Love them or hate them, YouTube Shorts are here to stay. If they don't want to show up in your feed on a regular basis, there are steps you can take to diminish their appeal to your already-declining attention span. YouTube's own option lets you hide them temporarily, but you'll need a third-party extension to eliminate them forever.
Tell YouTube you're not interested in Shorts
The fastest way to remove YouTube Shorts from view on Chrome is to click the X (not interested) button in the upper right corner of the Shorts row. But there are two things to keep in mind:
This is a temporary solution, as YouTube will resume recommending Shorts after 30 days.
The "Not Interested" button is only available in the desktop version of Chrome, not in the mobile apps for iOS and Android.
Even if you remove it from the homepage, Shorts will appear in the sidebar when you watch a particular video. While you can tell YouTube that you're "not interested" in a particular clip, you can't remove the suggestion from view.
Making YouTube Shorts disappear from the mobile app
You can't delete all the Shorts in the iOS and Android apps. But you can train the algorithm to stop showing you certain Shorts by selecting three vertical dots on each Shorts and choosing not to be interested in the menu. If you find certain Shorts in bad taste, you have the option of clicking "Report" and"Send Feedback". Honestly, I've had limited success with the mobile option, it's like swimming against the tide.
Block YouTube Shorts with extensions
While Chrome may give you a little bit of control, other browsers don't. Chrome or not, if you do want to remove YouTube Shorts, check out these browser extensions and add-ons.
ShortsBlocker (Chrome and Firefox): This extension improves your YouTube experience by completely hiding Shorts content. This includes the homepage, subscriptions, search results, left navigation bar, and right video recommendation bar.
Unhook (Chrome, Firefox and Edge): This extension gives you more control over what you want to hide on your YouTube homepage. The settings include options to hide YouTube Shorts as well as other distractions such as related videos, comments, homepage recommendations, the Trends tab, etc.
YouTube Shorts Interceptor (Chrome): This extension removes Shorts from the view of the necessary pages, but it also gives you a customizable block list to selectively block content from channels you don't want to appear on your feed. If you want to watch specific Shorts videos from certain channels, you can choose to automatically convert Shorts videos to a regular format.
BlockYT for Safari: This Safari extension keeps YouTube out of the way by blocking Shorts, comments, and recommendations. It also works with the Safari browser on iPhone and iPad.
Like all extensions, these extensions come from third-party developers. Please use them with caution and stay informed about bugs and bug fixes.
