YouTube users get option to set their Shorts time limit to zero minutes

>YouTube now lets you turn off Shorts

No it doesn't. If you were hoping it would mean you don't see shorts when you visit the Youtube home page, that's not what this is. I just tried the thing mentioned in the article-- set my Shorts time limit to 0 minutes. What it does is make it so if you click a short from somewhere the short plays, but then if you try to swipe to the next one it hits you with the "You reached your short limit". If you then return to the home page you still see Shorts.

Upvoting because Shorts are terrible. Flagging because the submission title - which is 100% faithful to the friendly article - is a complete lie!

Plug: I added a bunch of features to Control Panel for YouTube [1] which let you either hide Shorts completely, everywhere (which is the default) or take more control of how you use them if you do (e.g. redirecting to the normal video player)

[1] https://soitis.dev/control-panel-for-youtube

Before I quit YouTube, this was my setup.

Brave Shields[1] - Adblock

SponsorBlock[2] - Crowd-sourced skip sponsored segments

DeArrow[3] - Make thumbnails not clickbait

UnTrap[4] - Remove shorts and make UI amazing.

Return Youtube Dislike[5]

I deleted my Google account and now occasionally use Invidious with LibRedirect[6] to watch YT videos. Importing subscriptions into Invidious was a helpful stepping stone.

[1] https://brave.com [2] https://sponsor.ajay.app [3] https://dearrow.ajay.app [4] https://untrap.app [5] https://www.returnyoutubedislike.com [6] https://libredirect.github.io/

I removed the YT app from my phone because of all the addicting/simulating UX and hooking content. It was eating up my quiet/thinking time, and led to brainfog and brainrot. And then, the blame is being put on me as the user who has self control issues. I found that very twisted. Some responsiblity is mine, sure. But having an army of PMs and engineers whose only job is to keep users on the platform, longer and more "engaged", is a loosing battle for one person to fight.

Maybe the app can be given a retry if they have gotten away from the hooking/baiting at the product level.

IG/Tiktok already exist out there and I stay away from them. YT was a platform for me to learn and engage deeply. Shorts just ruined that experience for me.

I don’t see the option on iOS. At best I can limit to 15 mins.

Wish there was a way to completely turn off shorts. Youtube was significantly better 5-10 years ago.

I just wish I could pretend shorts were regular videos that happened to have a weird aspect ratio. There are extensions that switch the player automatically (and you can do it by editing the url) but that doesn't change how they appear in the subscriptions feed (i.e. an annoying carousel that hides all the information you need to decide whether you want to click or not)

I have no affiliation with Shorts Blocker, but I installed it a long time ago and immediately forgot that shorts existed. Worth whatever I paid for it.

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/shorts-blocker-for-youtube/id6...

Instagram needs to do this for Reels, too. I got quite addicted to these short-form videos during the pandemic and after I finished college things went immediately downhill once a lot of my mental activity could be somewhat "deferred". I could make up for the productivity hit by crunching but my life would be better without them. I remove things from my phone or put services into Pi-Hole but eventually I capitulate. Something about having the option to remove the most addicting parts of a service but not cutting yourself off completely has more success.

Edit: also to be somewhat objective, Instagram also offers a time limit. However, I've found that just by exiting the app (or it getting killed in the background), it basically clears the lockout so you don't even have to make the effort to click the "ignore" button.

I use the "Unhook" Firefox extension to customize the YouTube page. You can hide shorts, comments, recommendations, the home page feed, and more.

https://unhook.app/

I vibed up a chrome extension that sets a timer, hides shorts, redirects home to subscriptions, and hides comments and recommendations.

It’s all toggleable so I don’t disable the extension when I do want some neuronal junk food. But just the micro friction being added back in is such a huge help to becoming more aware when using it.

I think it's funny that nearly all videos on Youtube used to be short. Then Youtube pressured creators to make longer and longer content for ad revenue purposes.

Now they're forcing creators to pump out shorts.

Approximately one in every hundred shorts consist of something good that isn't also in a video somewhere. Is there a script to force shorts to be presented in the same way as videos, so that the recommendation algorithm can be forced to appropriately and natively mix in the one or two shorts that I'd appreciate seeing with the video recommendations?

The funny thing here, and I'm sure YT was counting on this, is that I wouldn't really be open to hiding/disabling Shorts anymore. Because despite most of my subscriptions being channels which publish long-form content, I also have begun to follow some channels which exclusively publish in the Shorts format, and as you know, it's not strictly necessary to subscribe to a channel in order to follow it. So sometimes I let the suggestions do the work, and surface new/old content in the form of Shorts.

The thing about Shorts that irks me is their completely separate classification, which suppresses useful info like the channel name, date of publication, until you go in and play them. Also, the player interface being totally different: why, just why?

No, it doesn't the easiest way is to always use it in Firefox and use the following uBlock filters

https://github.com/i5heu/ublock-hide-yt-shorts

Is there a way to do it at network level.

There are too many devices with different accounts and apps and guest access ... like YouTube app on Smart TVs.

Open youtube through a browser with uBlock origin, with this line in the filter:

m.youtube.com##.rich-section-content

This blocks the shorts bar. I also block the other algorithmic surfaces and have only the search bar available.

If they were actually serious, they would add an option in the Family Link app to set time limit for shorts for children.

I am still trying to figure out why YouTube/Google is willing to die on this hill ? Surely they’ve gotten feedback or seen it in their analytics that there is a significant group of people who don’t like these “shorts”.

Them implementing this “zero minutes” thing already tells you that they have realized there is some pushback.

Why not just add an on/off toggle?

This short form , TikTok style endless scroll stuff has a junk food feeling to it , as a paying customer why can’t you just give me the option to turn this off ?

Amazing! I can finally redownload the youtube app instead of using a userscript in my mobile browser

I use Newsfeed Eradicator[0] to block shorts and many more things.

[0]: https://github.com/jordwest/news-feed-eradicator

This seems like progress but it doesn’t practically solve anything. It doesn’t solve that every kid in the US has largely unrestricted school accounts that parents have no control over. It doesn’t really prevent a kid from creating a new account or simply logging out and bypassing it. Shorts would need to be disabled for unauthenticated accounts or educational accounts by default.

I don’t mind shorts. Especially when I have a few minutes to kill or just want something playing on a side Monitor. Just wish it would auto scroll to the next one without requiring an extension.

Hasn't rolled out everywhere yet, for the record.

What I want to get rid of is all the "Mix" videos. I never look at them, I have zero interest in watching a stream of stuff chained together by an algorithm or whatever. But, unlike single videos, under the three dots there's no option "Not interested" or "Don't recommend". I can't get rid of them.

I think there used to be a ublock filter to hide ytshorts but I haven't used youtube in a while at this so I can't be sure I'm not imagining it.

This is obviously not helpful if you use a smartTV or the app, in which case I would recommend using one of the third party apps like newpipe or whatever the smarttv 3p app is called

The only reason they would do this is because some kind of research determined it would yield higher revenue.

I find short form content really addictive. It’s so easy for me to lose half an hour to it, and at the end just feel like I’ve wasted my time.

Lacking better options I’ve turned on parental controls on my phone to block YouTube, and installed an extension to remove shorts from the site on my laptop.

I wish sites provided more real options.

I had to write a Chrome extensions to hide Shorts. it has been working great for me. https://github.com/mcotton/remove_yt_shorts

You already could by disabling watch history. I know that also disables the non-Shorts recommendations, but you know, if you're asking YT to recommend you stuff then of course it'll do it the way it wants.

As a parent of 4 kids, I find Shorts to be morally reprehensible. I think the people working on them should honestly question their decision framework. Youtube is an international treasure. One of the greatest learning resources of all time. I want my children to have as broad of access to youtube as possible. I can't do that though, because they can go from watching a very interesting documentary or something fun like a Mark Rober video, to being zombified unwittingly in to watching videos of a woman putting on makeup and making pronouncements in to the video camera.

It's not just annoying. It's not just inconvenient. It is harmful.

Nice! I wonder if it has anything to do with the lawsuit where the verdict was that meta and google designed addictive products.

It would be so cruel had the feature been only made available on premium accounts. But good it’s not (I guess so).

This feature is ONLY available in the app for mobile - - it is NOT available for Desktop

No, it's not like that at all. This thread is misleading and should be flagged.

Wait, this is only in the mobile app? You can't do it on a desktop?

Typical Google junk. So we get to continue seeing idiotic door-shaped videos on our desktops.

I hope this doesn’t get lost in the sea of comments

I just set shorts to 0 minutes

Tried to watch a short Got the message saying I’ve reached my limit and when I press X in the top right

I CAN WATCH SHORTS AGAIN

That is the most half assed attempt to limit my scrolling I could think of

Wow!

I’ve never once told YouTube I wanted Playables and declined, yet tracked every time I was asked for over a year:

March 19, 2025 - 8:31 PM

April 9 - 4:09 PM

April 24 - 8 AM

May 9 - 5:33 PM

May 20 - 2:07 PM

June 8 - 5:10 PM

July 9 - 6:59 PM

August 9 - 5:14 PM

September 8 - 8:45 PM

November 9 - 8:47 PM

December 9 - 8:48 PM

Jan 8, 2026 - 9:28 PM

Feb 7 — 11:11 PM

March 10 - 9:18 PM

April 10 - 1:10 AM

I’ve also noticed “Auto play next video” once a year or so automatically enabled. Shorts also come up regardless of dismissal though less so than Playables.

Thanks for pointing out, but I'm little bit sceptical about this feature because this will directly impact the revenue model around shorts. Maybe it's only for kids account?

Can we just get an option to turn it off? This is an insanely dumb workaround.

We wish. But it's not true.

Not related to many prior posts on HN, The Verge is not to be trusted with technical FAANG editorial content. They're either ignorant, stupid, or "playing stupid" due to prior "pay for play", under the table, and/or blatant advertiser-conflicting arrangements.

Also not related to prior YT posts. The secret to sanity with YT content is to never consume it on YT. FreeTube, yt-dlp, etc. are your friends.

Youtube (excuse me??? powered by Google?) has ruined their search for years and I'm convinced the Shorts don't help it

Nobody likes them, or Mixes. Stop it

Isn't this more for parents at the end of the day?

I think Youtube needs to be disentangled from Google.

I wouldn't have a a problem with shorts, in fact I definitely want to watch any videos from people I'm subscribed to be it short or otherwise. But core features are missing from shorts, like it doesnt even say what channel each short is from. So I've had a ublock filter for them forever.

Now make it easy to block a channel like you used to too. Before you could just go to the channel, click on some menu to block one entirely, now the hoops one has to go through to hide a channel are insane, I do not understand these companies, it's like they want to force me to watch some crap I have no interest in...

Glad, these companies are starting to get held legally responsible for the content they serve in civil courts...

Now hopefully we'll see it in YouTube music as well.

finally.

Just use uBlock origin and this filter: https://github.com/i5heu/ublock-hide-yt-shorts

Also annoying is how if you hover your mouse over a thumbnail on the homepage, it autoplays and then counts as part of your history.

Right. Just like they let you turn off those stupid games that keep popping up no matter how many times you tell them you're not interested.