With Star Wars: The Force Awakens reviews dropping today and the movie launching on Thursday night, it’s hard to avoid spoilers (or avoid the movie at all for that matter). Here’s how to set up automatic blocks both globally and on specific websites so you can avoid reading a single new spoiler or rumor.


This post was originally published in 2012. Due to the extreme inundation of Star Wars content on the web this week, we’ve updated the tips and tools with options that still work.

If You Don’t Mind a Little News Sneaking in Here and There

Most of us have a limit to the amount of spoilers (ranging from OMG! Han Solo is in the movie to OMG! Yoda is evil and has horns now) we can handle on any specific topic. Thankfully, you can hide this stuff to make sure you don’t come across anything during normal browsing or on social networks. You’ll obviously also need to practice a little common sense, too—basically, don’t read articles about something and then complain about spoilers. Everything’s going to be spoiled just by writing about it, so it’s probably best to avoid anything and everything on the internet if that matters to you.


Block Keywords on Social Networks

Blocking content on social networks is a great way to intentionally keep yourself in the dark on any topic of your choosing. It’s especially handy during sports games you don’t care about, tech launches that mean nothing to you, or on opening weekend for games and movies. Here are a few ways to block content without unfollowing or unfriending everyone.

Twitter: Some Twitter apps, like Tweetbot and Tweetdeck have a text filter hidden away in the options panel

Some Twitter apps, like Tweetbot and Tweetdeck have Facebook: If you have friends that can’t seem to stop talking about wars in space, then you might want to set up filters to get that content out of your news feed. Social Fixer set up content filters


Automatically Hide Comments on Sites Known for Spoilers


One of the most annoying ways to spoil a movie, book, or video game is by some commenter who drops a massive spoiler out of nowhere. This is especially the case if you’re just trying to watch a trailer for a movie or a review of a video game. Thankfully, it’s pretty easy to block these comments and continue on spoiler-free. Here’s how to do it.


If You Want a Complete Block on All Spoilers and Rumors

If you’re going for a more extreme or long-term method, you need to set up your browsing in a way where you can avoid any type of content. This means tailoring and filtering your RSS feed and using extensions to block keywords from any site you visit.


Set Up RSS Filters


Feedly doesn’t have a built-in way to filter content out of you feeds without completely unsubscribing from news sources. You’ll have to set up your feeds through another source. Feed Rinse allows you to drop in your current RSS feeds, set up filters, and then it shoots out a new, filtered RSS feed clean of whatever you don’t want to your reader of choice.

Use Extensions to Entirely Block Any Mention of the Content


If you really want to get rid of specific news or spoilers, it’s time to block the words from the entire internet. This should only be used in extreme cases, but if you really want to make sure you stay in the dark, it’s the only way to do it.


Short of completely unplugging, you can never get away from rumors and spoilers completely, but it’s possible to at least restrict your web content to a manageable level. Over the coming weeks an abundance of Star Wars nonsense will be pouring in, so if you’re looking to cut it away, this is a great way to do so.

Illustration by Fruzsina Kuhári.