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YouTube users get option to set their Shorts time limit to zero minutes
- forthwall 6mo agoAmazing! I can finally redownload the youtube app instead of using a userscript in my mobile browser
- thedeep_mind 6mo agoSame, I removed the YT app from my phone because of all the addicting/simulating UX and hooking content. It was eating up my quiet/thinking time, and led to brainfog and brainrot. Maybe the app can be given a retry if they have gotten away from the hooking/baiting at the product level. IG/Tiktok already exist out there and I stay away from them. YT was a platform for me to learn and engage deeply. Shorts just ruined that experience for me.
- techknight 6mo agoHasn't rolled out everywhere yet, for the record.
- ElijahLynn 6mo agoYeah, I only see 15 minutes in my settings. For those who want to see and tinker with it: Settings > Time Management
- nslsm 6mo agoThat means you need an account?
- dwa3592 6mo agoNice! I wonder if it has anything to do with the lawsuit where the verdict was that meta and google designed addictive products.
- spicyusername 6mo agoNow hopefully we'll see it in YouTube music as well.
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- savanaly 6mo ago>YouTube now lets you turn off Shorts No it doesn't. If you were hoping it would mean you don't see shorts when you visit the Youtube home page, that's not what this is. I just tried the thing mentioned in the article-- set my Shorts time limit to 0 minutes. What it does is make it so if you click a short from somewhere the short plays, but then if you try to swipe to the next one it hits you with the "You reached your short limit". If you then return to the home page you still see Shorts.
- idle_zealot 6mo agoClassic "self regulation" of an addictive product. "You look like you might have a problem with self-control, here are tools for managing yourself better" while admitting no fault and continuing with all of the hooks and barbs, design and advertising built to addict as many people as possible.
- alex1138 6mo agoReal name? No? We'll ask again later
- jiveturkey 6mo agoWell played. I don't think many remember this. The product was completely forgettable but the introduction of this user hostile pattern was a turning point.
- natpalmer1776 6mo agoWhat was this referencing?
- berdario 6mo agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nymwars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nymwars
- ktimespi 6mo agofinally.
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- throw_m239339 6mo agoNow make it easy to block a channel like you used to too. Before you could just go to the channel, click on some menu to block one entirely, now the hoops one has to go through to hide a channel are insane, I do not understand these companies, it's like they want to force me to watch some crap I have no interest in... Glad, these companies are starting to get held legally responsible for the content they serve in civil courts...
- x3n0ph3n3 6mo agoJust use uBlock origin and this filter: https://github.com/i5heu/ublock-hide-yt-shorts https://github.com/i5heu/ublock-hide-yt-shorts
- mococa 6mo agoLast time I tried a shorts blocker the entire YouTube crashed
- x3n0ph3n3 6mo agoNever once had that problem.
- Brian_K_White 6mo agoGladly. How do I do that on my roku?
- x3n0ph3n3 6mo agoIf you're using a native YouTube app, you've already lost the battle.
- nickthegreek 6mo agoiSponsorBlockTV running in docker on a system on the network can remote skip ads for all yt apps that it have been added to its monitoring. works great for appletv. But nothing is as good as SmartTube on androidtv.
- Brian_K_White 6mo agoObviously. Which belies your "just do this...". You may as well say "just watch dvds". An exactly equally effective solution.
- thedeep_mind 6mo agoI removed the YT app from my phone because of all the addicting/simulating UX and hooking content. It was eating up my quiet/thinking time, and led to brainfog and brainrot. And then, the blame is being put on me as the user who has self control issues. I found that very twisted. Some responsiblity is mine, sure. But having an army of PMs and engineers whose only job is to keep users on the platform, longer and more "engaged", is a loosing battle for one person to fight. Maybe the app can be given a retry if they have gotten away from the hooking/baiting at the product level. IG/Tiktok already exist out there and I stay away from them. YT was a platform for me to learn and engage deeply. Shorts just ruined that experience for me.
- pants2 6mo agoNearly all social media sites are better accessed through Brave browser on mobile, where there are no ads (including Instagram) and the experience is less optimized therefore less addicting.
- bentt 6mo agogreat tip! i didnt know this.
- subpixel 6mo agoI've deleted the app from my phone. When I want to watch YT I open Brave, which blocks shorts and promoted videos in search. As an added benefit watching videos feels like a slight chore and is not frictionless. On my Mac I also use Brave and have allowlisted only the YouTube domain and Google auth. No shorts, no search spam, and just slightly inconvenient.
- subpixel 5mo agoUpdate: watching YT in a browser on iOS is completely enshittified. I am giving up and actually looking into sideloading an app that kills shorts.
- alex1138 6mo agoYoutube (excuse me??? powered by Google?) has ruined their search for years and I'm convinced the Shorts don't help it Nobody likes them, or Mixes. Stop it
- tokioyoyo 6mo agoMight be a bubble thing. Check out DAU for Shorts.
- LaFolle 6mo agoIt would be so cruel had the feature been only made available on premium accounts. But good it’s not (I guess so).
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- legitster 6mo agoI think it's funny that nearly all videos on Youtube used to be short. Then Youtube pressured creators to make longer and longer content for ad revenue purposes. Now they're forcing creators to pump out shorts.
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- cpeterso 6mo agoI use the "Unhook" Firefox extension to customize the YouTube page. You can hide shorts, comments, recommendations, the home page feed, and more. https://unhook.app/ https://unhook.app/
- Brian_K_White 6mo agoWe wish. But it's not true.
- OgsyedIE 6mo agoApproximately one in every hundred shorts consist of something good that isn't also in a video somewhere. Is there a script to force shorts to be presented in the same way as videos, so that the recommendation algorithm can be forced to appropriately and natively mix in the one or two shorts that I'd appreciate seeing with the video recommendations?
- mc3301 6mo agoI wish there was a whitelist and blacklist (keywords or checklist or something) that could mostly faithfully be followed with some backend AI. Whitelist (skew algorithm this way please): -bicyles -diy clothing -python programming -snakes -art how-to -tornadoes Blacklist (skew algorithm away from this please): -pranks -anything with kids -fake DIY -ai produced content -only-fans people
- svachalek 6mo agoWeirdly enough I feel like this is how the Vision Pro Youtube app works. I'm not sure why.
- Cider9986 6mo agoBefore I quit YouTube, this was my setup. Brave Shields[1] - Adblock SponsorBlock[2] - Crowd-sourced skip sponsored segments DeArrow[3] - Make thumbnails not clickbait UnTrap[4] - Remove shorts and make UI amazing. Return Youtube Dislike[5] I deleted my Google account and now occasionally use Invidious with LibRedirect[6] to watch YT videos. Importing subscriptions into Invidious was a helpful stepping stone. [1] https://brave.com https://brave.com [2] https://sponsor.ajay.app https://sponsor.ajay.app [3] https://dearrow.ajay.app https://dearrow.ajay.app [4] https://untrap.app https://untrap.app [5] https://www.returnyoutubedislike.com https://www.returnyoutubedislike.com [6] https://libredirect.github.io/ https://libredirect.github.io/
- kirubakaran 6mo agoVery cool, thanks! I've been using SponsorBlock for a long time. This is the first time I'm hearing about DeArrow and I paid for it. That guy is doing incredible work.
- registeredcorn 6mo agoWhen you say "quit YouTube", do you mean you replaced it with a different service? Or do you simply mean you deleted your account? I've been hoping for more competition on alternative platforms, but everything that I've tried has failed to reach any kind of reasonable user base. Lots of bot videos. A few schizo uploads. Stolen movies, etc. It feels like the earliest versions of YouTube and it's been a struggle to put up with. Most of them went under at some point or another, too.
- Cider9986 6mo agoI watch probably 95% less videos than before I "quit youtube". I never visit youtube.com and I deleted all my google accounts. I still have my subscriptions saved in a few Invidious instances and I occasionally check them. I haven't really looked into any alt platforms besides interacting a little. This peertube instance[1] has a good experience but it only has a few channels. I might look more into peertube now that you mention it. I like videos for entertainment, but for information it is a timesuck. [1] neat.tube
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- preinheimer 6mo agoI find short form content really addictive. It’s so easy for me to lose half an hour to it, and at the end just feel like I’ve wasted my time. Lacking better options I’ve turned on parental controls on my phone to block YouTube, and installed an extension to remove shorts from the site on my laptop. I wish sites provided more real options.
- Cider9986 6mo agoIf you ever want to go more hardcore into keeping distracting apps off your phone I recommend checking out MDM for your device. At least on iOS you could connect a mac and then use Apple Configurator to block installing new apps. This made it so you would have to use your Mac to enable installing new apps, creating a large amount of friction. When I used iOS I used this method to create a "smart dumbhone" because you could have smart apps like mapping, without a browser or the ability to install distracting apps.
- noisy_boy 6mo agoIf they were actually serious, they would add an option in the Family Link app to set time limit for shorts for children.
- Retr0id 6mo agoI just wish I could pretend shorts were regular videos that happened to have a weird aspect ratio. There are extensions that switch the player automatically (and you can do it by editing the url) but that doesn't change how they appear in the subscriptions feed (i.e. an annoying carousel that hides all the information you need to decide whether you want to click or not)
- user3939382 6mo agoI’ve never once told YouTube I wanted Playables and declined, yet tracked every time I was asked for over a year: March 19, 2025 - 8:31 PM April 9 - 4:09 PM April 24 - 8 AM May 9 - 5:33 PM May 20 - 2:07 PM June 8 - 5:10 PM July 9 - 6:59 PM August 9 - 5:14 PM September 8 - 8:45 PM November 9 - 8:47 PM December 9 - 8:48 PM Jan 8, 2026 - 9:28 PM Feb 7 — 11:11 PM March 10 - 9:18 PM April 10 - 1:10 AM I’ve also noticed “Auto play next video” once a year or so automatically enabled. Shorts also come up regardless of dismissal though less so than Playables.
- b00ty4breakfast 6mo agoI think there used to be a ublock filter to hide ytshorts but I haven't used youtube in a while at this so I can't be sure I'm not imagining it. This is obviously not helpful if you use a smartTV or the app, in which case I would recommend using one of the third party apps like newpipe or whatever the smarttv 3p app is called
- everyone 6mo agoI wouldn't have a a problem with shorts, in fact I definitely want to watch any videos from people I'm subscribed to be it short or otherwise. But core features are missing from shorts, like it doesnt even say what channel each short is from. So I've had a ublock filter for them forever.
- EarlKing 6mo agoRight. Just like they let you turn off those stupid games that keep popping up no matter how many times you tell them you're not interested.
- Tor3 6mo agoWhat I want to get rid of is all the "Mix" videos. I never look at them, I have zero interest in watching a stream of stuff chained together by an algorithm or whatever. But, unlike single videos, under the three dots there's no option "Not interested" or "Don't recommend". I can't get rid of them.
- Frannky 6mo ago[dead]
- dunder_cat 6mo agoInstagram needs to do this for Reels, too. I got quite addicted to these short-form videos during the pandemic and after I finished college things went immediately downhill once a lot of my mental activity could be somewhat "deferred". I could make up for the productivity hit by crunching but my life would be better without them. I remove things from my phone or put services into Pi-Hole but eventually I capitulate. Something about having the option to remove the most addicting parts of a service but not cutting yourself off completely has more success. Edit: also to be somewhat objective, Instagram also offers a time limit. However, I've found that just by exiting the app (or it getting killed in the background), it basically clears the lockout so you don't even have to make the effort to click the "ignore" button.
- bentt 6mo agoThe only reason they would do this is because some kind of research determined it would yield higher revenue.
- insin 6mo agoUpvoting because Shorts are terrible. Flagging because the submission title - which is 100% faithful to the friendly article - is a complete lie! Plug: I added a bunch of features to Control Panel for YouTube [1] which let you either hide Shorts completely, everywhere (which is the default) or take more control of how you use them if you do (e.g. redirecting to the normal video player) [1] https://soitis.dev/control-panel-for-youtube https://soitis.dev/control-panel-for-youtube
- drouetg 6mo agoGreat addon thank you
- throwawaymobule 6mo agoI wish they'd show up like regular videos in the subscription feed, like they used to a few years ago. Currently, I have to guess who uploaded a short to decide if I want to watch it.
- LutfuRadu 6mo agoFantastic add-on! I couldn't find an option to hide games ("playables") - did I miss it? There seems to be a conflict with U block origin on Firefox on Android. The control panel didn't work when U block was on, even after I disabled "block ads" in the panel.
- miltonlost 6mo agoAlso annoying is how if you hover your mouse over a thumbnail on the homepage, it autoplays and then counts as part of your history.
- ButlerianJihad 6mo agoThe funny thing here, and I'm sure YT was counting on this, is that I wouldn't really be open to hiding/disabling Shorts anymore. Because despite most of my subscriptions being channels which publish long-form content, I also have begun to follow some channels which exclusively publish in the Shorts format, and as you know, it's not strictly necessary to subscribe to a channel in order to follow it. So sometimes I let the suggestions do the work, and surface new/old content in the form of Shorts. The thing about Shorts that irks me is their completely separate classification, which suppresses useful info like the channel name, date of publication, until you go in and play them. Also, the player interface being totally different: why, just why?
- subpixel 6mo agoI know what you mean, but I am willing to lose that content, in that form. Similar to the way I have used Instagram for a decade but have no idea what a reel is and ignore them.
- JeremyNT 6mo agoI agree. Shorts aren't inherently bad but the way they're sort of half as integrated in the UI just feels clunky and weird. They should allow you to treat shorts like normal videos and have them ranked directly against them in e.g. search results. Or, they should let you completely separate them so you have essentially a totally different app.
- codethief 6mo agoI use Newsfeed Eradicator[0] to block shorts and many more things. [0]: https://github.com/jordwest/news-feed-eradicator https://github.com/jordwest/news-feed-eradicator
- royal__ 6mo agoThis is the way. The biggest issue is that it's easy to disable if you have no self control, but I guess an official setting would be the same way.
- nirav72 6mo agoI don’t mind shorts. Especially when I have a few minutes to kill or just want something playing on a side Monitor. Just wish it would auto scroll to the next one without requiring an extension.
- albert_e 6mo agoIs there a way to do it at network level. There are too many devices with different accounts and apps and guest access ... like YouTube app on Smart TVs.
- erickhill 6mo agoIsn't this more for parents at the end of the day?
- aofeisheng 6mo agoNo, it's not like that at all. This thread is misleading and should be flagged.
- wanderingmind 6mo agoNo, it doesn't the easiest way is to always use it in Firefox and use the following uBlock filters https://github.com/i5heu/ublock-hide-yt-shorts https://github.com/i5heu/ublock-hide-yt-shorts
- pabs3 6mo agoMore similar ones here: https://old.reddit.com/r/uBlockOrigin/wiki/solutions/youtube https://old.reddit.com/r/uBlockOrigin/wiki/solutions/youtube
- jmacd 6mo agoAs a parent of 4 kids, I find Shorts to be morally reprehensible. I think the people working on them should honestly question their decision framework. Youtube is an international treasure. One of the greatest learning resources of all time. I want my children to have as broad of access to youtube as possible. I can't do that though, because they can go from watching a very interesting documentary or something fun like a Mark Rober video, to being zombified unwittingly in to watching videos of a woman putting on makeup and making pronouncements in to the video camera. It's not just annoying. It's not just inconvenient. It is harmful.
- hapticmonkey 6mo agoIt’s so incredibly frustrating the effort required to keep the site/app from funnelling my kids into low effort slop. I like to use it with my kids (under age of 6) to search and find interesting videos with them. The algorithm combined with the TV apps’s UX makes it such a frustrating experience. There is so much potential there, but searching for things like space videos inevitably funnels me into AI generated slop and conspiracies. Searching for upcoming movie trailers funnels me into completely fake trailers. It’s clear the platform is an engagement engine first and a knowledge base second.
- dlopes7 6mo agoI went ahead and turned my youtube history off, I only see my subscriptions and subscription shorts. I get zero recommendations of new/related videos (It breaks the algorithm) and it can't remember at what point of a video I was when I left it, but it is a very cheap price to pay for the shorts brainrot
- mcotton 6mo agoI had to write a Chrome extensions to hide Shorts. it has been working great for me. https://github.com/mcotton/remove_yt_shorts https://github.com/mcotton/remove_yt_shorts
- brcmthrowaway 6mo agoVibe coded?
- el_benhameen 6mo agoI have no affiliation with Shorts Blocker, but I installed it a long time ago and immediately forgot that shorts existed. Worth whatever I paid for it. https://apps.apple.com/us/app/shorts-blocker-for-youtube/id6451330524 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/shorts-blocker-for-youtube/id6...
- gooob 6mo agowhy pay for something like that when you can just write an extremely simple addon that removes the shorts section from the homepage and anywhere on the site?
- GoatOfAplomb 6mo agoMaybe you place a value on your time higher than $1.99 divided by the time it would take you to create it. Maybe you don't care to learn how to create an addon.
- ivanjermakov 6mo agoPaying for an app that is a single CSS filter is top notch Apple.
- josefresco 6mo agoIs there a similar blocker for Instagram Reels?
- calmbonsai 6mo agoNot related to many prior posts on HN, The Verge is not to be trusted with technical FAANG editorial content. They're either ignorant, stupid, or "playing stupid" due to prior "pay for play", under the table, and/or blatant advertiser-conflicting arrangements. Also not related to prior YT posts. The secret to sanity with YT content is to never consume it on YT. FreeTube, yt-dlp, etc. are your friends.
- Cider9986 6mo ago>Not related to many prior posts on HN, The Verge is not to be trusted with technical FAANG editorial content. They're either ignorant, stupid, or "playing stupid" due to prior "pay for play", under the table, and/or blatant advertiser-conflicting arrangements. Do you have any links that could give me more info on this?
- DivingForGold 6mo agoThis feature is ONLY available in the app for mobile - - it is NOT available for Desktop
- VerifiedReports 6mo agoWait, this is only in the mobile app? You can't do it on a desktop? Typical Google junk. So we get to continue seeing idiotic door-shaped videos on our desktops.
- traderj0e 6mo agoYou already could by disabling watch history. I know that also disables the non-Shorts recommendations, but you know, if you're asking YT to recommend you stuff then of course it'll do it the way it wants.
- SudheerTammini 6mo agoThanks for pointing out, but I'm little bit sceptical about this feature because this will directly impact the revenue model around shorts. Maybe it's only for kids account?
- r0fl 6mo agoI hope this doesn’t get lost in the sea of comments I just set shorts to 0 minutes Tried to watch a short Got the message saying I’ve reached my limit and when I press X in the top right I CAN WATCH SHORTS AGAIN That is the most half assed attempt to limit my scrolling I could think of Wow!
- SlightlyLeftPad 6mo agoThis seems like progress but it doesn’t practically solve anything. It doesn’t solve that every kid in the US has largely unrestricted school accounts that parents have no control over. It doesn’t really prevent a kid from creating a new account or simply logging out and bypassing it. Shorts would need to be disabled for unauthenticated accounts or educational accounts by default.
- shevy-java 6mo agoI think Youtube needs to be disentangled from Google.
- sanjananb 6mo ago[dead]
- madradavid 6mo agoI am still trying to figure out why YouTube/Google is willing to die on this hill ? Surely they’ve gotten feedback or seen it in their analytics that there is a significant group of people who don’t like these “shorts”. Them implementing this “zero minutes” thing already tells you that they have realized there is some pushback. Why not just add an on/off toggle? This short form , TikTok style endless scroll stuff has a junk food feeling to it , as a paying customer why can’t you just give me the option to turn this off ?
- prartichoke 6mo agoPirates get the best service, gabe newell was right.all along. Paying for youtube premium makes no sense, I'd rather donate that 15 bucks a month to my favorite creators, while using uBlock/sponsorblock/unhook and grayjay on mobile. No shorts in my homepage, no ads ever
- datahack 6mo agoCan we just get an option to turn it off? This is an insanely dumb workaround.
- sasaf5 6mo agoOpen youtube through a browser with uBlock origin, with this line in the filter: m.youtube.com##.rich-section-content This blocks the shorts bar. I also block the other algorithmic surfaces and have only the search bar available.
- ajdegol 6mo agoI vibed up a chrome extension that sets a timer, hides shorts, redirects home to subscriptions, and hides comments and recommendations. It’s all toggleable so I don’t disable the extension when I do want some neuronal junk food. But just the micro friction being added back in is such a huge help to becoming more aware when using it.
- pier25 6mo agoI don’t see the option on iOS. At best I can limit to 15 mins. Wish there was a way to completely turn off shorts. Youtube was significantly better 5-10 years ago.