11 ms·

uBlock filter list to hide all YouTube Shorts

1172 points by i5heu 8mo ago

OrvalWintermute 8mo ago
I love you!
papichulo2023 8mo ago
Finally, tired of creating this custom filter in all my devices lol. I wish it would all automatically apply the "videos" filter as well.
teddyh 8mo ago
I prefer using RYS <https://lawrencehook.com/rys/ https://lawrencehook.com/rys/> which has this as a feature, but a lot more, too.
RicoElectrico 8mo ago
Legit question, do you guys get really bad Shorts recommendations? Mine aren't half bad (really more of the same as with regular videos) plus creators don't insert ad spots. I get it, TikTok-style scrolling is annoying, but the format has its merits. At least less yapping and more to the point.
- 7734128 8mo ago
  It's 99% the interface, cluttered with useless garbage over the video, that I hate. I hate it so much that I couldn't even see the content hiding behind it, and don't really know what the recommendation is like.
  - fc417fc802 8mo ago
    If you do want to watch one for whatever reason you can open it in the standard interface. The video IDs are neutral it's just the URL that determines which interface you get. Actually I guess a browser extension to redirect to a fixed up URL would resolve the problem entirely.
    - insin 8mo ago
      Control Panel for YouTube [1] lets you remove most of the clutter from the Shorts player UI, or redirect Shorts to the normal player (using YouTube's internal navigation if on desktop, so no full page reload) You'll have to disable hiding them first, as they're completly hidden by default [1] https://soitis.dev/control-panel-for-youtube https://soitis.dev/control-panel-for-youtube
- StrangeSound 8mo ago
  Mine are usually pretty bad. If I ever do see one that I like I catch myself flicking through way too many of them afterwards and I hate that. So I prefer to hide them entirely. I use YouTube Tweaks which has a lot of different customisation options. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/youtube-tweaks/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/youtube-tweak...
- ssl-3 8mo ago
  Nearly all of the video I watch is on horizontal screens. Whether I'm using a real computer or a BFT or an iPad or I'm watching a something with my pocket supercomputer while bored on a plane: It's horizontal. This is simply how I do it, how I have always done it, and how I am likely to always do it. YouTube Shorts aren't compatible with this viewing method. In addition: Nearly all of the videos I watch are longer than 3 minutes, and YouTube Shorts aren't compatible with this either. Whether I'm watching a video because I want to be entertained or to learn something new, I want to be involved with it and focused on it. I am very capable of making time to do so when it behooves me. --- Anyway, to answer your question: I have no idea if my YouTube Shorts recommendations are good or not good. I don't partake. I don't need empty, <3-minute dopamine hits in my life.
- danny_codes 8mo ago
  I reject addiction-designs on principle.
- pigggg 8mo ago
  I constantly get tik tok style everything everywhere all at once fever dream headache rapid edited clips. There's a difference between to the point and just being brain rot delivered with no background. Reminds me of happy hardcore techno - you can't really feel the bass because it's not getting enough time to reverberate.
- themafia 8mo ago
  It's a cesspool of ripped off videos, AI generated slop, and people doing a really jazzy reading of a wikipedia article. I mean, you can eat Doritos for dinner, and maybe you can convince yourself it's nutritionally sufficient, but it's still garbage.
- hollerith 8mo ago
  I avoid Shorts (and Tiktok) for the same reason I avoid stimulant drugs and video games: it depletes dopamine faster than regular YT videos (especially the somber kind of videos I mostly watch).
- deleted 8mo ago
  [deleted]
- Brian_K_White 8mo ago
  There are about a dozen reasons to hate shorts regardless of the content. Everyone else has listed a bunch already. Here's yet another, the pointlessly limited UI. There are no play controls to back, forward or scrub. You missed something? Hope it was near the beginning because while you can restart by reloading, you can't skip ahead. Want to pause at a particular spot to show your wife? You get to wait for the whole thing to play again from the start so you can hopefully pause it at the right spot. There was one important part? too bad, you can only replay the whole thing... And why? Even if you want to assume the case of some video that is actually legitimately only a couple minutes long, ok fine, but why the artificially stupid UI? There is no legitimate reason. It's pure user manipulation. It's the service calling the shots to do what it wants to get what it wants instead of giving you a service that does what you want to give you what you want. Even if you are paying them money There are all kinds of other problems, like I simply didn't ask for this. I don't care how great someone else thinks something is, or even if I would agree it's great if I asked for it. But anything that you don't want but can't avoid, and it's not the weather but something someone DOES have control over and is choosing to inflict on you over your expressed wishes, as a paying customer on top of all, is automatically intolerable. But in fact I don't agree they are great at all ever. It doesn't matter what the content is or who's making it, including people I like on topics I like. I want to say I don't have ADHD and don't want to develop it, but really idk I might actually have some level by the looks of all my unfinished projects, and even so, shorts make me feel like what people with adhd look and sound like from the outside. It's a hell existence. I don't understand how people can just willingly sit there and let these things feed them this constant stream of spastic hyper ephemeral shit. Even if I can understand how someone can fall into it unwittingly initially, how do they not realize what's happening to them after a while? Is everyone really so utterly unconscious?
quaintdev 8mo ago
Just pause watch history and it will disable shorts recommendation. The only shorts you will see will be from your subscribed channels.
- jarvist 8mo ago
  I've always had watch history off, but my searches now return a couple of pages of short form nonsense, before my actual results.
  - malfist 8mo ago
    YouTube search is just broken. Has been for a long long long time. You get 3-4 relevant results and then it just shows you random unrelated crap.
    - daveguy 8mo ago
      It's not broken from Google's perspective. The results are just optimized for their ad revenue rather than your viewing preference. Even the engagement hooks don't care what your viewing preferences are - just what they've calculated to optimize watch potential * ad revenue.
      - themafia 8mo ago
        You've got to permanently block 1000s of "popular" channels. Then youtube starts working like it did in 2006 again.
    - asdff 8mo ago
      It is better to use google to search youtube via site:youtube.com operator.
      - visarga 8mo ago
        Better to use Gemini to search YT, you can just talk to it what you want, and see the videos right there in the chat window. I used this to find well targeted music, it can also review artists and discuss about them not just play music.
liquidise 8mo ago
Unhook[1] has been my go-to for this. Gives full customization over shorts, recommendations, comments, etc. 1a: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-recommended-videos/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-recom... 1b: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/unhook-remove-youtube-rec/khncfooichmfjbepaaaebmommgaepoid https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/unhook-remove-youtu...
- henning 8mo ago
  I clicked comments to say the same thing. Can recommend
- Vingdoloras 8mo ago
  Sadly, it hasn't been updated since 2024 and is slowly breaking. Haven't found a good replacement yet.
  - insin 8mo ago
    I keep Control Panel for YouTube [1] up to date with the latest YouTube shenanigans. Most recently: restoring the Related sidebar layout with the giant thumbs, if you're not hiding them. Shorts are hidden and redirected if you land on one externally by default, and it _was_ also restoring the sort by Upload date filter UI, until YouTube went and killed that in the API ;_; [1] https://soitis.dev/control-panel-for-youtube https://soitis.dev/control-panel-for-youtube
    - chrsw 8mo ago
      YouTube killing he sort by upload date made me furious. I feel like the only fight back is boycotting.
    - encom 8mo ago
      >Remove the pink gradient from progress bars How do I do that without an entire addon? This pink gradient irritates me so much.
marcosscriven 8mo ago
I’m sure I’ve clicked “show fewer shorts” every single time it’s shown me shorts. It seems to make zero difference.
- halyconWays 8mo ago
  [flagged]
  - ncr100 8mo ago
    Chafe them nipples. Seriously though, do any of our German / French compatriots here on HN have different experience of corporations, versus the USA's "maximizing profit" purpose, given the "corporate social responsibility" mandate of those countries? Greed (opportunism) is human and I wonder if that's "better" in the Germany or French corporate-world?
    - i5heu 8mo ago
      Mhhh although this is a bit OT it is also very interesting: Germany has unions and works council. It is required by law that companies allow works council to exist and if they exist they get certain rights. > In Germany, they serve two functions. The first is called co-determination, through which works councils elect members of the board of directors of German companies. The second is called participation, and means that works councils must be consulted about specific issues and have the right to make proposals to management. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Works_council#Germany https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Works_council#Germany ) Also Germany has good amounts of regulations for certain issues (sometimes too much regulation but oh well). And Germany has many options to participate in local and regional politics that prevent the worst offenders. But in the end a company is still a company that is forced to act in a way that maximizes it's profits. I think from my perspective we do not have such wild predator companies like you see them in the US but there are certainly a few very dubious things going on. Except maybe the gGmbH and Vereine (clubs) which are companies and semi company structures that must act for the common good and without profit interest. And one funny thing is that in Germany stock companies are required to act to the "best interests of the company" and not the "best interests of the stock holder" - in German law the company includes the worker, the future of the company and social aspects.
KellyCriterion 8mo ago
Is this really working on ALL shorts? And if I click on the panel "no more shorts", is this setting then applied continuously?
- revolvingthrow 8mo ago
  Nothing’s working on ALL shorts, not for long, because google shakes things up semi-frequently to jam shorts down everybody’s throats To solve it once and for all you’d probably want to extract the length of all displayed videos and hide all that fit within the short’s limits
  - PaulDavisThe1st 8mo ago
    I have leechblock setup to block: youtube.com/shorts/* and that seems to block all viewing of shorts. It doesn't stop their inclusion in playlists/recommendations or on a given channel's page(s). Works for me.
  - notpushkin 8mo ago
    Idk, I’m using a previous version of this list (the one it was forked from) and it works for me! Didn’t even realize it wasn’t updated.
modzu 8mo ago
i can't even get youtube to load with ublock.. theres a years old thread with hundreds of comments on the github -- what are people actually using today to preserve their sanity on youtube? edit: the issue with ublock is the black screen - sometimes the video loads after 10 or so seconds, sometimes it doesnt. i dont consider hiding the ad while still having to wait around for it to finsish playing behind an overlay the same as "blocking" :|
- carlosjobim 8mo ago
  Premium
  - blondin 8mo ago
    yep, can confirm. we pay for the service, we use an ad-blocker and we are the ones affected. oh the irony... i now have ublock disabled for youtube.
- hahn-kev 8mo ago
  Works fine for me, FF Win11
- flakes 8mo ago
  Thats interesting. If you’re on Chrome I’d try out Firefox just to see. I haven’t had any issues for a long time.
- chickensong 8mo ago
  Still using ublock. Recently there's a delay starting vid sometimes, about 3 sec. I can deal with it.
- fc417fc802 8mo ago
  Using ublock and umatrix both on firefox with full tracking protection enabled. Don't recall ever having any issues with youtube. Sometimes an alert will pop up "see why you're experiencing playback interruptions" and it clicks through to a page about how this is due to my adblocking extension but the joke is on them because I don't recall it ever actually being interrupted. It's just this erroneous alert that occasionally pops up.
danny_codes 8mo ago
I’ve been using brave on mobile and it seems to work pretty well!
WadeGrimridge 8mo ago
yt neuter has this and much more: https://github.com/mchangrh/yt-neuter https://github.com/mchangrh/yt-neuter
iainctduncan 8mo ago
The easy way to do this is to hide them with custom CSS - Install Stylebot extension for your browser - make an entry for youtube.com - enter this css: .shortsLockupViewModelHost { display: none} Bam, no more shorts.
- deleted 8mo ago
  [deleted]
- Hoodedcrow 8mo ago
  To be fair, Ublock Origin is a lot more common, and the less extensions the better, so or a lot of people this would be the better way.
  - 65 8mo ago
    You can also just use Tamper Monkey (though you need to add a script called Trusted Type Helper in order to inject CSS into YouTube). I used to use Stylebot but I switched everything over to Tamper Monkey so all my CSS and non CSS related scripts would be in one place. Tamper Monkey/Grease Monkey scripts are very portable too, I use my scripts in Safari on iOS via the UserScripts extension.
- brycewray 8mo ago
  Stylebot is no longer actively developed, but the similar (and open-source) Stylus extension is. Repo: https://github.com/openstyles/stylus https://github.com/openstyles/stylus Chrome extension: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/stylus/clngdbkpkpeebahjckkjfobafhncgmne https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/stylus/clngdbkpkpe... Firefox extension: https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/styl-us/ https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/styl-us/
autoexec 8mo ago
That takes care of the browser. Now I just need a way to filter out short videos in NewPipe (and ideally a way to specify that I only want very long ones)
- Brian_K_White 8mo ago
  And Roku. This is one of the several reasons I always react almost violently whenever someone tries to be smarmy in any threads about adblockers on youtube, trying to say that paying for youtube makes everything good the honest way. I do in fact pay for youtube and have for like 15 years or more, and it still sucks for a variety of reasons. "why pay then?" for the same reason I would pay to have 8 of my fingernails pulled out instead of all 10.
larsmaxfield 8mo ago
I read this as "The default uBlock filter list will change to hide all YouTube Shorts".
- Brian_K_White 8mo ago
  Don't know why you're downvoted. It's exactly a 50/50 likely way to parse it.
b00ty4breakfast 8mo ago
I've been using invidious for a while now but I remember I had blocked all recommends and suggestions on YT so I never saw shorts anyways (I know the recommend block was thru ublock but I can't remember if I'd blocked suggestions through YT options or if that was also a ublock filter). Also a great way to avoid mindless feed-surfing. I only watched videos from subs or that I have specifically searched for rather than getting sucked into the algo vortex.
digiown 8mo ago
Daily reminder that these tools are made possible by the power of general purpose computing, and corporate interests want to take it away. In a hypothetical future not too far from us where your devices become "trusted", you will have to view whatever they want you to see, with no recourse like blocking ads or undesirable content.
- Tade0 8mo ago
  Then I shall not look at it at all. Some months ago Facebook gave me the "ads vs payment" ultimatum. I closed the tab and didn't log into Facebook since.
  - digiown 8mo ago
    That's good, but everyone has only a limited amount of social capital to refuse popular things. School teachers, which are essentially agents of the government, often make your children watch Youtube videos, for example.
    - temp1514351 8mo ago
      Yeah like, I went to middle/high school 2008-2014, when Facebook was so popular that it's kinda hard to imagine today. I didn't have one. At some point I was so out of the loop that nobody even told me we had a freshman dance. In hindsight, could've just used it for a few minutes a week, so that's what I did in college. Also have a burner Twitter just because that was the only damn way to contact the DMV in 2020.
  - temp1514351 8mo ago
    What's the "ads vs payment" ultimatum, they block ad-blockers? Occasionally someone sends me a link there, and it never bothers me for having uBO.
    - Tade0 8mo ago
      Basically this: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-67226394 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-67226394 It's a region-locked subscription available in the EU and a few other countries. Before that they were intensifying efforts to derail adblockers, which already made the site painful to use (and, ironically, easier drop entirely). Personally I had issues loading the feed and posting comments, but until it occurred to me to disable uBlock for a moment, I was chalking it up to "move fast and break things" (emphasis on the latter).
chaps 8mo ago
Anyone have any similar uBlock filter lists like this?
- thoughtjunkie 8mo ago
  I'm also looking for a blocklist for X/Twitter that can remove the "who to follow", News sections, etc.
  - insin 8mo ago
    Not a blocklist, but for anyone who wants this, Control Panel for Twitter [1] can hide most things you'd want to hide on Twitter. The latest version adds a way to keep using the Dim dark mode variant theme they recently removed. [1] https://soitis.dev/control-panel-for-twitter https://soitis.dev/control-panel-for-twitter
    - thoughtjunkie 8mo ago
      This is great, thanks
- cmvincen 8mo ago
  I have some lists [1] I use to hide YouTube's constant recommendations of things I've already watched. They also hide previously watched music videos, which may be a downside. 1. https://caleb-vincent.io/post/2025-10-01_youtube-filters/#just-the-filters https://caleb-vincent.io/post/2025-10-01_youtube-filters/#ju...
_cs2017_ 8mo ago
is there anything that might work for the YT app on the Android?
sciencesama 8mo ago
Wish we could use this as a proxy for phones that connect to internet !
bkjlblh 8mo ago
is there a supply chain attack possible? What if some time later this list gets updated?
- i5heu 8mo ago
  I will update it later down the line as YT changes its layout and for bug fixes... but i think this was not what your question. I don't think that something super bad can happen with these uBlock filter, they will sanitize the filter heavily. Maybe a potential attack vector for these lists in general is to hide the body of a few sites but this is more annoying then dangerous AFAIK.
- charcircuit 8mo ago
  That's the benefit of Brave Browser. The YouTube Shorts blocking feature is built into the browser itself and is not from a third party.
n4bz0r 8mo ago
On the main page, shorts, as all the other videos, are served by the recommendation algorithm which should filter out general audience crap you'd see if you're not logged in or have view history disabled. You'd normally see the same stuff you're subscribed to there, plus a few random videos of cats. Maybe a wamen butt occasionally. Might as well hide the main page entirely if you're not that easily entertained. To be quite frank, the main page is such an echo chamber lately that I almost got myself unhooked from procrastinating on YouTube. On the search page, shorts are mostly a mixed bag, but you do occasionally get useful results. So what does this solve? Seems like a form of protest nobody important (those in power) cares about. Another thing is, I have, to my own surprise, discovered a few decent channels that I like, that post their videos in form of shorts exclusively. That's a somewhat new trend and mostly relevant to humor-related or music channels, though. Almost forgot to mention. YouTube recently added the scroll bar to the shorts so they aren't all that different from the other videos now.
- freehorse 8mo ago
  > Seems like a form of protest Filtering content is not "a form of protest", it is about deciding what content you want to see in your browser and what not. Youtube, even the paid version, does not offer much in terms of customising one's experience (imo the "algorithm" deciding what you should watch based on your history does not count as one) and shorts is a proven addictive pattern that one may not want to encounter online. It is fine if you like watching shorts, such filter lists are for those who do not want to watch shorts.
  - n4bz0r 8mo ago
    I might be wrong, but I don't think people really care about the addictiveness in the first place. As I see it, the shorts were irritating to see, mainly because they were heavily out of tune with the rest of recommendations. But they seem to have tuned them to be more in line with the rest of the videos. Being not that different from the rest of the videos one gets recommended, there is not much point in hiding them? I'm not exactly protecting shorts here. My point is, you can, of course, cut some of the videos from the feed, but the rest would still be affected by the same algorithm. You still don't get to filter anything, really. So what's the point? If addictiveness really is that much of a factor, I rest my case.
freehorse 8mo ago
In addition to the unhook addon that others also recommended and is great, I would also suggest, as an alternative, setting a redirection rule from "www.youtube.com/shorts/XYWZ" to "www.youtube.com/watch?v=XYWZ". This will play the short but in the classical youtube video (landscape) format, with no infinite scrolling, or replay or autoplay (assuming these are in general disabled), which takes away a big part of the addictive aspect of shorts.
- djsavvy 8mo ago
  That's an awesome idea — sometimes I really do want to watch a short but not in that interface. Do you know how to set this up in general?
  - ikaros02 8mo ago
    I use this addon for Firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/fi/firefox/addon/youtube-shorts-block https://addons.mozilla.org/fi/firefox/addon/youtube-shorts-b...
  - notpushkin 8mo ago
    Redirector to the rescue: https://einaregilsson.com/redirector/ https://einaregilsson.com/redirector/ Been using it for annoyances like Slack pushing you to their desktop app, or fixing links when sites change domains (ahem, Anna’s Archive).
    - djsavvy 8mo ago
      This is perfect, exactly what I was looking for. Thank you!
- netsharc 8mo ago
  Replacing "shorts" with "v" also works, so the resulting URL is www.youtube.com/v/XYWZ
  - freehorse 8mo ago
egze 8mo ago
Converted to 1Blocker format: https://gist.github.com/egze/7f672ebebecde0546ddb928e7f3adb4a https://gist.github.com/egze/7f672ebebecde0546ddb928e7f3adb4...
tobiasdorge 8mo ago
was able to get these added to ublock origin lite, which works in chrome; just paste the content directly into the custom filter settings.
- deepfriedrice 8mo ago
  same. hopefully it doesn't change frequently
ErrorNoBrain 8mo ago
Blocktube extension does this with just a checkmark can also hide other things
susam 8mo ago
I wrote this little quick and dirty userscript for myself sometime back: // ==UserScript== // @name No Shorts // @match https://www.youtube.com/shorts/* // @match https://www.facebook.com/reel/* // ==/UserScript== window.document.body.innerHTML = '' This isn't as comprehensive as the uBlock filter but it has worked pretty well for me so far.
- susam 8mo ago
  Here is another one I found in my personal userscripts. I believe this script is more effective than my previous one because it prevents recommendations for Shorts or other videos from being shown. // ==UserScript== // @name No YT Sidebar and Shorts // @match https://www.youtube.com/* // ==/UserScript== function noYTSidebar () { const element = document.getElementById('secondary') if (element === null) { window.setTimeout(noYTSidebar, 1000) return } element.getElementById('secondary').style.display = 'none' } function noYTShorts () { const elements = document.querySelectorAll('ytd-rich-shelf-renderer') if (elements.length === 0) { window.setTimeout(noYTShorts, 1000) return } for (e of document.querySelectorAll('ytd-rich-shelf-renderer')) { e.style.display = 'none' } } noYTSidebar() noYTShorts()
  - I_like_tomato 8mo ago
    This is what I used, they have field `is-short`, https://github.com/epicseven-cup/remove-youtube-short/blob/main/src/content.ts#L3-L23 https://github.com/epicseven-cup/remove-youtube-short/blob/m... https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/remove-youtube-short/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/remove-youtub...
    - susam 8mo ago
      Thanks for sharing. I realised I have several userscripts I've written over time to tackle web browsing distractions. I found another one and this is probably the most effective for me because it hides Shorts at the CSS level. That means I don't need to rely on setTimeout(..., 1000) to catch elements that get inserted dynamically after the page loads. (function () { const css = ` #secondary { display: none } .ytd-rich-shelf-renderer { display: none } ` const style = document.createElement('style') style.textContent = css document.head.appendChild(style) })()
deleted 8mo ago
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throwaway613746 8mo ago
[dead]
deleted 8mo ago
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nomilk 8mo ago
I've noticed other junk like 'games' and ads for paid 'premium' content getting through uBlock's filter list. Hope those are added to the list too. I used uBlock's element zapper feature to block the youtube logo on top left, because it's often animated and always distracting (I desperately need fewer distractions when using youtube, not more, even if minor).
inv 8mo ago
Canceled YouTube subscription and deleted the app. Don't miss it, surprisingly.
platevoltage 8mo ago
I really don't mind shorts, but I want to be the one that chooses to watch them.
jbjbjbjb 8mo ago
I use Brave to watch YouTube. I was pleasantly surprised that they had so many YouTube related features, blocking shorts is one of them.
- jahnu 8mo ago
  Same. One I want though is for it to remember to not auto-preview videos. YouTube refuses to remember this setting.
everyone 8mo ago
I have so many freakin' rules in ublock just to make youtube's UI acceptable
drnick1 8mo ago
I can confirm this works great, you are back to a mid 2010s kind of homescreen without any of the modern cellphone format crap.
asdff 8mo ago
Just take the next step and stop going to youtube entirely, and pull the video from the url.
paulpauper 8mo ago
Unpopular opinion, but I like youtube shorts. No ads, no rambling, no product placement. it forces brevity and getting to point. it is how youtube should be.
eek2121 8mo ago
I know this won't help much, however, FreeTube can help with this. Yes, it is a standalone app, however... Also, if you a Google/Youtube employee, rubbing your hands together, making fun of folks, and generally thinking negative thoughts, take it from a former veteran software engineer/manager (never had the desire to move up the ladder, and I am disabled now thanks to a tragic accident): There are a ton of negative comments about your UX, even from paid users. Nobody likes your shit. They only tolerate it because you currently have a monopoly. That will not always be the case. You are failing yourself, your job, and your users. Learn to put those users first. If Google had stuck to that early on, uBlock Origin wouldn't exist. I know everyone at Google is tone deaf, so let me put this another way: Someone is ALWAYS left holding the bag. It could be you, the lowly programmer, or it could be you, the lowly manager. It could also be anyone in C-Suite. Once the numbers don't align with what investors want to see, someone will be blamed. As we reach the top of an AI bubble, those at the top are going to want to find a way to blame others down below, that means you will likely take the hit.
phony-account 8mo ago
I’m paying over 40 dollars a month for YouTube but it doesn’t allow me to choose almost anything of what I see, despite trying hard to fine-tune my recommendations. I can’t permanently turn off shorts - and this I find personally insulting. It really feels like encountering a drug dealer outside my house every time I come home, always expecting me to cave and try some of that good smack. But apart from ignoring me when I say I’m not interested in whole genres of ‘fun’ videos, it also resets the streaming quality to the lowest setting every single day and then hides the quality setting deep inside a menu with several fiddly clicks. And this isn’t for my benefit of course: I can easily stream 4K video to my screens. It’s to shave a few cents off each stream and max the gouging.
- testfrequency 8mo ago
  YT is desperate for me to engage with rage bait news, and I’m not biting. It’s so god damn annoying, regardless of how often I choose to ignore channels or don’t suggest feedback. All they care about is vote time…give me content I want to view! Also, in the evenings, my timeline gets weirdly paranoid phobia centric, like deep insecurities people live with that are triggering and keep you up late. It’s so obvious YT is doing this to try and bait me into watching these deeply emotional and personal content, and again, ignoring it and providing feedback seems to do nothing to my feed. I hate it.
  - sandworm101 8mo ago
    Do not give them the satisfaction. Dont like videos and never comment on anything. The videos are the bait. The comments sections are the trap. Use youtube as a multi-channel TV. Keep it a one-way stream of data. Give them nothing beyond the unavoidable knowledge of what you watch.
    - throwawayqqq11 8mo ago
      I am waiting for the day when they permanently turn off the channels rss feeds. Recently, after years of smooth sailing, they had a couple of outages, first selective, with only about 50% of my feeds effected and yesterday again with 100%, returning 404s. I am concerned given this development and alphabets apparent plan to kill as much interop as possible. For the uninitiated, afaik, some feedreaders can auto discover the rss url when you add the channels url. Otherwise you have to manually search the channel page source for 'RSS' or 'channel_id='.
nmaleki 8mo ago
Shorts seem good to me, but only when watched at 3x
MrDresden 8mo ago
While I use uBlock to skip the ads, I think unhook.app does a better job of hiding the actual elements on YouTube.
calmbonsai 8mo ago
Do not use YouTube to consume YouTube content. FreeTube and yt-dlp are your friends.
- notpushkin 8mo ago
  I used to use Invidious but it was breaking too often. Nowadays, I just open YouTube in a private window, or use yt-dlp from time to time to watch something later offline.
venusenvy47 8mo ago
I'm curious if anyone knows of something like SponsorBlock or a UBlock list, that can flag tje onslaught of AI videos that are appearing. I find those crappy videos worse than the ads and the shorts.
- aucisson_masque 8mo ago
  I got an idea. We could use some kind of voting system where user can upvote or downvote YouTube videos, and it shows the rating when someone click on it. It could be as simple as 2 buttons and a percentage bar right under the video, on the right, close to the dislike button that does nothing lol.
  - venusenvy47 8mo ago
    This is basically what Sponsorsblock does - it takes crowdsourced inputs to update the info for each video, then automatically skips the parts of the video that we want to avoid. "AIblock" could simply add some indicator of videos to ignore, or maybe just hide them from me.
doctor_blood 8mo ago
I can't even stand to visit YT without the combo of Blocktube/Unhook/uBlock Origin/SponsorBlock/Return YouTube Dislike. (Some people may also find Clickbait Remover useful.) Blocktube is a godsend; it adds a context menu for blocking videos/channels, and you can block vids/channels/comments based on a regex or keywords (e.g. transparently remove every 'minecraft' or 'roblox' vid, or remove every comment with 'Telegram' in it). It even removes vids before the DOM rendering, so blocked vids don't show up as empty title cards or blank spaces. Unhook lets you independently toggle visibility of the home feed, the rec sidebar, endscreen recs, comments, shorts, and the unrelated BS they ad to search results. (The latest YT update lets endscreen recs slip through again; be sure to add youtube.com##.html5-video-player.ended-mode .ytp-fullscreen-grid to your ublock filter to get rid of them again.) Surprisingly YouTube still generates a feed for every channel's video page, so I just add channels to my RSS reader for updates instead of bothering with the increasingly flaky subscriptions page. (If they ever break this or yt-dlp I'm not even going to bother with YT in the future.) Remember when Google exec Prabhakar Raghavan (the man who previously ran Yahoo search into the ground) made Google Search worse so they could serve more ads? This is the YouTube philosophy; make the platform worse to drive 'engagement', completely ignoring the second and third order effects of their 'optimizations'. Want to search by upload date? Sorry, we removed that! Have some slop! Want to look for a video? Here's a bunch of unrelated bullshit instead - have you tried some slop? Also, have some ads. The experience for creators is even worse. The recommendation algorithm and monetization policies change every month and YT conveniently gets to collect all the ad money if you've been demonitized. They're shoving a bajillion AI tools down creator's throats and even editing videos after they've been uploaded. In the end, YouTube caters to advertisers. You're just the product. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a bot shoving slop in a human's face -- forever.
- temp1514351 8mo ago
  Google Plus already killed the coolness of YouTube long ago. There isn't much point in browsing there anymore, except maybe for music.
etothepii 8mo ago
I would pay for YouTube premium again if I could switch off shorts. I actually stopped paying for premium to make YouTube less appealing.
- tecoholic 8mo ago
  Another technique is to turn off watch history. As soon as you do that, you get a blank page on YouTube. It puts the decision making on the user to choose what to watch. I rarely get into the rage bait or shorts. It’s shown in search results and the sidebar. But at least, it’s not in the face when you open the website.
ekipan 8mo ago
Oh, it's a list you can add to your uBO. I thought it was a descriptive headline: "(The) uBlock filter list (is going) to hide ..." I only watch Youtube via browser now for both adblocking and my own custom userscripts, both on my laptop and my phone. A couple creators I watch mostly do shorts so I tolerate them but I wrote a userscript that changes all /shorts/<videoid> URLs into normal /watch?v=<videoid> to lessen the temptation to doomscroll.
I_like_tomato 8mo ago
As a user that doesn't use uBlock, I was also kind of sick of youtube shorts shoving into my eyes. I just made my own firefox plugins forcibly remove them as well. It is good to see the filter list here. Looks like I missed out on the mobile ones.
Phelinofist 8mo ago
I use the extension "Control Panel for YouTube" which also supports hiding shorts and much more
pooploop64 8mo ago
unlock is great. So many standalone extensions turn out to be a lot better simply as ublock filters. I would like one of these to block the community posts as well. I'm getting really tired of seeing screencaps of Twitter engagement bait from 8 years ago. There's one account that just won't go away, even now that I'm reporting it for spam when it comes up.
ragall 8mo ago
I suggest trying the "Enhancer for YouTube" extension.
bgro 8mo ago
There’s a lot of stupid shit garbage on the internet that needs more blocking and nobody’s doing anything about it. Aside from bad JavaScript and css garbage and other things that are obvious and still only slightly blocked by ubo, there’s entire swaths of categories that are going completely untouched. Every Reddit mod post is cancer for example. So is every pinned post and automod. 99% of email. Any story about farting or buttholes or diarrhea or any other child joke about how you were unable to be in control of your butthole. I don’t want to hear it and every single day there it is. Any pro-terrorism post from jihadist groups like maga, posts from other nations pretending to be Americans, posts asking people to explain a loaded joke they understand but are trying to get more views on or spread the topic about. Any ai video any video about crypto any fake news. There’s a lot of room for improvement. Even just detecting things like if a news article doesn’t actually contain information. It seems like we have a ton of areas we could be filtering out cancer a lot better.
- JKCalhoun 8mo ago
  Best I can come up with: people flag shit and it goes to a server, and like PiHole, anyone subscribed to that server will have the crap excised. I'm liking Apple's "Hide Distracting Items…" feature in Safari. Now if only everyone's audits could be shared, a consensus arrived at, then others could be spared having to spend time hiding-distracting-items themselves. A kind of HTML shadow banning?
  - Ylpertnodi 8mo ago
    > A kind of HTML shadow banning? A 'Proxomitron', of sorts.
akst 8mo ago
Auto video playback in Twitter/X isn’t much better especially on the mobile app. I realised this can be remedied by switching to the webapp. It’s a subpar user experience due to constraints of mobile web (and lack of investment by X) but it’s also likely why auto video playback rarely works, so it evens out. Is frustrating I have no control over it s as a paying user, same with hiding the blue checkmark
hk1337 8mo ago
Even works on safari iPhone, nice
ThrowawayTestr 8mo ago
I feel like I'm the only person on this site that likes shorts. I only see videos from interesting creators, mainly comedy skits.
dolomo 8mo ago
Also see brizz.xyz which allows you to make YouTube whitelists.
misterthp 8mo ago
this is soo good thanks !
tsoukase 8mo ago
Many stuff are addictive, some legal (smoking, gambling), some legal with prescription (drugs) and some illigal (opioids). Infinite scrolling, either video only (yt shorts) or mixed content lies in the first category. This is a war one fights by himself as law doesn't helps with gatekeeping. Any weapon that helps me is welcome. Filtering the content that whould otherwise polute my screen space and distract me from the useful content is desirable. In Homer Iliad, Ulysses ordered his sailors to tie him up in order to withstand the voice of Sirens, while they were wearing earplugs. Today we have uBlock.
- smw 8mo ago
  This reads like AI slop?
  - dqv 8mo ago
    > Many stuff are > polute Not at all. It's an organic comment.
  - jahsome 8mo ago
    ESL AI?
  - tsoukase 8mo ago
    Haha, I take it as a compliment for now. Being not a native English speaker and managing to tie an LLM is a little flattering. Besides, Sirens are mentioned in Odyssey.
  - lobsterthief 8mo ago
    It didn’t read like that to me, at all. Also, did you mean to ask a question? :)
maxxmod 8mo ago
[dead]
- vidyesh 8mo ago
  Looks great! But all the screenshots are of the settings. It would be nice to see what the end result is after enabling certain features.The preview is not the actual UX. I would like to see how will this tool change my youtube experience. The reason I like unhook is, it doesn't change or force me to learn new ways to use YouTube but just reduce it to just video viewing with no distractions and blocking all the addictive pulls.
  - maxxmod 8mo ago
    > It would be nice to see what the end result is after enabling certain features. The previews in the admin panel are meant to reflect the actual UI changes on YouTube. For example, if you enable Speed Control in the player, the control appears in the player preview. Settings are saved on the fly, and when you go to youtube.com you get the modified experience accordingly. On the website I only included a static demo, not an interactive one. Does that clarify your concern? Maxxmod is still in development but we already have functional alpha builds. If you’re interested in testing one and giving feedback, feel free to email me at maxxmod [at] proton.me. Thanks, Pablo.
- notpushkin 8mo ago
  Welcome to HN! Plugging your stuff is okay, but it’s generally frowned upon if you’re only here to sell something: > Please don't use HN primarily for promotion. It's ok to post your own stuff part of the time, but the primary use of the site should be for curiosity. – https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Perhaps you could just participate in the discussion for now, and do a Show HN later when you’re ready?
  - maxxmod 8mo ago
    You’re right, and I appreciate you pointing that out. I’m mainly looking for early feedback to validate the direction before launch, not trying to use HN purely as a marketing channel. I’ll participate in the discussion and, once it’s ready, do a proper Show HN. Thanks for the guidance.
ackyshake 8mo ago
Oh this is amazing, thank you! I tried to make my own but youtube's CSS is so complex, I gave up. I have no idea why they push shorts to me when I'm on my computer. But then again, I really cannot stand them, even on my phone. I also just discovered a way[1] to just get real videos from my youtube RSS feeds, free from shorts. Honestly it's been a joy to not have my RSS reader notify me for a old video republished as vertical. [1]: https://blog.amen6.com/blog/2025/01/no-shorts-please-hidden-youtube-rss-feed-urls/ https://blog.amen6.com/blog/2025/01/no-shorts-please-hidden-...
- susam 8mo ago
  The CSS is complex indeed. Moreover, the page renders the Shorts widgets after the page has completed loading, so JavaScript-based solutions need to exercise a little care in ensuring that it can hide the distracting elements after the page has loaded. Despite the complexity, I've found that just hiding all elements with the 'ytd-rich-shelf-renderer' class just works fine. For example: .ytd-rich-shelf-renderer { display: none } This single line of CSS seems to just work fine for me.
- deleted 8mo ago
  [deleted]
broof 8mo ago
For iPhone I use an extension called shorts blocker that does the same thing.
31337Logic 8mo ago
I swear I didn't even know one COULD pay for YouTube!! Why would you want to? They're are so many good front ends that block ALL that toxic garbage. Revamped still works, so does pipepipe, youpipe, noutube, etc.
- temp1514351 8mo ago
  People who watch on locked down devices
farazbabar 8mo ago
Oh this is great, any ideas on how to do this for Samsung and LG televisions?
- abdusco 8mo ago
  Set up a proxy and inject JS on the page?
vidyesh 8mo ago
You should look into filters setup by https://github.com/letsblockit/letsblockit https://github.com/letsblockit/letsblockit for YouTube. That was an ambitious project, sadly discontinued.
- i5heu 8mo ago
  The road to death with any OSS project is scope creep. I appreciate your comment though! Thanks :)
xhcuvuvyc 8mo ago
Thank you holy hell thank you
nikitau 8mo ago
Nice. I've also been doing this for a while too. I don't like to depend on a lot of addons, so I find the ublock only implementation of it quite elegant and fast. I also try to use filters nowadays to block other types of dark patterns (eg. Infinite scroll recommendations). It's surprising how much you can de-enshittify the modern corporate internet by just blocking tags with some css path filters.
globular-toast 8mo ago
Is there an explanation for why YouTube is hell bent on pushing Shorts to people, other than to get them addicted? There must be something we can do about these abusive arseholes. I hate that the number one business strategy right now is to make something addictive. This isn't good for us.
RRRA 8mo ago
I just installed a plug-in for that, shorts are pure brain rot which YouTube already mostly is ...
darkoob12 8mo ago
It's just the most horrible thing. The whole idea of YouTube for me was to control what you watch in comparison to traditional TV where they fed you what they wanted. I know people say that you should not click on it but we all how low times in our day that we have exhausted our brain.
orena 8mo ago
But what to do with android YouTube app ??
qwertox 8mo ago
A Tapermonkey script which redirects a short to the classic YT experience is somewhat more helpful, because sometimes there are interesting snippets in the Shorts. This lets you see the video but breaks you out of doomscrolling.
- edgartaor 8mo ago
  "Enhancer for YouTube" have that 'convert Shorts' option or hide them entirely.
zytoon 8mo ago
Wonder why their X account is suspended?!
FranklinJabar 8mo ago
Is there any way to get this to work outside of desktop and android? You can't pay me to watch videos on either.
piokoch 8mo ago
I would pay any money for ability to block for my kids chosen channels on youtube. For some reason this is not possible and worthless crap keeps being promoted there.
TyrunDemeg101 8mo ago
A nuclear option that's worked extremely well for me is going into Youtube's settings and disabling history. I no longer am even able to see shorts, they don't get suggested to me. However, this is an extreme nuclear option and also disables the entire 'Home' and for-you type content. You can search and watch videos, but it flips it so it is 100% intention driven. Which means discoverability and browsing is non-existent. You're still able to see your existing subscriptions but that's it. It's REALLY helped me disconnect from the addictive dopamine of the infinite, short type formats. YMMV
- caro_kann 8mo ago
  I think this is the best way of using Youtube if you're trying to avoid brain rot and doomscrolling. This way helped me alot and gives you full control over what you consume.
- LtWorf 8mo ago
  It doesn't break subscribed channels though so I just bookmarked that page as my youtube page.
- byproxy 8mo ago
  This is exactly what I’ve done for my Google settings after feeling more and more upset with what the Youtube homepage was showing me. Not so much in that it was necessarily contrary to what I may have wanted to watch, but more-so me thinking “My god.. is this what I’ve become?” I now much prefer to open Youtube (quasi)tabula rasa. I still have subscriptions set up so I can follow “vetted” accounts, but for other things I now rely on that intentionality. The one minor bummer is that Youtube won’t remember your spot in a video, say if you’re watching in your phone and want to continue on your desktop (or vice-versa). Not the biggest hassle to manually check the time and sync it up, though.
  - TyrunDemeg101 8mo ago
    Yea - the not remembering a spot in a video IS a slight inconvenience, but for me it's a small price to pay in order to not get sucked into HOURS thrown away chasing the next 'hit' of dopamine from shorts.
albert_e 8mo ago
anything that blocks the doom-scrolling mode on twitter videos? I dont see youtube shorts, have no login to instagram or tiktok, and stopped using facebook years ago; only social media i frequent is twitter -- and once i view a video in the feed, it hijacks my attention by auto scrolling to a new video. I burned a couple of evenings this way -- and I need to be more careful about this.
jahsome 8mo ago
They appear to have recently removed the "show fewer shorts options" in the app. I pay for premium and the idea I cannot remove them from the app even as part of that is absolutely infuriating.
arendtio 8mo ago
What bothers me most about YT is that it constantly plays videos with an AI-generated voice. In general, I like AI features and use AI daily to build prototypes, but this feature looks so stupid to me and feels so wrong. I have no problem with it being an option, but by default I just want to watch the videos with their original soundtracks. But instead YT decides that I should watch the videos with some mediocre AI translation... Maybe I could disable it using an account, but I still prefer not to have one when it's not necessary.
SamDc73 8mo ago
I switched from using YouTube to invidious mainly because they don't support shorts and blocked YouTube on the DNS level, it's a bit slower, but I know I won't be sucked into doom-scrolling
zhovnd 8mo ago
I like YT shorts.
- gardnr 8mo ago
  Not everyone has the brain chemistry to watch them in a healthy way. Google seems to be preying on that population by preventing people from disabling the feature; to make some quarterly charts look better.
h4kunamata 8mo ago
After dealing with lists like this for far too long, Google will find ways to block it. The best solution up to date is Brave Browser. They do provide their own "lists", you do not have access to it :) That is the beauty of it, you cannot, neither can big techs so it lasts longer. So far, Brave filter is the only one able to block Shorts and a lot of crappy from YT. No filter will do that, or will get blocked very soon until a new one is released. Everything is public, won't last!

1172 points by i5heu 8mo ago

I love you!

papichulo2023 8mo ago

Finally, tired of creating this custom filter in all my devices lol. I wish it would all automatically apply the "videos" filter as well.

teddyh 8mo ago

I prefer using RYS <https://lawrencehook.com/rys/ https://lawrencehook.com/rys/> which has this as a feature, but a lot more, too.

RicoElectrico 8mo ago

Legit question, do you guys get really bad Shorts recommendations? Mine aren't half bad (really more of the same as with regular videos) plus creators don't insert ad spots. I get it, TikTok-style scrolling is annoying, but the format has its merits. At least less yapping and more to the point.

7734128 8mo ago
It's 99% the interface, cluttered with useless garbage over the video, that I hate. I hate it so much that I couldn't even see the content hiding behind it, and don't really know what the recommendation is like.
- fc417fc802 8mo ago
  If you do want to watch one for whatever reason you can open it in the standard interface. The video IDs are neutral it's just the URL that determines which interface you get. Actually I guess a browser extension to redirect to a fixed up URL would resolve the problem entirely.
  - insin 8mo ago
    Control Panel for YouTube [1] lets you remove most of the clutter from the Shorts player UI, or redirect Shorts to the normal player (using YouTube's internal navigation if on desktop, so no full page reload) You'll have to disable hiding them first, as they're completly hidden by default [1] https://soitis.dev/control-panel-for-youtube https://soitis.dev/control-panel-for-youtube
StrangeSound 8mo ago
Mine are usually pretty bad. If I ever do see one that I like I catch myself flicking through way too many of them afterwards and I hate that. So I prefer to hide them entirely. I use YouTube Tweaks which has a lot of different customisation options. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/youtube-tweaks/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/youtube-tweak...
ssl-3 8mo ago
Nearly all of the video I watch is on horizontal screens. Whether I'm using a real computer or a BFT or an iPad or I'm watching a something with my pocket supercomputer while bored on a plane: It's horizontal. This is simply how I do it, how I have always done it, and how I am likely to always do it. YouTube Shorts aren't compatible with this viewing method. In addition: Nearly all of the videos I watch are longer than 3 minutes, and YouTube Shorts aren't compatible with this either. Whether I'm watching a video because I want to be entertained or to learn something new, I want to be involved with it and focused on it. I am very capable of making time to do so when it behooves me. --- Anyway, to answer your question: I have no idea if my YouTube Shorts recommendations are good or not good. I don't partake. I don't need empty, <3-minute dopamine hits in my life.
danny_codes 8mo ago
I reject addiction-designs on principle.
pigggg 8mo ago
I constantly get tik tok style everything everywhere all at once fever dream headache rapid edited clips. There's a difference between to the point and just being brain rot delivered with no background. Reminds me of happy hardcore techno - you can't really feel the bass because it's not getting enough time to reverberate.
themafia 8mo ago
It's a cesspool of ripped off videos, AI generated slop, and people doing a really jazzy reading of a wikipedia article. I mean, you can eat Doritos for dinner, and maybe you can convince yourself it's nutritionally sufficient, but it's still garbage.
hollerith 8mo ago
I avoid Shorts (and Tiktok) for the same reason I avoid stimulant drugs and video games: it depletes dopamine faster than regular YT videos (especially the somber kind of videos I mostly watch).
deleted 8mo ago
[deleted]
Brian_K_White 8mo ago
There are about a dozen reasons to hate shorts regardless of the content. Everyone else has listed a bunch already. Here's yet another, the pointlessly limited UI. There are no play controls to back, forward or scrub. You missed something? Hope it was near the beginning because while you can restart by reloading, you can't skip ahead. Want to pause at a particular spot to show your wife? You get to wait for the whole thing to play again from the start so you can hopefully pause it at the right spot. There was one important part? too bad, you can only replay the whole thing... And why? Even if you want to assume the case of some video that is actually legitimately only a couple minutes long, ok fine, but why the artificially stupid UI? There is no legitimate reason. It's pure user manipulation. It's the service calling the shots to do what it wants to get what it wants instead of giving you a service that does what you want to give you what you want. Even if you are paying them money There are all kinds of other problems, like I simply didn't ask for this. I don't care how great someone else thinks something is, or even if I would agree it's great if I asked for it. But anything that you don't want but can't avoid, and it's not the weather but something someone DOES have control over and is choosing to inflict on you over your expressed wishes, as a paying customer on top of all, is automatically intolerable. But in fact I don't agree they are great at all ever. It doesn't matter what the content is or who's making it, including people I like on topics I like. I want to say I don't have ADHD and don't want to develop it, but really idk I might actually have some level by the looks of all my unfinished projects, and even so, shorts make me feel like what people with adhd look and sound like from the outside. It's a hell existence. I don't understand how people can just willingly sit there and let these things feed them this constant stream of spastic hyper ephemeral shit. Even if I can understand how someone can fall into it unwittingly initially, how do they not realize what's happening to them after a while? Is everyone really so utterly unconscious?

quaintdev 8mo ago

Just pause watch history and it will disable shorts recommendation. The only shorts you will see will be from your subscribed channels.

jarvist 8mo ago
I've always had watch history off, but my searches now return a couple of pages of short form nonsense, before my actual results.
- malfist 8mo ago
  YouTube search is just broken. Has been for a long long long time. You get 3-4 relevant results and then it just shows you random unrelated crap.
  - daveguy 8mo ago
    It's not broken from Google's perspective. The results are just optimized for their ad revenue rather than your viewing preference. Even the engagement hooks don't care what your viewing preferences are - just what they've calculated to optimize watch potential * ad revenue.
    - themafia 8mo ago
      You've got to permanently block 1000s of "popular" channels. Then youtube starts working like it did in 2006 again.
  - asdff 8mo ago
    It is better to use google to search youtube via site:youtube.com operator.
    - visarga 8mo ago
      Better to use Gemini to search YT, you can just talk to it what you want, and see the videos right there in the chat window. I used this to find well targeted music, it can also review artists and discuss about them not just play music.

liquidise 8mo ago

Unhook[1] has been my go-to for this. Gives full customization over shorts, recommendations, comments, etc. 1a: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-recommended-videos/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-recom... 1b: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/unhook-remove-youtube-rec/khncfooichmfjbepaaaebmommgaepoid https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/unhook-remove-youtu...

henning 8mo ago
I clicked comments to say the same thing. Can recommend
Vingdoloras 8mo ago
Sadly, it hasn't been updated since 2024 and is slowly breaking. Haven't found a good replacement yet.
- insin 8mo ago
  I keep Control Panel for YouTube [1] up to date with the latest YouTube shenanigans. Most recently: restoring the Related sidebar layout with the giant thumbs, if you're not hiding them. Shorts are hidden and redirected if you land on one externally by default, and it _was_ also restoring the sort by Upload date filter UI, until YouTube went and killed that in the API ;_; [1] https://soitis.dev/control-panel-for-youtube https://soitis.dev/control-panel-for-youtube
  - chrsw 8mo ago
    YouTube killing he sort by upload date made me furious. I feel like the only fight back is boycotting.
  - encom 8mo ago
    >Remove the pink gradient from progress bars How do I do that without an entire addon? This pink gradient irritates me so much.

marcosscriven 8mo ago

I’m sure I’ve clicked “show fewer shorts” every single time it’s shown me shorts. It seems to make zero difference.

halyconWays 8mo ago
[flagged]
- ncr100 8mo ago
  Chafe them nipples. Seriously though, do any of our German / French compatriots here on HN have different experience of corporations, versus the USA's "maximizing profit" purpose, given the "corporate social responsibility" mandate of those countries? Greed (opportunism) is human and I wonder if that's "better" in the Germany or French corporate-world?
  - i5heu 8mo ago
    Mhhh although this is a bit OT it is also very interesting: Germany has unions and works council. It is required by law that companies allow works council to exist and if they exist they get certain rights. > In Germany, they serve two functions. The first is called co-determination, through which works councils elect members of the board of directors of German companies. The second is called participation, and means that works councils must be consulted about specific issues and have the right to make proposals to management. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Works_council#Germany https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Works_council#Germany ) Also Germany has good amounts of regulations for certain issues (sometimes too much regulation but oh well). And Germany has many options to participate in local and regional politics that prevent the worst offenders. But in the end a company is still a company that is forced to act in a way that maximizes it's profits. I think from my perspective we do not have such wild predator companies like you see them in the US but there are certainly a few very dubious things going on. Except maybe the gGmbH and Vereine (clubs) which are companies and semi company structures that must act for the common good and without profit interest. And one funny thing is that in Germany stock companies are required to act to the "best interests of the company" and not the "best interests of the stock holder" - in German law the company includes the worker, the future of the company and social aspects.

KellyCriterion 8mo ago

Is this really working on ALL shorts? And if I click on the panel "no more shorts", is this setting then applied continuously?

revolvingthrow 8mo ago
Nothing’s working on ALL shorts, not for long, because google shakes things up semi-frequently to jam shorts down everybody’s throats To solve it once and for all you’d probably want to extract the length of all displayed videos and hide all that fit within the short’s limits
- PaulDavisThe1st 8mo ago
  I have leechblock setup to block: youtube.com/shorts/* and that seems to block all viewing of shorts. It doesn't stop their inclusion in playlists/recommendations or on a given channel's page(s). Works for me.
- notpushkin 8mo ago
  Idk, I’m using a previous version of this list (the one it was forked from) and it works for me! Didn’t even realize it wasn’t updated.

modzu 8mo ago

i can't even get youtube to load with ublock.. theres a years old thread with hundreds of comments on the github -- what are people actually using today to preserve their sanity on youtube? edit: the issue with ublock is the black screen - sometimes the video loads after 10 or so seconds, sometimes it doesnt. i dont consider hiding the ad while still having to wait around for it to finsish playing behind an overlay the same as "blocking" :|

carlosjobim 8mo ago
Premium
- blondin 8mo ago
  yep, can confirm. we pay for the service, we use an ad-blocker and we are the ones affected. oh the irony... i now have ublock disabled for youtube.
hahn-kev 8mo ago
Works fine for me, FF Win11
flakes 8mo ago
Thats interesting. If you’re on Chrome I’d try out Firefox just to see. I haven’t had any issues for a long time.
chickensong 8mo ago
Still using ublock. Recently there's a delay starting vid sometimes, about 3 sec. I can deal with it.
fc417fc802 8mo ago
Using ublock and umatrix both on firefox with full tracking protection enabled. Don't recall ever having any issues with youtube. Sometimes an alert will pop up "see why you're experiencing playback interruptions" and it clicks through to a page about how this is due to my adblocking extension but the joke is on them because I don't recall it ever actually being interrupted. It's just this erroneous alert that occasionally pops up.

danny_codes 8mo ago

I’ve been using brave on mobile and it seems to work pretty well!

WadeGrimridge 8mo ago

yt neuter has this and much more: https://github.com/mchangrh/yt-neuter https://github.com/mchangrh/yt-neuter

iainctduncan 8mo ago

The easy way to do this is to hide them with custom CSS - Install Stylebot extension for your browser - make an entry for youtube.com - enter this css: .shortsLockupViewModelHost { display: none} Bam, no more shorts.

deleted 8mo ago
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Hoodedcrow 8mo ago
To be fair, Ublock Origin is a lot more common, and the less extensions the better, so or a lot of people this would be the better way.
- 65 8mo ago
  You can also just use Tamper Monkey (though you need to add a script called Trusted Type Helper in order to inject CSS into YouTube). I used to use Stylebot but I switched everything over to Tamper Monkey so all my CSS and non CSS related scripts would be in one place. Tamper Monkey/Grease Monkey scripts are very portable too, I use my scripts in Safari on iOS via the UserScripts extension.
brycewray 8mo ago
Stylebot is no longer actively developed, but the similar (and open-source) Stylus extension is. Repo: https://github.com/openstyles/stylus https://github.com/openstyles/stylus Chrome extension: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/stylus/clngdbkpkpeebahjckkjfobafhncgmne https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/stylus/clngdbkpkpe... Firefox extension: https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/styl-us/ https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/styl-us/

autoexec 8mo ago

That takes care of the browser. Now I just need a way to filter out short videos in NewPipe (and ideally a way to specify that I only want very long ones)

Brian_K_White 8mo ago
And Roku. This is one of the several reasons I always react almost violently whenever someone tries to be smarmy in any threads about adblockers on youtube, trying to say that paying for youtube makes everything good the honest way. I do in fact pay for youtube and have for like 15 years or more, and it still sucks for a variety of reasons. "why pay then?" for the same reason I would pay to have 8 of my fingernails pulled out instead of all 10.

larsmaxfield 8mo ago

I read this as "The default uBlock filter list will change to hide all YouTube Shorts".

Brian_K_White 8mo ago
Don't know why you're downvoted. It's exactly a 50/50 likely way to parse it.

b00ty4breakfast 8mo ago

I've been using invidious for a while now but I remember I had blocked all recommends and suggestions on YT so I never saw shorts anyways (I know the recommend block was thru ublock but I can't remember if I'd blocked suggestions through YT options or if that was also a ublock filter). Also a great way to avoid mindless feed-surfing. I only watched videos from subs or that I have specifically searched for rather than getting sucked into the algo vortex.

digiown 8mo ago

Daily reminder that these tools are made possible by the power of general purpose computing, and corporate interests want to take it away. In a hypothetical future not too far from us where your devices become "trusted", you will have to view whatever they want you to see, with no recourse like blocking ads or undesirable content.

Tade0 8mo ago
Then I shall not look at it at all. Some months ago Facebook gave me the "ads vs payment" ultimatum. I closed the tab and didn't log into Facebook since.
- digiown 8mo ago
  That's good, but everyone has only a limited amount of social capital to refuse popular things. School teachers, which are essentially agents of the government, often make your children watch Youtube videos, for example.
  - temp1514351 8mo ago
    Yeah like, I went to middle/high school 2008-2014, when Facebook was so popular that it's kinda hard to imagine today. I didn't have one. At some point I was so out of the loop that nobody even told me we had a freshman dance. In hindsight, could've just used it for a few minutes a week, so that's what I did in college. Also have a burner Twitter just because that was the only damn way to contact the DMV in 2020.
- temp1514351 8mo ago
  What's the "ads vs payment" ultimatum, they block ad-blockers? Occasionally someone sends me a link there, and it never bothers me for having uBO.
  - Tade0 8mo ago
    Basically this: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-67226394 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-67226394 It's a region-locked subscription available in the EU and a few other countries. Before that they were intensifying efforts to derail adblockers, which already made the site painful to use (and, ironically, easier drop entirely). Personally I had issues loading the feed and posting comments, but until it occurred to me to disable uBlock for a moment, I was chalking it up to "move fast and break things" (emphasis on the latter).

chaps 8mo ago

Anyone have any similar uBlock filter lists like this?

thoughtjunkie 8mo ago
I'm also looking for a blocklist for X/Twitter that can remove the "who to follow", News sections, etc.
- insin 8mo ago
  Not a blocklist, but for anyone who wants this, Control Panel for Twitter [1] can hide most things you'd want to hide on Twitter. The latest version adds a way to keep using the Dim dark mode variant theme they recently removed. [1] https://soitis.dev/control-panel-for-twitter https://soitis.dev/control-panel-for-twitter
  - thoughtjunkie 8mo ago
    This is great, thanks
cmvincen 8mo ago
I have some lists [1] I use to hide YouTube's constant recommendations of things I've already watched. They also hide previously watched music videos, which may be a downside. 1. https://caleb-vincent.io/post/2025-10-01_youtube-filters/#just-the-filters https://caleb-vincent.io/post/2025-10-01_youtube-filters/#ju...

_cs2017_ 8mo ago

is there anything that might work for the YT app on the Android?

sciencesama 8mo ago

Wish we could use this as a proxy for phones that connect to internet !

bkjlblh 8mo ago

is there a supply chain attack possible? What if some time later this list gets updated?

i5heu 8mo ago
I will update it later down the line as YT changes its layout and for bug fixes... but i think this was not what your question. I don't think that something super bad can happen with these uBlock filter, they will sanitize the filter heavily. Maybe a potential attack vector for these lists in general is to hide the body of a few sites but this is more annoying then dangerous AFAIK.
charcircuit 8mo ago
That's the benefit of Brave Browser. The YouTube Shorts blocking feature is built into the browser itself and is not from a third party.

n4bz0r 8mo ago

On the main page, shorts, as all the other videos, are served by the recommendation algorithm which should filter out general audience crap you'd see if you're not logged in or have view history disabled. You'd normally see the same stuff you're subscribed to there, plus a few random videos of cats. Maybe a wamen butt occasionally. Might as well hide the main page entirely if you're not that easily entertained. To be quite frank, the main page is such an echo chamber lately that I almost got myself unhooked from procrastinating on YouTube. On the search page, shorts are mostly a mixed bag, but you do occasionally get useful results. So what does this solve? Seems like a form of protest nobody important (those in power) cares about. Another thing is, I have, to my own surprise, discovered a few decent channels that I like, that post their videos in form of shorts exclusively. That's a somewhat new trend and mostly relevant to humor-related or music channels, though. Almost forgot to mention. YouTube recently added the scroll bar to the shorts so they aren't all that different from the other videos now.

freehorse 8mo ago
> Seems like a form of protest Filtering content is not "a form of protest", it is about deciding what content you want to see in your browser and what not. Youtube, even the paid version, does not offer much in terms of customising one's experience (imo the "algorithm" deciding what you should watch based on your history does not count as one) and shorts is a proven addictive pattern that one may not want to encounter online. It is fine if you like watching shorts, such filter lists are for those who do not want to watch shorts.
- n4bz0r 8mo ago
  I might be wrong, but I don't think people really care about the addictiveness in the first place. As I see it, the shorts were irritating to see, mainly because they were heavily out of tune with the rest of recommendations. But they seem to have tuned them to be more in line with the rest of the videos. Being not that different from the rest of the videos one gets recommended, there is not much point in hiding them? I'm not exactly protecting shorts here. My point is, you can, of course, cut some of the videos from the feed, but the rest would still be affected by the same algorithm. You still don't get to filter anything, really. So what's the point? If addictiveness really is that much of a factor, I rest my case.

freehorse 8mo ago

In addition to the unhook addon that others also recommended and is great, I would also suggest, as an alternative, setting a redirection rule from "www.youtube.com/shorts/XYWZ" to "www.youtube.com/watch?v=XYWZ". This will play the short but in the classical youtube video (landscape) format, with no infinite scrolling, or replay or autoplay (assuming these are in general disabled), which takes away a big part of the addictive aspect of shorts.

djsavvy 8mo ago
That's an awesome idea — sometimes I really do want to watch a short but not in that interface. Do you know how to set this up in general?
- ikaros02 8mo ago
  I use this addon for Firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/fi/firefox/addon/youtube-shorts-block https://addons.mozilla.org/fi/firefox/addon/youtube-shorts-b...
- notpushkin 8mo ago
  Redirector to the rescue: https://einaregilsson.com/redirector/ https://einaregilsson.com/redirector/ Been using it for annoyances like Slack pushing you to their desktop app, or fixing links when sites change domains (ahem, Anna’s Archive).
  - djsavvy 8mo ago
    This is perfect, exactly what I was looking for. Thank you!
netsharc 8mo ago
Replacing "shorts" with "v" also works, so the resulting URL is www.youtube.com/v/XYWZ
- freehorse 8mo ago

egze 8mo ago

Converted to 1Blocker format: https://gist.github.com/egze/7f672ebebecde0546ddb928e7f3adb4a https://gist.github.com/egze/7f672ebebecde0546ddb928e7f3adb4...

tobiasdorge 8mo ago

was able to get these added to ublock origin lite, which works in chrome; just paste the content directly into the custom filter settings.

deepfriedrice 8mo ago
same. hopefully it doesn't change frequently

ErrorNoBrain 8mo ago

Blocktube extension does this with just a checkmark can also hide other things

susam 8mo ago

I wrote this little quick and dirty userscript for myself sometime back: // ==UserScript== // @name No Shorts // @match https://www.youtube.com/shorts/* // @match https://www.facebook.com/reel/* // ==/UserScript== window.document.body.innerHTML = '' This isn't as comprehensive as the uBlock filter but it has worked pretty well for me so far.

susam 8mo ago
Here is another one I found in my personal userscripts. I believe this script is more effective than my previous one because it prevents recommendations for Shorts or other videos from being shown. // ==UserScript== // @name No YT Sidebar and Shorts // @match https://www.youtube.com/* // ==/UserScript== function noYTSidebar () { const element = document.getElementById('secondary') if (element === null) { window.setTimeout(noYTSidebar, 1000) return } element.getElementById('secondary').style.display = 'none' } function noYTShorts () { const elements = document.querySelectorAll('ytd-rich-shelf-renderer') if (elements.length === 0) { window.setTimeout(noYTShorts, 1000) return } for (e of document.querySelectorAll('ytd-rich-shelf-renderer')) { e.style.display = 'none' } } noYTSidebar() noYTShorts()
- I_like_tomato 8mo ago
  This is what I used, they have field `is-short`, https://github.com/epicseven-cup/remove-youtube-short/blob/main/src/content.ts#L3-L23 https://github.com/epicseven-cup/remove-youtube-short/blob/m... https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/remove-youtube-short/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/remove-youtub...
  - susam 8mo ago
    Thanks for sharing. I realised I have several userscripts I've written over time to tackle web browsing distractions. I found another one and this is probably the most effective for me because it hides Shorts at the CSS level. That means I don't need to rely on setTimeout(..., 1000) to catch elements that get inserted dynamically after the page loads. (function () { const css = ` #secondary { display: none } .ytd-rich-shelf-renderer { display: none } ` const style = document.createElement('style') style.textContent = css document.head.appendChild(style) })()

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nomilk 8mo ago

I've noticed other junk like 'games' and ads for paid 'premium' content getting through uBlock's filter list. Hope those are added to the list too. I used uBlock's element zapper feature to block the youtube logo on top left, because it's often animated and always distracting (I desperately need fewer distractions when using youtube, not more, even if minor).

inv 8mo ago

Canceled YouTube subscription and deleted the app. Don't miss it, surprisingly.

platevoltage 8mo ago

I really don't mind shorts, but I want to be the one that chooses to watch them.

jbjbjbjb 8mo ago

I use Brave to watch YouTube. I was pleasantly surprised that they had so many YouTube related features, blocking shorts is one of them.

jahnu 8mo ago
Same. One I want though is for it to remember to not auto-preview videos. YouTube refuses to remember this setting.

everyone 8mo ago

I have so many freakin' rules in ublock just to make youtube's UI acceptable

drnick1 8mo ago

I can confirm this works great, you are back to a mid 2010s kind of homescreen without any of the modern cellphone format crap.

asdff 8mo ago

Just take the next step and stop going to youtube entirely, and pull the video from the url.

paulpauper 8mo ago

Unpopular opinion, but I like youtube shorts. No ads, no rambling, no product placement. it forces brevity and getting to point. it is how youtube should be.

eek2121 8mo ago

I know this won't help much, however, FreeTube can help with this. Yes, it is a standalone app, however... Also, if you a Google/Youtube employee, rubbing your hands together, making fun of folks, and generally thinking negative thoughts, take it from a former veteran software engineer/manager (never had the desire to move up the ladder, and I am disabled now thanks to a tragic accident): There are a ton of negative comments about your UX, even from paid users. Nobody likes your shit. They only tolerate it because you currently have a monopoly. That will not always be the case. You are failing yourself, your job, and your users. Learn to put those users first. If Google had stuck to that early on, uBlock Origin wouldn't exist. I know everyone at Google is tone deaf, so let me put this another way: Someone is ALWAYS left holding the bag. It could be you, the lowly programmer, or it could be you, the lowly manager. It could also be anyone in C-Suite. Once the numbers don't align with what investors want to see, someone will be blamed. As we reach the top of an AI bubble, those at the top are going to want to find a way to blame others down below, that means you will likely take the hit.

phony-account 8mo ago

I’m paying over 40 dollars a month for YouTube but it doesn’t allow me to choose almost anything of what I see, despite trying hard to fine-tune my recommendations. I can’t permanently turn off shorts - and this I find personally insulting. It really feels like encountering a drug dealer outside my house every time I come home, always expecting me to cave and try some of that good smack. But apart from ignoring me when I say I’m not interested in whole genres of ‘fun’ videos, it also resets the streaming quality to the lowest setting every single day and then hides the quality setting deep inside a menu with several fiddly clicks. And this isn’t for my benefit of course: I can easily stream 4K video to my screens. It’s to shave a few cents off each stream and max the gouging.

testfrequency 8mo ago
YT is desperate for me to engage with rage bait news, and I’m not biting. It’s so god damn annoying, regardless of how often I choose to ignore channels or don’t suggest feedback. All they care about is vote time…give me content I want to view! Also, in the evenings, my timeline gets weirdly paranoid phobia centric, like deep insecurities people live with that are triggering and keep you up late. It’s so obvious YT is doing this to try and bait me into watching these deeply emotional and personal content, and again, ignoring it and providing feedback seems to do nothing to my feed. I hate it.
- sandworm101 8mo ago
  Do not give them the satisfaction. Dont like videos and never comment on anything. The videos are the bait. The comments sections are the trap. Use youtube as a multi-channel TV. Keep it a one-way stream of data. Give them nothing beyond the unavoidable knowledge of what you watch.
  - throwawayqqq11 8mo ago
    I am waiting for the day when they permanently turn off the channels rss feeds. Recently, after years of smooth sailing, they had a couple of outages, first selective, with only about 50% of my feeds effected and yesterday again with 100%, returning 404s. I am concerned given this development and alphabets apparent plan to kill as much interop as possible. For the uninitiated, afaik, some feedreaders can auto discover the rss url when you add the channels url. Otherwise you have to manually search the channel page source for 'RSS' or 'channel_id='.

nmaleki 8mo ago

Shorts seem good to me, but only when watched at 3x

MrDresden 8mo ago

While I use uBlock to skip the ads, I think unhook.app does a better job of hiding the actual elements on YouTube.

calmbonsai 8mo ago

Do not use YouTube to consume YouTube content. FreeTube and yt-dlp are your friends.

notpushkin 8mo ago
I used to use Invidious but it was breaking too often. Nowadays, I just open YouTube in a private window, or use yt-dlp from time to time to watch something later offline.

venusenvy47 8mo ago

I'm curious if anyone knows of something like SponsorBlock or a UBlock list, that can flag tje onslaught of AI videos that are appearing. I find those crappy videos worse than the ads and the shorts.

aucisson_masque 8mo ago
I got an idea. We could use some kind of voting system where user can upvote or downvote YouTube videos, and it shows the rating when someone click on it. It could be as simple as 2 buttons and a percentage bar right under the video, on the right, close to the dislike button that does nothing lol.
- venusenvy47 8mo ago
  This is basically what Sponsorsblock does - it takes crowdsourced inputs to update the info for each video, then automatically skips the parts of the video that we want to avoid. "AIblock" could simply add some indicator of videos to ignore, or maybe just hide them from me.

doctor_blood 8mo ago

I can't even stand to visit YT without the combo of Blocktube/Unhook/uBlock Origin/SponsorBlock/Return YouTube Dislike. (Some people may also find Clickbait Remover useful.) Blocktube is a godsend; it adds a context menu for blocking videos/channels, and you can block vids/channels/comments based on a regex or keywords (e.g. transparently remove every 'minecraft' or 'roblox' vid, or remove every comment with 'Telegram' in it). It even removes vids before the DOM rendering, so blocked vids don't show up as empty title cards or blank spaces. Unhook lets you independently toggle visibility of the home feed, the rec sidebar, endscreen recs, comments, shorts, and the unrelated BS they ad to search results. (The latest YT update lets endscreen recs slip through again; be sure to add youtube.com##.html5-video-player.ended-mode .ytp-fullscreen-grid to your ublock filter to get rid of them again.) Surprisingly YouTube still generates a feed for every channel's video page, so I just add channels to my RSS reader for updates instead of bothering with the increasingly flaky subscriptions page. (If they ever break this or yt-dlp I'm not even going to bother with YT in the future.) Remember when Google exec Prabhakar Raghavan (the man who previously ran Yahoo search into the ground) made Google Search worse so they could serve more ads? This is the YouTube philosophy; make the platform worse to drive 'engagement', completely ignoring the second and third order effects of their 'optimizations'. Want to search by upload date? Sorry, we removed that! Have some slop! Want to look for a video? Here's a bunch of unrelated bullshit instead - have you tried some slop? Also, have some ads. The experience for creators is even worse. The recommendation algorithm and monetization policies change every month and YT conveniently gets to collect all the ad money if you've been demonitized. They're shoving a bajillion AI tools down creator's throats and even editing videos after they've been uploaded. In the end, YouTube caters to advertisers. You're just the product. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a bot shoving slop in a human's face -- forever.

temp1514351 8mo ago
Google Plus already killed the coolness of YouTube long ago. There isn't much point in browsing there anymore, except maybe for music.

etothepii 8mo ago

I would pay for YouTube premium again if I could switch off shorts. I actually stopped paying for premium to make YouTube less appealing.

tecoholic 8mo ago
Another technique is to turn off watch history. As soon as you do that, you get a blank page on YouTube. It puts the decision making on the user to choose what to watch. I rarely get into the rage bait or shorts. It’s shown in search results and the sidebar. But at least, it’s not in the face when you open the website.

ekipan 8mo ago

Oh, it's a list you can add to your uBO. I thought it was a descriptive headline: "(The) uBlock filter list (is going) to hide ..." I only watch Youtube via browser now for both adblocking and my own custom userscripts, both on my laptop and my phone. A couple creators I watch mostly do shorts so I tolerate them but I wrote a userscript that changes all /shorts/<videoid> URLs into normal /watch?v=<videoid> to lessen the temptation to doomscroll.

I_like_tomato 8mo ago

As a user that doesn't use uBlock, I was also kind of sick of youtube shorts shoving into my eyes. I just made my own firefox plugins forcibly remove them as well. It is good to see the filter list here. Looks like I missed out on the mobile ones.

Phelinofist 8mo ago

I use the extension "Control Panel for YouTube" which also supports hiding shorts and much more

pooploop64 8mo ago

unlock is great. So many standalone extensions turn out to be a lot better simply as ublock filters. I would like one of these to block the community posts as well. I'm getting really tired of seeing screencaps of Twitter engagement bait from 8 years ago. There's one account that just won't go away, even now that I'm reporting it for spam when it comes up.

ragall 8mo ago

I suggest trying the "Enhancer for YouTube" extension.

bgro 8mo ago

There’s a lot of stupid shit garbage on the internet that needs more blocking and nobody’s doing anything about it. Aside from bad JavaScript and css garbage and other things that are obvious and still only slightly blocked by ubo, there’s entire swaths of categories that are going completely untouched. Every Reddit mod post is cancer for example. So is every pinned post and automod. 99% of email. Any story about farting or buttholes or diarrhea or any other child joke about how you were unable to be in control of your butthole. I don’t want to hear it and every single day there it is. Any pro-terrorism post from jihadist groups like maga, posts from other nations pretending to be Americans, posts asking people to explain a loaded joke they understand but are trying to get more views on or spread the topic about. Any ai video any video about crypto any fake news. There’s a lot of room for improvement. Even just detecting things like if a news article doesn’t actually contain information. It seems like we have a ton of areas we could be filtering out cancer a lot better.

JKCalhoun 8mo ago
Best I can come up with: people flag shit and it goes to a server, and like PiHole, anyone subscribed to that server will have the crap excised. I'm liking Apple's "Hide Distracting Items…" feature in Safari. Now if only everyone's audits could be shared, a consensus arrived at, then others could be spared having to spend time hiding-distracting-items themselves. A kind of HTML shadow banning?
- Ylpertnodi 8mo ago
  > A kind of HTML shadow banning? A 'Proxomitron', of sorts.

akst 8mo ago

Auto video playback in Twitter/X isn’t much better especially on the mobile app. I realised this can be remedied by switching to the webapp. It’s a subpar user experience due to constraints of mobile web (and lack of investment by X) but it’s also likely why auto video playback rarely works, so it evens out. Is frustrating I have no control over it s as a paying user, same with hiding the blue checkmark

hk1337 8mo ago

Even works on safari iPhone, nice

ThrowawayTestr 8mo ago

I feel like I'm the only person on this site that likes shorts. I only see videos from interesting creators, mainly comedy skits.

dolomo 8mo ago

Also see brizz.xyz which allows you to make YouTube whitelists.

misterthp 8mo ago

this is soo good thanks !

tsoukase 8mo ago

Many stuff are addictive, some legal (smoking, gambling), some legal with prescription (drugs) and some illigal (opioids). Infinite scrolling, either video only (yt shorts) or mixed content lies in the first category. This is a war one fights by himself as law doesn't helps with gatekeeping. Any weapon that helps me is welcome. Filtering the content that whould otherwise polute my screen space and distract me from the useful content is desirable. In Homer Iliad, Ulysses ordered his sailors to tie him up in order to withstand the voice of Sirens, while they were wearing earplugs. Today we have uBlock.

smw 8mo ago
This reads like AI slop?
- dqv 8mo ago
  > Many stuff are > polute Not at all. It's an organic comment.
- jahsome 8mo ago
  ESL AI?
- tsoukase 8mo ago
  Haha, I take it as a compliment for now. Being not a native English speaker and managing to tie an LLM is a little flattering. Besides, Sirens are mentioned in Odyssey.
- lobsterthief 8mo ago
  It didn’t read like that to me, at all. Also, did you mean to ask a question? :)

maxxmod 8mo ago

[dead]

vidyesh 8mo ago
Looks great! But all the screenshots are of the settings. It would be nice to see what the end result is after enabling certain features.The preview is not the actual UX. I would like to see how will this tool change my youtube experience. The reason I like unhook is, it doesn't change or force me to learn new ways to use YouTube but just reduce it to just video viewing with no distractions and blocking all the addictive pulls.
- maxxmod 8mo ago
  > It would be nice to see what the end result is after enabling certain features. The previews in the admin panel are meant to reflect the actual UI changes on YouTube. For example, if you enable Speed Control in the player, the control appears in the player preview. Settings are saved on the fly, and when you go to youtube.com you get the modified experience accordingly. On the website I only included a static demo, not an interactive one. Does that clarify your concern? Maxxmod is still in development but we already have functional alpha builds. If you’re interested in testing one and giving feedback, feel free to email me at maxxmod [at] proton.me. Thanks, Pablo.
notpushkin 8mo ago
Welcome to HN! Plugging your stuff is okay, but it’s generally frowned upon if you’re only here to sell something: > Please don't use HN primarily for promotion. It's ok to post your own stuff part of the time, but the primary use of the site should be for curiosity. – https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Perhaps you could just participate in the discussion for now, and do a Show HN later when you’re ready?
- maxxmod 8mo ago
  You’re right, and I appreciate you pointing that out. I’m mainly looking for early feedback to validate the direction before launch, not trying to use HN purely as a marketing channel. I’ll participate in the discussion and, once it’s ready, do a proper Show HN. Thanks for the guidance.

ackyshake 8mo ago

Oh this is amazing, thank you! I tried to make my own but youtube's CSS is so complex, I gave up. I have no idea why they push shorts to me when I'm on my computer. But then again, I really cannot stand them, even on my phone. I also just discovered a way[1] to just get real videos from my youtube RSS feeds, free from shorts. Honestly it's been a joy to not have my RSS reader notify me for a old video republished as vertical. [1]: https://blog.amen6.com/blog/2025/01/no-shorts-please-hidden-youtube-rss-feed-urls/ https://blog.amen6.com/blog/2025/01/no-shorts-please-hidden-...

susam 8mo ago
The CSS is complex indeed. Moreover, the page renders the Shorts widgets after the page has completed loading, so JavaScript-based solutions need to exercise a little care in ensuring that it can hide the distracting elements after the page has loaded. Despite the complexity, I've found that just hiding all elements with the 'ytd-rich-shelf-renderer' class just works fine. For example: .ytd-rich-shelf-renderer { display: none } This single line of CSS seems to just work fine for me.
deleted 8mo ago
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broof 8mo ago

For iPhone I use an extension called shorts blocker that does the same thing.

31337Logic 8mo ago

I swear I didn't even know one COULD pay for YouTube!! Why would you want to? They're are so many good front ends that block ALL that toxic garbage. Revamped still works, so does pipepipe, youpipe, noutube, etc.

temp1514351 8mo ago
People who watch on locked down devices

farazbabar 8mo ago

Oh this is great, any ideas on how to do this for Samsung and LG televisions?

abdusco 8mo ago
Set up a proxy and inject JS on the page?

vidyesh 8mo ago

You should look into filters setup by https://github.com/letsblockit/letsblockit https://github.com/letsblockit/letsblockit for YouTube. That was an ambitious project, sadly discontinued.

i5heu 8mo ago
The road to death with any OSS project is scope creep. I appreciate your comment though! Thanks :)

xhcuvuvyc 8mo ago

Thank you holy hell thank you

nikitau 8mo ago

Nice. I've also been doing this for a while too. I don't like to depend on a lot of addons, so I find the ublock only implementation of it quite elegant and fast. I also try to use filters nowadays to block other types of dark patterns (eg. Infinite scroll recommendations). It's surprising how much you can de-enshittify the modern corporate internet by just blocking tags with some css path filters.

globular-toast 8mo ago

Is there an explanation for why YouTube is hell bent on pushing Shorts to people, other than to get them addicted? There must be something we can do about these abusive arseholes. I hate that the number one business strategy right now is to make something addictive. This isn't good for us.

RRRA 8mo ago

I just installed a plug-in for that, shorts are pure brain rot which YouTube already mostly is ...

darkoob12 8mo ago

It's just the most horrible thing. The whole idea of YouTube for me was to control what you watch in comparison to traditional TV where they fed you what they wanted. I know people say that you should not click on it but we all how low times in our day that we have exhausted our brain.

orena 8mo ago

But what to do with android YouTube app ??

qwertox 8mo ago

A Tapermonkey script which redirects a short to the classic YT experience is somewhat more helpful, because sometimes there are interesting snippets in the Shorts. This lets you see the video but breaks you out of doomscrolling.

edgartaor 8mo ago
"Enhancer for YouTube" have that 'convert Shorts' option or hide them entirely.

zytoon 8mo ago

Wonder why their X account is suspended?!

FranklinJabar 8mo ago

Is there any way to get this to work outside of desktop and android? You can't pay me to watch videos on either.

piokoch 8mo ago

I would pay any money for ability to block for my kids chosen channels on youtube. For some reason this is not possible and worthless crap keeps being promoted there.

TyrunDemeg101 8mo ago

A nuclear option that's worked extremely well for me is going into Youtube's settings and disabling history. I no longer am even able to see shorts, they don't get suggested to me. However, this is an extreme nuclear option and also disables the entire 'Home' and for-you type content. You can search and watch videos, but it flips it so it is 100% intention driven. Which means discoverability and browsing is non-existent. You're still able to see your existing subscriptions but that's it. It's REALLY helped me disconnect from the addictive dopamine of the infinite, short type formats. YMMV

caro_kann 8mo ago
I think this is the best way of using Youtube if you're trying to avoid brain rot and doomscrolling. This way helped me alot and gives you full control over what you consume.
LtWorf 8mo ago
It doesn't break subscribed channels though so I just bookmarked that page as my youtube page.
byproxy 8mo ago
This is exactly what I’ve done for my Google settings after feeling more and more upset with what the Youtube homepage was showing me. Not so much in that it was necessarily contrary to what I may have wanted to watch, but more-so me thinking “My god.. is this what I’ve become?” I now much prefer to open Youtube (quasi)tabula rasa. I still have subscriptions set up so I can follow “vetted” accounts, but for other things I now rely on that intentionality. The one minor bummer is that Youtube won’t remember your spot in a video, say if you’re watching in your phone and want to continue on your desktop (or vice-versa). Not the biggest hassle to manually check the time and sync it up, though.
- TyrunDemeg101 8mo ago
  Yea - the not remembering a spot in a video IS a slight inconvenience, but for me it's a small price to pay in order to not get sucked into HOURS thrown away chasing the next 'hit' of dopamine from shorts.

albert_e 8mo ago

anything that blocks the doom-scrolling mode on twitter videos? I dont see youtube shorts, have no login to instagram or tiktok, and stopped using facebook years ago; only social media i frequent is twitter -- and once i view a video in the feed, it hijacks my attention by auto scrolling to a new video. I burned a couple of evenings this way -- and I need to be more careful about this.

jahsome 8mo ago

They appear to have recently removed the "show fewer shorts options" in the app. I pay for premium and the idea I cannot remove them from the app even as part of that is absolutely infuriating.

arendtio 8mo ago

What bothers me most about YT is that it constantly plays videos with an AI-generated voice. In general, I like AI features and use AI daily to build prototypes, but this feature looks so stupid to me and feels so wrong. I have no problem with it being an option, but by default I just want to watch the videos with their original soundtracks. But instead YT decides that I should watch the videos with some mediocre AI translation... Maybe I could disable it using an account, but I still prefer not to have one when it's not necessary.

SamDc73 8mo ago

I switched from using YouTube to invidious mainly because they don't support shorts and blocked YouTube on the DNS level, it's a bit slower, but I know I won't be sucked into doom-scrolling

zhovnd 8mo ago

I like YT shorts.

gardnr 8mo ago
Not everyone has the brain chemistry to watch them in a healthy way. Google seems to be preying on that population by preventing people from disabling the feature; to make some quarterly charts look better.

h4kunamata 8mo ago

After dealing with lists like this for far too long, Google will find ways to block it. The best solution up to date is Brave Browser. They do provide their own "lists", you do not have access to it :) That is the beauty of it, you cannot, neither can big techs so it lasts longer. So far, Brave filter is the only one able to block Shorts and a lot of crappy from YT. No filter will do that, or will get blocked very soon until a new one is released. Everything is public, won't last!