Clean up visual clutter
Turn off the thumbnails, avatars, banners, and flair that crowd the text you came to read.
A Reddit page competes for your attention in a lot of small ways at once, and most of them have nothing to do with what anyone wrote. With those switched off the page is calm, a long feed is quick to skim, and what you stop on is something you picked. Nothing here hides a post: the same posts, in the same order, with less around them.
Skim a feed of titles instead of pictures
Post thumbnails hides the preview image on posts in your feeds, for when scrolling one feels like scrolling a shopping catalog. A feed of titles and community names is faster to skim and easier to stop reading. The post you open still shows its image (and in card view, a post’s own photo or video stays).
Read feeds and threads without avatars
Community & author avatars clears the avatar beside a community or author name in feeds, page headers, and sidebar lists (your own account avatar in the top bar stays). Comment avatars swaps a commenter’s photo for a plain grey circle rather than removing it, so the reply lines in a deep thread stay easy to follow. (Both are new Reddit only.)
Clear the tags off posts and usernames
User flair hides the tag beside a username, the poster’s on a post and the commenter’s in a thread, so a busy community’s bylines stop competing with what was said. Post flair hides a post’s own category tag. Neither changes whether a post reaches you: keyword filters read a post’s title, body, and community, never its flair.
Open a community straight into its posts
Community banners hides the wide image across the top of a community’s page, so opening r/hogwarts puts you at the posts instead of a header you scroll past. Community status emoji drops the emoji some communities set beside their name, on posts and on the community’s own page. (Both are new Reddit only.)