Behind the scenes the shorts are just normal YouTube videos. You can change the /shorts/ to /watch?v= in the URL and they work fine. There are addons to do thi

Behind the scenes the shorts are just normal YouTube videos. You can change the /shorts/ to /watch?v= in the URL and they work fine. There are addons to do this redirect automatically, but I haven't bothered. Why they force the terrible UI on desktop is beyond me though.