A minimal Android app that wraps Snapchat's web interface, letting kids chat with friends without the addictive content feeds.
Snapchat is how kids talk to their friends. But Discover, Spotlight, and Stories are designed to keep them doom-scrolling. Snapchat's built-in parental controls (Family Center) can't disable these feeds. SnapClean strips them out by routing through the web version, which is chat-focused by design.
- Text chat and group chats
- Voice and video calls
- Sending photo snaps (front camera)
- Viewing friend Stories (read-only)
- Login session persists (~1 year)
- Discover - third-party content, ads, publisher stories
- Spotlight - short-form video feed (TikTok-like)
- Stories/Spotlight buttons - visible but unclickable (touch overlay)
- External links - YouTube, TikTok, etc. sent in chat are silently dropped
- Snap Map, Lenses, Snapchat+ - path-blocked
Single-activity Android app with a WebView pointing at web.snapchat.com. Three layers of content blocking:
- Domain whitelist - only
snapchat.com,snap.com,sc-cdn.netnavigations allowed - Path blacklist -
/discover,/spotlight,/stories,/map,/lens,/plusblocked - Touch overlay - fixed div covers Stories/Spotlight buttons, repositions on rotate/keyboard
Additional spoofing to make the WebView work:
- Desktop Chrome user agent (Snapchat web requires desktop browser)
window.chromeobject injection (Snapchat detects WebView and redirects)navigator.permissions.queryoverride (reports camera/mic as granted)
Requires JDK 17+ and Android SDK. No Android Studio needed.
./setup-sdk.sh # one-time: downloads Android SDK (~1.5GB)
source env.sh
./gradlew assembleDebug
adb install app/build/outputs/apk/debug/app-debug.apk- Back camera not available (web version limitation)
- No AR filters/lenses
- Camera picker shows 4 options on first use - pick any front-facing one
- Overlay positions are calibrated for a specific phone (Samsung, 1080x2340)
- Snapchat can change their web app at any time and break things