Hey! I’m glad you’re here. This week I’m going to browse Reddit in our browser, as God intended, and then build my own version of a $15/month subscription in about five minutes. Let’s get started.

How to browse Reddit on mobile without installing the app

Reddit, the company, really wants me to install its app. When I try to browse the site on my phone I get a pop-up telling me to “Get the app to keep using Reddit”.

Reddit has its reasons for this. It wants to gather more data about me, for one thing. It wants to stop me from blocking ads. I want to not let Reddit do those things, though, so I’m not going to install the app. 

As I’ve joked, I’ve been trying to quit reading Reddit anyway. But I couldn’t help but wonder: is there a workaround? And there is, sort of: you can use the old version of Reddit, which you can access by adding old. to the beginning of any Reddit URL. You won’t see the pop-up—but editing URLs is an annoying thing to do on a phone. Also, the old Reddit is too small to really read on my tiny phone screen. So I needed another solution. 

It turns out that Sink It, which I wrote about for WIRED a couple years ago, solves these issues. This free browser extension works in Safari on iPhone and Firefox on Android (the mobile version of Chrome doesn’t support browser extensions). As of this writing, the extension does not solve the mobile pop-up directly, but it does support re-directing Reddit to the old version of the site. You’ll have to make this change in the settings. There are also options in SinkIt that make the old version of Reddit easier to read on a phone.

I tested this and can confirm it works. Every site I open loads in the old version of Reddit, adjusted to work well on mobile. Even better: no amount of browsing will cause the “Get the app to keep using Reddit” pop-up to show up. 

As I said: I’m kind of enjoying Reddit being broken on my phone, so I’m going to uninstall this. But if you want to scroll Reddit, and don’t want to install the app, this method works.

🔗 https://justinpot.com/how-to-browse-reddit-on-mobile-without-installing-the-app/

I built a WisprFlow alternative in five minutes

I find the existence of WisprFlow fascinating. This application does two things: transcribe audio, then clean up the filler words and apply proper punctuation. It’s sleek, works well, and is marketed heavily. 

It also costs $15 a month. 

To be fair, twenty years ago this application would have been a miracle, and it’s still pretty impressive in 2026. There’s something compelling about rambling into a microphone and getting semi-coherent writing back. 

Even so, WisprFlow is made up of two relatively basic AI features—dictation followed by simple text editing. These are the exact things that local AI handles well, even without an internet connection. Basically there is no reason for this to be a subscription service, which is why I wrote about free alternatives to WisprFlow for WIRED a couple weeks ago. I figured there must be multiple free alternatives out there, and it turns out there are. 

But the real fun happened in the comments. Someone with the handle Mysterious_Doctor mentioned  building a similar application using Claude Code. “It uses Whisper locally then passes the text through Claude Sonnet for a polishing step,” they wrote. “Guess I should sell it like these guys are doing, but the barrier to entry to this sort of thing is basically zero.” 

Mystery, MD has a point: there is no barrier to entry. Right below that comment was another person who built a totally free and open source alternative I somehow missed during my research. WisprFlow alternatives are popping up everywhere right now, and with good reason: they’re easy to build. But how easy?

But how easy? I wanted a challenge, so I decided to see if I could make something in five minutes without using a chatbots. And it turns out I could.

I used Apple Shortcuts, starting with a “Dictate text” step. Next, I used an Apple Intelligence step to proofread the text. Finally, I set the text to be copied to the clipboard, ready for me to paste wherever. Then all I had to do was assign a keyboard shortcut for the Shortcut and I had a fully offline replacement for WisprFlow. 

I call it WisprFree—you can download it here if you have a Mac, iPhone, or iPad that supports Apple Intelligence. It’s not perfect—it stops transcribing too quickly, and copies text to the clipboard instead of just pasting it. It’s not bad for five minutes work, though, and you can tweak it easily enough. 

Do I think you should use this tool? No. Am I amused that I could make it so quickly? Absolutely. Please feel free to give me $15 a month.

🔗 https://justinpot.com/i-built-a-wisprflow-alternative-in-five-minutes/

Other stuff I wrote

• Wondering if your files are safe in the cloud? I tried to explain all the jargon and make it easy to understand what to look for over at PCMag: https://www.pcmag.com/explainers/is-your-cloud-storage-actually-secure-heres-what-most-companies-dont-explain

• I turned my handwriting into a font. It’s horrible, because my handwriting is horrible, but I bet it will work well for you: https://theintelligence.com/43361/handwriting-font/

• Finally, I finally put my rural Ontario upbringing to work for science and journalism, over at PopSci: https://www.popsci.com/environment/cow-tipping-myth/

That’s it for this week! Thanks for hanging out. Please forward this email to everyone you know, then encourage them to subscribe. Thank you for your attention to this matter. See you next week.