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Mute Twitter keywords to avoid spoilers

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Mute twitter
Shut! Up!
Photo: Charlie Sorrel/Cult of Mac

Twitter is a swamp of spoilers. You can’t move for tweets about the plot of the new Star Wars movie or spoilers about whatever new TV show is dropping all its new episodes this week. There are two ways to avoid spoilers. One is to avoid Twitter entirely.

The other is to mute keywords, so you don’t see references to — well, references to whatever you want. Mutes don’t have to be about the long-awaited meeting between Spock and Obi-Wan, though. You can mute anything. You could avoid all mentions of President Donald Trump, for example. Brits could stanch the flow of Brexit mentions. Or you might temporarily mute mentions of a sports event if it’s taking over your timeline.

Spotify will let you mute artists you don’t want to hear

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Spotify
You won't have to listen to music you don't like.
Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac

Spotify will soon let you mute artists you don’t want to listen to.

It is currently testing a “don’t play this artist” feature in the latest version of its iOS app. Using it will prevent the artist’s tracks from playing altogether — even if they feature in a playlist, chart list, or on a radio station you listen to.

How to mute people on Instagram

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Now you can mute Instagram, just like this creepy doll.
Now you can mute people on Instagram, just like this creepy doll.
Photo: Charlie Sorrel/Cult of Mac

Instagram finally lets you mute people, letting you remove their pictures from your timeline. If you’re too cowardly to just unfollow someone (like they’d even notice anyway), or your best friend just got their first dog/baby, and has flooded their Instagram with “cute” photos, you can now block these photos and videos without ditching the person responsible for them. Let’s see how to mute Instagram.

Instagram lets you mute accounts you don’t want to see

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These Instagram tips will help you connect with photographers who share your interests.
We don’t want to see photos from everyone we follow.
Photo: Lee Peterson/Cult of Mac

Instagram is finally giving us the ability to mute accounts that we don’t want to see in our feeds.

The feature lets you weed out annoying friends without actually unfollowing them. You will still be able to view their profile if you choose to, and you can unmute them anytime you want.

How to mute iMessage threads, and spot those you accidentally silenced

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shhh mute iMessage
Shut those annoying conversations up right now.
Photo: Shawn Rossi/Flickr CC

Have you ever had your regular (important) iMessages swamped by a flurry of notifications for that inane group conversations about matcha-flavored KitKats? Or maybe you want to keep your iPad’s notifications switched on, but you want to mute iMessages from your boss until Monday, because she has no concept of boundaries?

If so, you need iMessage’s handy conversation-muting feature. It’s so easy to use that you may have turned it on by mistake. If you’re no longer getting alerts for certain messages, you may want to check this, too.

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How to turn off sound in Facebook News Feed videos

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facebook-news-feed
Some Facebook users now have a second News Feed.
Photo: Facebook

Facebook is making big changes to the way it approaches video. Videos in the Facebook News Feed previously played silently unless users turned sound on. Now if you want to keep the sound off, you’ll need to dig through your Facebook settings.

Turn off the annoying new feature with these steps.