Apptisan #46 - NoFeed: An Anti-Feed Tool That Makes Search Pure Again
In this edition, we feature Leslie, the creator of NoFeed and a self-described “extreme INFP” who is about to graduate with a master’s degree in AI and design.
Name: NoFeed
Developer / Team: Leslie (Twitter, Instagram, Rednote, Jike)
Platforms: iOS, iPadOS
Read this newsletter issue in Chinese (中文) .
Please describe your product.
NoFeed is a tool that lets you skip an app’s homepage and jump directly to its search results. It allows you to escape the endless recommendations, tempting trending topics, and distracting short videos. Simply enter the app’s name and your search query, and a single tap takes you straight to the results page. It’s designed to be as simple, direct, and pure as jotting down a thought on paper.
Was there a ‘aha!’ moment that inspired your product’s creation?
To be honest, I’ve always been troubled by information feeds. I don’t deny that recommendation algorithms are a low-cost way to discover wonderful and interesting content. But every time I open an app—be it Rednote, Douban, or Taobao—every single element on that small screen is crying for attention. The algorithm knows me so well that every item on the page piques my interest and makes me want to click.
The result? I’d get hopelessly lost in the feed. It felt like being hypnotized, and it would take a long time before I’d remember why I opened the app in the first place. I hate that feeling.
So, it wasn’t so much a single “aha!” moment as it was a cumulation of moments of belated dread and annoyance after realizing I’d just mindlessly scrolled for hours.
Beyond specific ‘aha!’ moment, how do you generally find and nurture creative inspiration in your daily life?
It’s hard to say I have specific habits. While I don’t believe in categorizing people with labels, I am a very extreme INFP—with every metric over 90%. So, aside from my mandatory daily coffee, I don’t really have any routines that could be called “habits.”
However, I love to walk. I love grabbing a shared bike and just wandering aimlessly through the streets of Shanghai. I love finding a comfortable spot on a sunny lawn to lie down and read. My life would be incomplete without these moments of emptiness, these times that aren’t filled with anything. It’s in these blank spaces that many ideas and inspirations emerge. My job is simply to catch them.
As an “extreme INFP,” how do you balance the need for introverted thinking with the demands of external creation and expression?
I don’t quite understand why “introverted thinking” and “external expression” are seen as needs that must be balanced. In my view, they aren’t mutually exclusive. It is precisely because of all the introverted thinking that these thoughts need to be nurtured and channeled through a medium—whether that medium is literature, music, film, or a product. They need to transition from a subjective existence in my mind to an objective one in the world.
In other words, it’s not that I need to express, but that these thoughts need to be expressed through me.
Could you walk us through your typical workflow, from initial concept to a shipped product? What key tools or methodologies do you rely on?
NoFeed went from concept to launch in about a month, and the whole process was pure “vibe coding.”
Once the idea struck me, I started brainstorming with my “teacher,” ChatGPT, and we quickly settled on a technical approach. I then used Cursor to build a demo and validate its feasibility. After that, I moved into the product design phase. I sketched out a few interfaces in Figma but wasn’t fully satisfied with any of them, so I decided to just start developing and figure it out along the way.
I’ve collaborated on small products before, but NoFeed is the first one I’ve designed and developed entirely on my own, and I finally experienced the thrill of solo development. During the “vibe coding” process with Cursor, I was thinking and doing, building and revising, developing and designing all at once. Details that were fuzzy in the design mockups became clear once I started coding, and I could immediately spot what was wrong and adjust it.
After creating an MVP that I was happy with, I posted a call for beta testers on Rednote. The response was surprisingly positive, and I gathered a lot of valuable feedback from the testers. This led to a longer phase of refining the details. Although NoFeed is functionally simple with a minimalist interface, I spent a great deal of time polishing the small details to ensure the best possible user experience.
One of the most critical decisions was about how users would input the app name. From the very first version I shared with friends to the official launch, users repeatedly suggested replacing the text input with a grid of common app icons or a dropdown menu. However, after much consideration, I stuck with the text input method.
My reasoning is that the thought “I want to search for [keyword] in [app]” is the most direct flash of inspiration that crosses your mind when you decide to actively search for something. I wanted NoFeed to protect that mental flow as much as possible. I wanted it to feel as direct and natural as scribbling a sentence on paper. I didn’t want to sacrifice that seamlessness for a minor convenience that would force the user into a secondary process of information intake or selection, breaking their train of thought.
However, the friction of typing the app name was a genuine usability issue. To address this, I implemented features like app name auto-suggestions, a default app setting, and app aliases. I also added a home screen widget that can hold four preset apps, allowing users to tap a button to pre-fill the app name in NoFeed.
The result of sticking to this principle was fascinating. One user mentioned that opening NoFeed and typing “Search [app] for [keyword]” feels like casting a magic spell. A friend told me that after getting used to NoFeed, he found himself consciously questioning his motives. When he just wanted to scroll aimlessly, being forced to first articulate what he wanted to see made him realize he didn’t actually want to see anything specific; he was just reaching for his phone out of habit. At that moment, he chose to put his phone down and pick up a book or go for a walk instead.
Another unexpected benefit of insisting on text input was that as I was mulling over this problem, a short poem popped into my head. I used it to create a branding concept for NoFeed and came to the bold conclusion that “when inspiration strikes, building a product and writing a poem are one and the same,” haha.
What makes your product unique compared to others in the market?
I find it difficult to define NoFeed. It’s a simple shortcut tool that also indirectly promotes self-discipline and reduces screen time. If we were to compare it to others, the closest category would be self-discipline apps like one sec. Their design model is typically to interrupt you when you try to open a target app, forcing you to pause and reflect, relying on your willpower to cut down on usage.
The unique aspect of NoFeed’s design is its acknowledgment that we can’t completely escape feed-based apps. They contain a lot of valuable content and information—for example, I use Rednote for visual inspiration and Douban to look up films and books. Therefore, NoFeed doesn’t block access to these apps. Instead, it offers a different, more proactive, and controlled way to use them. It empowers users to engage with the mobile internet on their own terms, free from constant interruption.
My design philosophy was to give users an experience similar to writing on a blank piece of paper. When you face a blank page, you are really facing your own mind. I wanted to give users that moment of blankness when they open NoFeed, a space for self-reflection. I also wrote personal letters to users in the welcome and trial-end screens to convey this philosophy, hoping it would resonate with them.
How have you marketed your product, and what key lessons have you learned?
It’s been exactly one month since NoFeed launched, and looking back, it feels like a dream.
For the first two weeks, my only promotion channel was organic traffic from Rednote. Even before the launch, during the beta testing phase, NoFeed was fortunate to receive a positive response on the platform. The official App Store launch announcement also went viral, causing downloads to peak in the first couple of days. We even hit #63 on the App Store’s free productivity chart. However, without further high-exposure posts or new promotion channels, the downloads and ranking quickly dropped.
Besides product-focused posts, I also shared my thoughts and feelings about the process of creating NoFeed on Rednote. While these posts didn’t get massive traffic, they were pushed to other product developers and media professionals (another testament to how feeds can bring us benefits), allowing me to connect with them and gain more visibility.
Some of my Rednote posts were luckily discovered by major tech media outlets. Perhaps the sincerity of the product’s design resonated with them, because they voluntarily wrote articles about NoFeed, helping it reach a much wider audience. This opened doors for me to meet so many amazing people, attend founder events, and even receive better job opportunities. For someone who had spent their whole life in academia, this was something I wouldn’t have dared to dream of (is it cheeky for a 25-year-old to call herself a kid?).
Thinking about it this way, building NoFeed and promoting it on Rednote has yielded an almost infinite ROI. Of course, a huge part of that was luck (I feel like I’ve met more kind-hearted people in the last month than in the previous two decades combined). But I’m still the same person I was a month ago, thinking the same unconventional thoughts. The difference is that through NoFeed, more people have seen me, are willing to listen to me, and are open to my less-mainstream views and values.
I think that is the greatest reward a creator can receive.
What has been some memorable feedback since your product’s release?
The feedback that left the biggest impression was when a beta tester shared a screenshot showing she had placed NoFeed in the center of her phone’s dock—the prime real estate! I honestly never thought anyone besides me would do that, haha. I think that’s the highest compliment a user can give an app; it’s like the Oscar-worthy spot on their phone.
Another user told me that after developing the habit of direct searching with NoFeed, she could now open Rednote directly and still head straight for the search bar without getting distracted. This touched me more than any praise because it meant my design had genuinely helped improve someone’s daily habits. This feedback has given me more confidence in myself and the motivation to keep turning the weird ideas floating in my head into reality.
What does “improving someone’s daily habits” mean to you? Has it changed your perception of a product’s value?
That’s a really great question.
I haven’t been involved in product development for very long. My previous understanding of a product’s value was that it’s about using clever solutions to meet user needs. But the creation of NoFeed made me realize that by changing the interaction design—by altering how a user engages with the same app—you can have a profound impact on their lifestyle and state of mind.
This led me to ask a deeper question: what exactly is a user need? Our interpretation of “need” is shaped by our underlying values. In a society that worships efficiency, we tend to build products with the mantra ”Don’t make me think.”
But what kind of products would we build if we believed, as Aristotle did, that “happiness in the highest sense is the contemplative life.”?
How do you typically structure your day to stay productive and creative? Any favorite time management techniques?
As an INFP, I never have a plan. And even if I did, I’ve never succeeded in following one, haha. But a typical creative day for me involves finding a cafe with the right atmosphere, writing down a list of things I need to do, and tackling them one by one. Around evening, I’ll go for a walk by the river or in a park to clear my head.
My only time management secret is this: do what you love. If I’m forced to do something I dislike or find meaningless, I’ll procrastinate all day and then rush to slap something together at the last minute. But if it’s something I’m passionate about and find meaningful, I don’t need a schedule at all. I can work from dawn till dusk, completely absorbed and enjoying every moment.
Are there any products out there that you feel deserve more recognition?
myLightMeter: I shoot film photography, and many old film cameras have broken light meters. myLightMeter is a simple, practical light meter app. Its design and texture perfectly replicate old physical light meters, making it both beautiful and functional.
SlideBox: A photo organization tool. It lets you swipe left or right to delete or sort multiple photos at once. As someone who’s constantly taking casual snapshots, it’s fantastic. The interaction is incredibly smooth.
one year: A simple annual visualization tool. It has two themes—a hand-drawn garden and black dots—and both the visual design and interaction are superb. one year was a huge source of inspiration for me during NoFeed’s design process.
Bird Alone: This app helped me through one of the most depressing periods of my life. The bird sings with you, writes poetry, and paints with you; you pick fruit, plant flowers, and make music together. But it only stays with you for a limited time, just like all relationships. It’s the finiteness, the fact that it ends, that gives every day spent with the bird its true value.
Would you mind sharing your phone and computer home screens with us and a few of your go-to daily apps?
Right now, my phone’s home screen only has NoFeed and its two widgets (I hope to add more of my own apps in the future!), a widget for one year, and essentials like WeChat and the Camera in the dock. When I need to open an app, I usually use Spotlight search. I find that scanning through clusters of icons to find the one I need is too mentally draining. This habit was probably another inspiration for NoFeed. If Spotlight could search within an app and open the results page directly, NoFeed might not exist.
Which creators do you look up to, and what admirable qualities do you see in them or their work?
In the product world, I admire the two founders of Flomo. During the recent AI hype, when every product was scrambling to add AI features, I think Flomo offered the most elegant solution. Their philosophy is “meaning emerges from continuous recording.” They truly empower users as individuals with agency and creative desires, allowing creators to have a dialogue with their past selves.
When it comes to film, literature, and music, my tastes are eclectic, and their influence is more subconscious. I’m currently reading Cioran’s On the Heights of Despair, which has been very insightful for my current stage in life. There’s a quote that resonates with me: “Each person remains with his own suffering, which he believes absolute and unlimited. Because in this organically insufficient and fragmentary world, the individual is set to live fully, wishing to make of his own existence an absolute.”
My favorite photographer at the moment is Vivian Maier.
Tell us a bit about yourself and what you envision for the future.
I’m Leslie, and my Rednote handle is @菠萝的胃 (Pineapple’s Stomach). I’m about to graduate with my master’s degree at the end of this June and leave the bubble of university to start leveling up in the game of life on my own. My undergraduate degree was in Computer Science, but after realizing I wasn’t passionate enough about coding, I pursued a master’s in a cross-disciplinary field combining AI and design. Before NoFeed, I worked with a friend on a small AI-assisted decision-making tool, which is currently a web-only version undergoing a UI redesign. Hopefully, we can officially release it soon.
As for the future, the current plan is likely to join a company as a Product Manager to gain more experience and skills. After some time, I’ll see if I have the opportunity to build my own products full-time. In the meantime, I will continue to improve NoFeed and, if new ideas come up, I’ll use my spare time to create (if I have any spare time, that is).
About Apptisan
Apptisan is a portmanteau of “application” and “artisan”, signifying “a weekly exploration into the world of apps and the passionate artisans who create them.” Each issue is a conversation with global creators, aiming to uncover and present intriguing products to a wider audience.
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