Discussion
YouTube now lets you turn off Shorts
forthwall: Amazing! I can finally redownload the youtube app instead of using a userscript in my mobile browser
spicyusername: Now hopefully we'll see it in YouTube music as well.
dwa3592: Nice! I wonder if it has anything to do with the lawsuit where the verdict was that meta and google designed addictive products.
savanaly: >YouTube now lets you turn off ShortsNo 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.
techknight: Hasn't rolled out everywhere yet, for the record.
ElijahLynn: Yeah, I only see 15 minutes in my settings.For those who want to see and tinker with it: Settings > Time Management
amazingamazing: only took a lawsuit
legitster: 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.
ButlerianJihad: Yeah but Grok lets you turn off skirts
LaFolle: It would be so cruel had the feature been only made available on premium accounts. But good it’s not (I guess so).
senectus1: dammit. I got so excited about that headline.now I'm just angry again.
alex1138: Youtube (excuse me??? powered by Google?) has ruined their search for years and I'm convinced the Shorts don't help itNobody likes them, or Mixes. Stop it
leptons: "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.
thedeep_mind: 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.
x3n0ph3n3: Just use uBlock origin and this filter: https://github.com/i5heu/ublock-hide-yt-shorts
throw_m239339: 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...
Cider9986: Before I quit YouTube, this was my setup.Brave Shields[1] - AdblockSponsorBlock[2] - Crowd-sourced skip sponsored segmentsDeArrow[3] - Make thumbnails not clickbaitUnTrap[4] - Remove shorts and make UI amazing.Return Youtube Dislike[5][1] https://brave.com [2] https://sponsor.ajay.app [3] https://dearrow.ajay.app [4] https://untrap.app [5] https://www.returnyoutubedislike.com
OgsyedIE: 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?
Brian_K_White: We wish. But it's not true.
idle_zealot: 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.
alex1138: Real name? No? We'll ask again later
cpeterso: [delayed]
PaulHoule: 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.
pants2: 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.
Brian_K_White: Gladly. How do I do that on my roku?
delduca: Last time I tried a shorts blocker the entire YouTube crashed
Tor3: 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.
EarlKing: 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.
registeredcorn: 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.
everyone: 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.
b00ty4breakfast: 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
samxli: It’s still working for me tho. Could it be a different app version?
miltonlost: 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.
rmwaite: 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).
insin: 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
bentt: great tip! i didnt know this.
noisy_boy: If they were actually serious, they would add an option in the Family Link app to set time limit for shorts for children.
shmoogy: 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.
basch: need a network level dearrow for all the other devices and tvs on the network.
bentt: The only reason they would do this is because some kind of research determined it would yield higher revenue.
dunder_cat: 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.
nirav72: 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.
codethief: I use Newsfeed Eradicator[0] to block shorts and many more things.[0]: https://github.com/jordwest/news-feed-eradicator
jiveturkey: 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.
natpalmer1776: What was this referencing?
ButlerianJihad: 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?
subpixel: 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.
subpixel: 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.
philipov: 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.
x3n0ph3n3: If you're using a native YouTube app, you've already lost the battle.
Brian_K_White: Obviously. Which belies your "just do this...". You may as well say "just watch dvds". An exactly equally effective solution.
