If you're not watching every match live, scores show up everywhere. Push notifications, group chats, Twitter trends, Reddit threads, and news widgets all publish the result before you've had a chance to watch the replay. One glance at the wrong tab gives the score away.
Muting a few accounts or turning off notifications for one app only goes so far. Here is how to block scores across the sites you visit.
Where World Cup Spoilers Come From
| Source | Turning off notifications | ElementHider |
|---|---|---|
| Push notifications from news apps | Yes | Yes |
| Twitter / X trending sidebar | No | Yes |
| Reddit post titles & thumbnails | No | Yes |
| YouTube video titles & thumbnails | No | Yes |
| News homepage headlines | No | Yes |
| Search engine score widgets | No | Yes (with a selector rule) |
The pattern is the same across these sites: the result is written directly into the headline, the thumbnail, or the trending topic, where a notification toggle won't catch it. Filtering the page content before it renders is the reliable fix.
Setting Up ElementHider for Match Days
Add the teams and rounds you're avoiding
Open the popup and add the team names, plus common result shorthand: Argentina France Quarter-final FT full-time beat defeat
Use Blur instead of Hide on news sites
Hide removes the element completely, which works well for feeds. Blur is often better for headlines, since you still see that a story exists without reading the score. Turn on hover-to-reveal if you want the option to peek once you're ready.
Hide the score widgets with point-and-click
Google's search results and most news homepages show a live score box that bypasses keyword matching, since it doesn't always contain the team name in text you'd think to filter. Use ElementHider's point-and-click selector mode to click the widget directly. It creates a CSS-selector rule that removes it on every visit.
Common Match-Day Scenarios
Recording a match to watch after work
Add every team playing that day, not just the ones you care about. A headline like "Underdogs stun favorites in extra time" still gives the result away if you don't yet know who was playing. If you have the Supporter Pack's Groups feature, bundle the whole tournament into one World Cup group so you can switch it off in one click once you've caught up.
Following the tournament, but not every match
Add just the specific matches or players you're behind on, and use "This site only" to scope a keyword to one site. This is helpful when a team name means something unrelated elsewhere.
Avoiding the group chat screenshot problem
Screenshots of final scores often get reposted onto Reddit or X with standard captions. Generic keywords like final score FT: 92' catch many of these reposts, since spoiler captions tend to follow the same few formats.
Tip: Supporter Pack users can use a Regexp rule like \b(FT|HT)\b.*\d+\s*-\s*\d+ to catch scoreline shorthand ("FT 2-1", "HT 0-0") in one rule, instead of listing every possible score by hand.
The Bottom Line
Notification settings only stop the messages your phone sends you. They don't hide the headline you scroll past on a news site, the thumbnail in your YouTube subscriptions, or the trending topic at the top of your timeline. Filtering the page itself before it renders covers all of those places. Set your keywords once before kickoff, and you can browse normally until you're ready to watch.