There is a particular kind of noise that keyword filters can't touch: the numbers. The like count under a post. The view count on a video. The follower total on a profile — including your own. They carry no words to match on, they sit in the corner of your eye on every page, and for a lot of people they quietly turn reading into scorekeeping.
If you have ever caught yourself checking how a post performed rather than whether it said anything, this guide is for you. It covers how to remove engagement numbers from the sites you use, using ElementHider's element picker.
Why Vanity Metrics Are Worth Removing
Engagement counters are designed to be read before the content is. They tell you what other people already decided about a post, which makes it much harder to form your own view of it. On your own posts, they turn a thing you made into a number that goes up or down while you watch.
None of this requires quitting the site. The numbers are a layer on top of the content, and that layer can come off while everything else stays exactly where it is — which is usually a far more sustainable arrangement than an all-or-nothing block.
The Problem: Counters Aren't Words
ElementHider's default tool is keyword matching, and for most filtering that is the right instrument — as covered in muting any word on any website. But a like count is not a word. It is 1.2k today and 1.3k tomorrow. There is no stable string to match, and matching digits in general would take out timestamps, prices and everything else numeric on the page.
What is stable is the counter's position in the page structure — it is the same element, in the same place, on every post. That is what the element picker targets.
Using the Element Picker
Open the popup on the page you want to clean up
Navigate to the site first — the picker works on whichever page is in front of you.
Click Element in the Keywords toolbar
It sits between the Word and Flag buttons. The popup closes and a banner appears telling you to click on an element.
Hover over the number you want gone
A blue outline follows your cursor showing exactly what will be selected. Click when the outline is around the counter.
Adjust the level, then save
A dialog shows the CSS selector it generated, plus a row of parent buttons. If you caught only the digits but wanted the whole "1.2k likes" row, step up one parent. The match count tells you how many elements on the page the rule will affect.
Tip: Counters often sit at the very top of a page, in a sticky header. The guidance banner used to sit on top of exactly that spot and get in the way — as of v1.2.1 it no longer intercepts your clicks, and it slides out of the way to the bottom of the window when your cursor moves into its strip. If you tried this before and gave up, it works now.
Watch the match count in the dialog before saving. A selector that matches 1 element will hide one counter; a selector that matches 40 will hide every counter in the feed — usually what you want here, but worth seeing before you commit.
Site by Site
X / Twitter
The reply, repost, like and view counts sit in a single action bar under each post. Picking one number and stepping up a parent or two usually catches the whole bar at once, across every post in the timeline. Follower and following totals on profile pages are a separate pick.
Instagram already offers a native "hide like counts" setting, and if it does what you need, use it. The picker is for what it doesn't cover: follower counts on profiles, and view counts on Reels.
YouTube
View counts and like totals under the player are separate elements from the video title and channel name, so they can go without touching anything else. Thumbnail view counts in the sidebar are a separate pick — worth doing if recommendations are what pull you around the site. Pair it with keyword filtering if spoilers in titles are also a problem.
The score sits in its own column beside each post, which makes it one of the cleaner picks — hiding it leaves the layout intact and stops you sorting your own attention by what already got upvoted. Comment scores are a separate element inside each comment.
Reaction and comment counts sit in a bar under each feed post. If engagement numbers are the problem, this is the pick; if the posts themselves are, keyword-filtering the feed is the better tool.
Before you commit: Test Mode outlines what a rule matches without removing it. On a dense feed, that is the fastest way to confirm a selector catches every counter and nothing else.
When Keywords Are Still the Better Tool
The picker targets structure, so it is the right choice when the thing you want gone is always in the same place and its text keeps changing. Keywords are better when the reverse is true — the text is predictable but the position isn't:
| What you want gone | Best tool |
|---|---|
| Like / view / follower counts | Element picker |
| Trending sidebars, "Who to follow" | Element picker |
| A topic, name or spoiler | Keywords |
| "Sponsored" and promoted posts | Keywords |
| Anything whose position moves around | Keywords |
There is no reason to pick one. Most useful setups are a handful of selectors for the furniture plus a keyword list for the content.
Making It Stick
A saved element rule is stored like any other entry in your keyword list, so it applies automatically on every page load — you set it once, not once per visit. Two things are worth knowing:
- Site redesigns break selectors. When a site restructures its markup, a selector that pointed at the old structure stops matching. The fix is to re-pick the element; it takes a few seconds.
- Prefer the smallest selector that does the job. Stepping up too many parents can take a whole post with it, and is more likely to break on a redesign than a tighter one.
If you end up with rules covering several sites for several different reasons, Groups (Supporter Pack) let you bundle them and toggle a whole bundle at once — a "Vanity metrics" group you can switch off on the rare occasion you actually need to see the numbers.
The Bottom Line
Engagement counters are the easiest thing on a page to remove and among the highest-impact, precisely because they are structural rather than textual: one pick, and the number is gone everywhere on the site. If the broader goal is a calmer feed rather than just quieter numbers, distraction-free browsing covers the rest of the setup.