straight to each store:

Unofficial project. Not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by X Corp. or Twitter.

Closing

I hope Robin can help you stay informed, without getting distracted or annoyed by random posts and replies from strangers.