YouTube first introduced short-form videos around the world in 2021, and it didn’t take long for them to become popular. It was clearly a reaction to the popularity of TikTok, which specializes in short-form video, whereas YouTube has videos that are literally hundreds of hours long.
So now, when you open your YouTube homepage, you’ll get recommended a variety of long-form videos in 16:9 format alongside several short-form videos in vertical format, perfect for consuming in quick bursts on your phone. The mix works for some people, but others miss the way YouTube started pushing Shorts so aggressively.
There are ways to get rid of Shorts…and ways to get them back when you miss them.
YouTube offers few official options for getting rid of Shorts
And getting them back is even harder
YouTube does not offer any official way to completely get rid of Shorts. The only option is to go to the first row of Shorts you see on your homepage, click the three dots in the upper right-hand corner, and hit “See Fewer Shorts.” That part is incredibly easy. This will result in you not seeing as many Shorts on your homepage for a period of around 30 days on the high end, although that can fluctuate.
Mind you, this doesn’t mean you’ll stop seeing Shorts entirely. If you search for something on YouTube, you will still see Shorts in the results (although you can hit “Videos” from the row of options at the top if you only want to see long-form videos. For that matter, you could also hit “Shorts” if you only want to see Shorts). If you open a long-form video, you will see Shorts YouTube is suggesting you watch next. Again, this option only lets you see “fewer Shorts,” not none.
You can also set a time limit on how many Shorts you see per day on mobile. Open the YouTube hit, go into your profile, select Settings, and then Time Management. Scroll down to Daily Limits and hit Shorts Feed Limit. From there, you can make it so you see as few as 15 minutes worth of YouTube Shorts per day. But again, this is not the same things as getting tid of them entirely.
Considering how hard YouTube makes it to stop seeing Shorts entirely, it’s curious that bringing them back is not easy. If you’ve hit the “See Fewer Shorts” option but want to again see Shorts on your homepage, there is no button or setting to make that happen. The only option is to seek out Shorts and watch them. Then, they will start to creep back onto your homepage, usually after a couple of days. Watching more Shorts will make this happen faster, but you’ll generally have to sleep on it.
Since YouTube’s official options for getting rid of (and bringing back) Shorts are so limited, you’ll have to take more drastic steps if you want to change things for good.
Unofficial options for getting rid of Shorts
For when you absolutely, positively have to eradicate every Short in the room
There are several third party options for getting rid of Shorts, and unlike with YouTube’s official options, they won’t come back afterwards. If you watch YouTube on an Android device, ReVanced is a reliable open-source patcher that can modify apps like YouTube. After you have ReVanced on your Android device, download the YouTube ReVanced app and open it. From the Settings menu, you’ll then have the flexibility to hide YouTube Shorts on your homepage, in your search results, and anywhere else you might see them, and you can bring them back just as easily.
For iPhones, apps like Shorts Blocker For YouTube do exactly what they advertise. You can also seek out browser extensions like uBlock Origin or Unhook YouTube.
You could also download Brave, which is arguably the best web browser around, and watch YouTube on that. Brave automatically blocks ads and gives you more control over apps like YouTube than YouTube itself would ever consider. To block Shorts on mobile with Brave, simply open settings, hit Media, and then toggle on the option “Block YouTube Shorts.” If you’re using Brave on desktop, go to Settings, then Shields, then Content Filtering, and enable “YouTube Anti-Shorts.” Again, you can simply deselect these options if you want Shorts back in your feed.
It’s silly anyone would have to use these options to get rid of Shorts
If it’s this easy, why can’t YouTube do it?
Once installed, these third party workarounds will allow you to toggle Shorts on and off with ease, which underscores the fact that YouTube could give us an official way to do this if it wanted to. It just doesn’t. Not even paying for YouTube Premium, which is generally a pretty good deal, will get you access to those kinds of options.
This is most likely because YouTube feels that pushing Shorts is necessary to compete in an environment where many people prefer TikTok. And that makes sense, but it means that video sites are changing themselves in a way that makes them more homogenous, which is a little dispiriting. The maximum length of a YouTube Short has extended over time. It’s possible that in a few years there won’t be long-form videos on YouTube anymore, just very long Shorts.
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But YouTube can’t just force people to forget that it spent most of its life as a site mostly designed to host long-form video. It’s natural that not everybody who uses YouTube, some of whom have been at it for two decades now, would be okay with this new element. And the least YouTube could do is provide those people with an easy way to customize the site to their liking, but until that happens, these workarounds will have to do.
And there’s always the option to use other video sites, some of which may be even better than YouTube in the first place.
- Release Date
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July 7, 2023
- Runtime
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99 Minutes
- Director
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Alex Winter
