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

Posted by pentagrama 1 day ago

Comments

Comment by savanaly 1 day ago

>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.

Comment by runevault 1 day ago

It really amazes how how Youtube refuses to let me hide stuff I don't want to see on my homepage. I still long for the ability to tell them to not give me mix playlists, I do not want them, and often they annoy me when the first song is one I'd click on but I don't want to have to pay attention enough to kill it before the next song plays (since you cannot disable play next in playlists...)

Comment by rjbwork 1 day ago

It's not a product where you are the user. Your attention is the product being sold to advertisers and the videos are a harvesting/production mechanism.

It is not in the interests of either YT or the advertisers to allow you to opt out of features that are proven to be lucrative for eyeballs.

Comment by al_borland 1 day ago

I’m a Premium subscriber. I don’t see ads, and YouTube added a feature so I can easily skip in-video sponsored sections.

It seems like the incentive for Premium subscribers should be to keep them happy, so they keep paying, and minimize how much they watch, as they’ll be a cheaper user using less bandwidth.

Am I missing something?

Comment by runlevel1 1 day ago

> YouTube added a feature so I can easily skip in-video sponsored sections

That feature benefits YouTube, too. Maybe even more than its value as a Premium feature. It makes it so that viewers can skip the ads the creator was paid to make without YouTube getting a cut of the proceeds, pushing down the value of those ads.

Comment by gloxkiqcza 1 day ago

It’s crazy to me YouTube is okay with hosting ads they get no cut from in the first place.

Comment by tsimionescu 1 day ago

Hasn't this always been the case? If a movie or show features product placement, a TV station playing said movie/show doesn't get any of the proceeds from that advertisement, do they?

Comment by polshaw 1 day ago

These are not product placements, it's as if someone wrote a movie or TV episode literally with an ad break.

Comment by al_borland 1 day ago

This is just the pros having more tact than amateurs, and actual writers. I do see some “influencers” that do more of a pure product placement. They just happen to be drinking a specific energy drink in every video where it sits perfectly with the label out. I see some YouTubers trying to get better at integrating the ad into the video, but most of them can’t be bothered to write and record a custom script.

That said, Subway often seemed to get pretty heavy with its product placement. The last season of Chuck had a good amount of this, even what was essentially an ad read right in the middle of an episode by Big Mike. On Community they personified Subway and based a whole episode on him. In the Office they brought in Ryan Howard to say “eat fresh” over and over again, and even called out that it was for Subway to make sure it didn’t go over anyone’s head. Subway was big on sponsoring the last seasons of struggling shows with loyal fanbases, and littering the episodes with Subway product placement to the point where it became a plot point. I remember Zachary Levi (Chuck) tweeting out to ask everyone to go buy some Subway before the finale. It sounded like if Subway saw enough of a spike in buying from the sponsorship, they might fund yet another season.

Comment by tsimionescu 1 day ago

I know, but I don't see a fundamental difference. If TV networks are happy to pay for a show that also gets advertising revenue from product placement, I don't see why YouTube would not be happy to deliver ads and pay some percent of that to a channel that displays its own ads. Especially given that YouTube has much, much less cost per video than a traditional network, which can only broadcast one program at a time.

Comment by tsimionescu 1 day ago

This line of argument would make sense if they did allow paying customers who don't see ads to disable these anti-features. They don't.

Comment by crustaceansoup 1 day ago

It's still a fine argument for that case, you've just moved yourself out of it. They still have an incentive to keep you addicted to the service, which is basically the point of Shorts, "so you keep paying us money to satisfy your addiction" instead of the first case's "so you keep watching ads that pay us money to satisfy your addiction"

Comment by runevault 15 hours ago

The thing that is funny about it is at least with the mixes, it does actively make me engage less because there are videos I would click on if they were not being tied into a mix, but because they are I actively choose not to open the video and let the song play.

Comment by ajkjk 1 day ago

joke's on them, I have not consciously experienced a youtube advertisement in ten years

Comment by charcircuit 1 day ago

YouTube has multiple different products. YouTube as a company do not call your attention a product. There isn't a product team that is in charge of people's attention as a product.

Comment by pabs3 1 day ago

If you have uBlock Origin installed, the subreddit wiki for it has lots of options for blocking stuff on YouTube.

https://old.reddit.com/r/uBlockOrigin/wiki/solutions/youtube

Comment by benterix 1 day ago

Believe me, if they tried as hard as FB, an ordinary user wouldn't stand a chance. As it is now, a single uBlock Origin action is enough to make these disappear from my YT page for good, and for all accounts.

Comment by rob74 1 day ago

You see, you think you don't want all those things, but the algorithm knows better. Trust the algorithm!

Comment by ChrisRR 1 day ago

Search youtube for a thing

> 5 results for your search

> 10 unrelated videos that you've already watched

> An endless stream of unrelated videos

Comment by ChrisRR 1 day ago

Youtube has added random people's text posts to my subscription feed, and it's pissing me off. They're never anything interesting or entertaining, it's always just gumpf

Comment by netcoyote 1 day ago

I so hate the videos YouTube shows me that I wrote a plugin to place a white box over videos called TubeGate [0], which I open-sourced [1]. It does keyword-based filtering so you can tell it to hide "sports", "politics", etc.

[0]: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/tubegate/aokfpmegea...

[1]: https://github.com/webcoyote/tubegate

Comment by losvedir 1 day ago

Damn, yeah that's what I was hoping for.

Honestly, the only thing really keeping me from watching shorts is the perplexing UX decision to not show the channel name as part of the preview tile. As basic Internet hygiene it just feels real bad to click on a video without the tiniest bit of idea about its provenance. For that reason I never do and have always just wanted to hide Shorts altogether.

Comment by chii 1 day ago

I don't watch shorts because of the type of content it encourages - short clickbait content for the attention deficit.

I want long form, well researched, well put together content. These types of content takes a long time to produce, unfortunately, and the youtube algorithm doesn't favour it.

Comment by rob74 1 day ago

These types of content takes a long time to produce

Unless they're AI slop, of course. Between shorts and AI slop, worthwhile content on YouTube will soon become almost impossible to find...

Comment by chii 1 day ago

That's where off-platform, trust worthy sources are important.

Over the years, i've curated a lot of subscriptions on youtube of such long form content (talking about things like Primitive Technology, Smarter Everyday, etc).

It simply sucks that youtube has gutted the UI for subscriptions - the layout is horrible, i can't scan it as they removed the list view, etc. And sometimes subscribed channel's videos don't even show up there - you have to visit the channel page directly to see the new videos.

it's almost as if they want people to rely only on the home page and the recommended videos from their algo.

Comment by tveita 23 hours ago

Honestly I'd sometimes like a checkbox to ignore any results uploaded after, say 2023. Or else to only see 'verified non-AI' content. There is nothing I'd ever search Youtube for where an AI generated video would be an acceptable answer.

Comment by InMice 1 day ago

I use the control panel for youtube plugin - there is an option that any short plays in the traditional player. It also has lets you customize the thumbnail grid sizes. it is a little over aggressive with its defaults but you can turn them off. it has a lot of options

Comment by rob74 1 day ago

If TikTok does it that way (I have no idea if it does actually), YouTube obviously has to copy that! If a fishy channel name stops you from clicking on a short, that hurts your engagement, and that's the last thing social media companies want.

Comment by idle_zealot 1 day ago

Classic "self regulation" of an addictive product. "You look like you might have a problem with self-control, here are tools for managing yourself better" while admitting no fault and continuing with all of the hooks and barbs, design and advertising built to addict as many people as possible.

Comment by alex1138 1 day ago

Real name? No? We'll ask again later

Comment by trinsic2 1 day ago

You sure you don't want to add your phone number? I makes verification easier next time you want to upload a video.

Comment by alex1138 1 day ago

I was referring to Google+. I don't know if you mean something else like Facebook, which is no less abusive than Google+ ever was

People seemed to like Google+ but a) nymwars lead to dangerous situations (although no less dangerous than Facebook's graph search) for people that don't want to reveal their real names but also b) the merging of accounts ruined some people's Youtube channels. Zuckerberg is so much of a control freak that I suspect (based on evidence I've vaguely heard, not just my own intuition) links to Google+ used to get deleted. It used to be the case people liked it but they "couldn't get their friends to use it". So yeah - in part, inertia; but also what if you linked it and nobody saw it in the feed?

Comment by trinsic2 14 hours ago

I know. I was joining in on the joke, I think I just made that one up though. Im pretty sure youtube asks that If you upload a video and don't have a phone number on file

Comment by alex1138 14 hours ago

Sorry!

Comment by jiveturkey 1 day ago

Well played. I don't think many remember this. The product was completely forgettable but the introduction of this user hostile pattern was a turning point.

Comment by natpalmer1776 1 day ago

What was this referencing?

Comment by berdario 1 day ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nymwars

Comment by natpalmer1776 1 day ago

Thank you!

Comment by jldugger 1 day ago

Technically I think it's for parents to regulate their kids.

Comment by idle_zealot 1 day ago

Yeah, it's pretty broad consensus that the Chinese opium epidemic was really on the parents. 19th century Chinese parents really dropped the ball there, and no further considerations or blame should be placed.

Comment by Carrok 1 day ago

I'm confused why you're bringing up parents and kids. Are you implying only children might have problems with self-control wrt media consumption?

Comment by jldugger 1 day ago

No, I'm implying Google faces liability after that court case and is using this as a fig leaf to blame parents.

Comment by misnome 1 day ago

> The feature was expanded in January to give parents some control over how long their kids spend scrolling through Shorts,

Comment by jval43 1 day ago

My parents are retired. How exactly do they come into play?

I'm actively avoiding Shorts, Reels, and whatever else with those mechanics precisely because they pull you in and snap an hour is gone with nothing of value to show for it. It's so totally different from regular long form videos.

We regulate addictive substances too, even for adults and without relying on parents. The amount of productivity and quality of life lost to these platforms must be staggering in aggregation.

Comment by darth_avocado 1 day ago

Correct, based on the text when you change the setting mentions that.

> scrolling is paused but you may still see individual Shorts

It prevents doomscrolling, not what you see in your feed or homepage.

Comment by rkapsoro 1 day ago

Argh. I was really excited for this. I'm a YouTube Premium user, and I get a lot of value from YouTube, but I can't get rid of the nicotine-tastic home feed and shorts. I go to YouTube for useful (especially, long-form) stuff, and get sucked into garbage.

On desktop you can manage this with extensions. Not so much on mobile.

Profound product misalignment.

Comment by jore 1 day ago

I actually set the time limit to 0 minutes , then I restarted the app in iOS and right now I do not see any shorts. Let’s see how long it would take for them to reappear again

Comment by superjan 1 day ago

The nuclear option is to disallow it to store your watch history. You get only a search bar and your subscriptions.

I switched to this. It is less fun, but also less of a timewaste.

Comment by joelthelion 1 day ago

Note that you don't need YouTube's permission to remove shorts from the homepage; there's a Firefox extension for that.

Comment by nine_k 1 day ago

If you want to completely eschew shorts, consider adding https://www.youtube.com/shorts to your adblocker blocklist, and maybe use an extension like Stylus to hide the "Shorts" links on YT pages.

I would rather keep the ability to see a short if I need it.

Comment by PaulHoule 1 day ago

ROFL because there is no danger that I'm going to spend any time watching shorts. If they put some limit on other videos now that might be relevant... but shorts are just taking up real estate on the screen which could be filled with content I might engagement. I want to say it is like picking their shareholder's pockets except nobody profits from the existence of shorts in any way.

Comment by philipov 1 day ago

An ad blocker handles this use case just fine, however. It's easy to create a rule to remove the div containing shorts. Also works on many Use AI buttons.

Comment by adjejmxbdjdn 1 day ago

I think this might be even worse, psychologically.

You’ve added a “forbidden fruit” element to the Shorts.

Comment by bityard 1 day ago

It turns out, the tiger can't change its shorts

Comment by BingBingBap 1 day ago

Youtube would be cooked if there was an alternative that actually eorked (incentives for people uploading, spread well etc).

Comment by 1 day ago

Comment by dahcryn 1 day ago

weird how its 0 to 15, and no in between.

I went in hoping to set it to 5 minutes. I don't see that as a problem. However, suddenly losing 15 minutes, yeah that's an issue

Comment by senectus1 1 day ago

dammit. I got so excited about that headline.

now I'm just angry again.

Comment by geerlingguy 1 day ago

Ditto

Comment by samxli 1 day ago

It’s still working for me tho. Could it be a different app version?

Comment by rmwaite 1 day ago

In my case, once I set the limit to 0 minutes and refreshed the home tab I don't see Shorts recommendations at all. There is still a Shorts tab at the bottom that tells me I have no remaining time (and allows me to trivially override it, sigh). But otherwise this seems to have cleaned up the "feed" that I see in the app of anything Shorts related (for now, at least).

Comment by VerifiedReports 1 day ago

Wow, WTF. What an inept implementation.

Comment by neop1x 1 day ago

Same.They just did the minimum to look like they care about restricting addiction practices but in reality still continuing with business as usual

Comment by kakacik 1 day ago

Swipe. Not a problem with mouse control and generally full computer, seems like even such a dumb move as swiping can become addictive and be done subconsiously. Never understood why people complain here so much about shorts since they never go beyond the one video played that I opened myself I guess that explains it.

Tablets/touchscreens/phones are not the best way to experience online stuff, rather the worst. ublock origin in firefox makes internet usable in other dimension for me, since I am allergic to ads but thats another story

Comment by paulnpace 1 day ago

My shorts are on.

Comment by leptons 1 day ago

"Shorts" is the #1 reason I switched to the SmartTube app on my Chromecast.

No more Shorts.

It also has other great features that are well beyond what the Youtube app lets you do to customize the expernience.

And then I realized, it also blocks all the ads. I was a Youtube subscriber, but they alienated me with their "Shorts", so I switched apps, and then I cancelled my subscription.

Most of big tech is too big. It's ridiculous how bad these monoliths have gotten.

Comment by mrandish 1 day ago

Yep, SmartTube is great.

Comment by insin 1 day ago

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

Comment by LutfuRadu 1 day ago

Fantastic add-on! I couldn't find an option to hide games ("playables") - did I miss it?

There seems to be a conflict with U block origin on Firefox on Android. The control panel didn't work when U block was on, even after I disabled "block ads" in the panel.

Comment by throwawaymobule 1 day ago

I wish they'd show up like regular videos in the subscription feed, like they used to a few years ago.

Currently, I have to guess who uploaded a short to decide if I want to watch it.

Comment by drouetg 1 day ago

Great addon thank you

Comment by Cider9986 1 day ago

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/

Comment by kirubakaran 1 day ago

Very cool, thanks! I've been using SponsorBlock for a long time. This is the first time I'm hearing about DeArrow and I paid for it. That guy is doing incredible work.

Comment by pabs3 1 day ago

This stuff can help a lot too:

https://old.reddit.com/r/uBlockOrigin/wiki/solutions/youtube

Comment by basch 1 day ago

need a network level dearrow for all the other devices and tvs on the network.

Comment by registeredcorn 1 day ago

When you say "quit YouTube", do you mean you replaced it with a different service? Or do you simply mean you deleted your account?

I've been hoping for more competition on alternative platforms, but everything that I've tried has failed to reach any kind of reasonable user base.

Lots of bot videos. A few schizo uploads. Stolen movies, etc. It feels like the earliest versions of YouTube and it's been a struggle to put up with. Most of them went under at some point or another, too.

Comment by Cider9986 1 day ago

I watch probably 95% less videos than before I "quit youtube". I never visit youtube.com and I deleted all my google accounts. I still have my subscriptions saved in a few Invidious instances and I occasionally check them.

I haven't really looked into any alt platforms besides interacting a little. This peertube instance[1] has a good experience but it only has a few channels. I might look more into peertube now that you mention it.

I like videos for entertainment, but for information it is a timesuck.

[1] neat.tube

Comment by thedeep_mind 1 day ago

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.

Comment by subpixel 1 day ago

I've deleted the app from my phone. When I want to watch YT I open Brave, which blocks shorts and promoted videos in search. As an added benefit watching videos feels like a slight chore and is not frictionless.

On my Mac I also use Brave and have allowlisted only the YouTube domain and Google auth. No shorts, no search spam, and just slightly inconvenient.

Comment by pants2 1 day ago

Nearly all social media sites are better accessed through Brave browser on mobile, where there are no ads (including Instagram) and the experience is less optimized therefore less addicting.

Comment by bentt 1 day ago

great tip! i didnt know this.

Comment by Retr0id 1 day 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)

Comment by el_benhameen 1 day ago

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...

Comment by ivanjermakov 1 day ago

Paying for an app that is a single CSS filter is top notch Apple.

Comment by gooob 1 day ago

why pay for something like that when you can just write an extremely simple addon that removes the shorts section from the homepage and anywhere on the site?

Comment by GoatOfAplomb 1 day ago

Maybe you place a value on your time higher than $1.99 divided by the time it would take you to create it. Maybe you don't care to learn how to create an addon.

Comment by josefresco 1 day ago

Is there a similar blocker for Instagram Reels?

Comment by cpeterso 1 day ago

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/

Comment by dunder_cat 1 day ago

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.

Comment by legitster 1 day ago

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.

Comment by wanderingmind 1 day ago

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

Comment by pabs3 1 day ago

More similar ones here:

https://old.reddit.com/r/uBlockOrigin/wiki/solutions/youtube

Comment by OgsyedIE 1 day ago

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?

Comment by mc3301 1 day ago

I wish there was a whitelist and blacklist (keywords or checklist or something) that could mostly faithfully be followed with some backend AI.

Whitelist (skew algorithm this way please):

-bicyles

-diy clothing

-python programming

-snakes

-art how-to

-tornadoes

Blacklist (skew algorithm away from this please):

-pranks

-anything with kids

-fake DIY

-ai produced content

-only-fans people

Comment by svachalek 1 day ago

Weirdly enough I feel like this is how the Vision Pro Youtube app works. I'm not sure why.

Comment by ButlerianJihad 1 day ago

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?

Comment by subpixel 1 day ago

I know what you mean, but I am willing to lose that content, in that form. Similar to the way I have used Instagram for a decade but have no idea what a reel is and ignore them.

Comment by JeremyNT 1 day ago

I agree. Shorts aren't inherently bad but the way they're sort of half as integrated in the UI just feels clunky and weird.

They should allow you to treat shorts like normal videos and have them ranked directly against them in e.g. search results. Or, they should let you completely separate them so you have essentially a totally different app.

Comment by albert_e 1 day ago

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.

Comment by Tor3 1 day ago

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.

Comment by noisy_boy 1 day ago

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

Comment by shmoogy 1 day ago

They did add it, it explicitly says "Scrolling is paused after time's up but they may still see individual Shorts"

I added 15 min timer for my kids today, not as good as blocking them entirely from even being seen .. but at least it's something.

Comment by noisy_boy 22 hours ago

There is no such setting I can see in Family Link. Not per-device setup, Family Link.

Comment by CWwdcdk7h 1 day ago

[dead]

Comment by forthwall 1 day ago

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

Comment by thedeep_mind 1 day ago

Same, 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.

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.

Comment by codethief 1 day ago

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

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

Comment by royal__ 1 day ago

This is the way. The biggest issue is that it's easy to disable if you have no self control, but I guess an official setting would be the same way.

Comment by madradavid 1 day ago

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 ?

Comment by prartichoke 1 day ago

Pirates get the best service, gabe newell was right.all along. Paying for youtube premium makes no sense, I'd rather donate that 15 bucks a month to my favorite creators, while using uBlock/sponsorblock/unhook and grayjay on mobile. No shorts in my homepage, no ads ever

Comment by nirav72 1 day ago

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.

Comment by ajdegol 1 day ago

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.

Comment by SlightlyLeftPad 1 day ago

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.

Comment by techknight 1 day ago

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

Comment by ElijahLynn 1 day ago

Yeah, I only see 15 minutes in my settings.

For those who want to see and tinker with it: Settings > Time Management

Comment by nslsm 1 day ago

That means you need an account?

Comment by b00ty4breakfast 1 day ago

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

Comment by preinheimer 1 day ago

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.

Comment by Cider9986 1 day ago

If you ever want to go more hardcore into keeping distracting apps off your phone I recommend checking out MDM for your device.

At least on iOS you could connect a mac and then use Apple Configurator to block installing new apps. This made it so you would have to use your Mac to enable installing new apps, creating a large amount of friction.

When I used iOS I used this method to create a "smart dumbhone" because you could have smart apps like mapping, without a browser or the ability to install distracting apps.

Comment by bentt 1 day ago

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

Comment by sasaf5 1 day ago

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.

Comment by pier25 1 day ago

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.

Comment by mcotton 1 day ago

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

Comment by brcmthrowaway 1 day ago

Vibe coded?

Comment by mcotton 11 hours ago

Yup and in my opinion it is a great use case for it. Faster to generate my own extension than to trust something already in the store. Not critical enough to matter if it failed and very low threat surface.

Comment by ugh123 1 day ago

does that matter?

Comment by traderj0e 1 day ago

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.

Comment by dwa3592 1 day ago

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

Comment by LaFolle 1 day ago

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

Comment by jmacd 1 day ago

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.

Comment by dlopes7 23 hours ago

I went ahead and turned my youtube history off, I only see my subscriptions and subscription shorts.

I get zero recommendations of new/related videos (It breaks the algorithm) and it can't remember at what point of a video I was when I left it, but it is a very cheap price to pay for the shorts brainrot

Comment by hapticmonkey 1 day ago

It’s so incredibly frustrating the effort required to keep the site/app from funnelling my kids into low effort slop.

I like to use it with my kids (under age of 6) to search and find interesting videos with them. The algorithm combined with the TV apps’s UX makes it such a frustrating experience.

There is so much potential there, but searching for things like space videos inevitably funnels me into AI generated slop and conspiracies. Searching for upcoming movie trailers funnels me into completely fake trailers. It’s clear the platform is an engagement engine first and a knowledge base second.

Comment by DivingForGold 1 day ago

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

Comment by aofeisheng 1 day ago

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

Comment by user3939382 1 day ago

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.

Comment by VerifiedReports 1 day ago

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.

Comment by r0fl 1 day ago

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!

Comment by SudheerTammini 1 day ago

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?

Comment by Brian_K_White 1 day ago

We wish. But it's not true.

Comment by calmbonsai 1 day ago

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.

Comment by Cider9986 1 day ago

>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.

Do you have any links that could give me more info on this?

Comment by alex1138 1 day ago

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

Comment by tokioyoyo 1 day ago

Might be a bubble thing. Check out DAU for Shorts.

Comment by erickhill 1 day ago

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

Comment by 1 day ago

Comment by datahack 1 day ago

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

Comment by shevy-java 1 day ago

I think Youtube needs to be disentangled from Google.

Comment by everyone 1 day ago

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.

Comment by throw_m239339 1 day ago

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...

Comment by spicyusername 1 day ago

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

Comment by 1 day ago

Comment by ktimespi 1 day ago

finally.

Comment by x3n0ph3n3 1 day ago

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

Comment by delduca 1 day ago

Last time I tried a shorts blocker the entire YouTube crashed

Comment by x3n0ph3n3 1 day ago

Never once had that problem.

Comment by Brian_K_White 1 day ago

Gladly. How do I do that on my roku?

Comment by x3n0ph3n3 1 day ago

If you're using a native YouTube app, you've already lost the battle.

Comment by Brian_K_White 1 day ago

Obviously. Which belies your "just do this...". You may as well say "just watch dvds". An exactly equally effective solution.

Comment by nickthegreek 1 day ago

iSponsorBlockTV running in docker on a system on the network can remote skip ads for all yt apps that it have been added to its monitoring. works great for appletv. But nothing is as good as SmartTube on androidtv.

Comment by miltonlost 1 day ago

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.

Comment by EarlKing 1 day ago

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.