YouTube Shorts have plagued Google’s video app for years as it attempted to play catch-up with the likes of TikTok. Whether you like them or not, there they are — on both desktop and mobile. That ‘See fewer Shorts’ prompt is more of a decoration than anything else. Now, YouTube is adding a way to rid your feed of Shorts for good.
Keep them long, please
Kinda. It’s not quite the nuclear option we had hoped for. The change builds upon the in-app timer Google added back in October, meant to slap your wrist and pull you out of that stupor whenever you get a little too sucked in. Back then, the minimum daily timer users could set was fifteen minutes. After the update, which is busy rolling out to everyone globally, that figure can be set to zero, effectively wiping Shorts from your feed.
That may seem ‘nuclear’, but Shorts won’t leave the app forever, even if you do set the timer to zero. Some Shorts will still appear in some areas, notably within a user’s subscription feed. As much as we don’t like Shorts, this makes sense. There’d be little more than uproar if YouTube were filtering out your favourite creator’s content.
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YouTube hasn’t officially announced the change, but confirmed to The Verge that the zero-minute timer was now live for all parents, and is currently being rolled out to everyone.” That includes your adult account, too. As for when it’ll reach your device, we don’t know. It hasn’t hit our daily Android driver at the time of writing, anyway.
When it does turn up, you’ll want to navigate to YouTube’s settings, find “time management”, and toggle the Shorts feed limit on. From there, you’ll want to select a time. Hit ‘0 minutes’to (mostly) rid your feed of Shorts.
