Can You Disable YouTube Shorts? What Actually Works in 2024

YouTube Shorts isn't going away — but that doesn't mean you're stuck watching them. Whether you find the vertical video feed distracting, prefer long-form content, or just want a cleaner YouTube experience, there are real ways to reduce or eliminate Shorts from your feed. The methods available to you depend heavily on your device, browser, and how you access YouTube.

What YouTube Shorts Actually Is (And Why It's Hard to Turn Off)

YouTube Shorts is YouTube's short-form vertical video feature, built directly into the platform's core interface. Unlike a standalone app, Shorts is embedded into the YouTube homepage, sidebar, and mobile app navigation — which is precisely why there's no single "disable" toggle in your account settings.

Google has not provided an official, permanent way to turn off Shorts entirely. This is a deliberate product decision: Shorts drives engagement and ad revenue. What you can do is use a combination of platform features, third-party tools, and browser extensions to suppress or block Shorts content — with varying degrees of effectiveness depending on your setup.

Method 1: The "Not Interested" Approach (No Tools Required)

On both desktop and mobile, YouTube lets you signal disinterest in content types. This is the lowest-effort option but also the least reliable.

• On mobile: Tap and hold a Short, then select "Not interested" or "Don't recommend this channel."
• On desktop: Hover over a Short thumbnail, click the three-dot menu, and select "Not interested."

Doing this repeatedly over time can reduce how often Shorts appear in your recommendations — but it won't eliminate the dedicated Shorts shelf on the homepage or the Shorts tab in the mobile app. YouTube's algorithm treats this as a soft signal, not a hard filter. 🎯

Method 2: Browser Extensions (Desktop — Most Effective)

If you watch YouTube in a web browser on a desktop or laptop, browser extensions are currently the most reliable way to remove Shorts from your experience entirely.

Popular options include:

Unhook is the most purpose-built for this use case. It lets you toggle off specific YouTube UI elements — including the Shorts shelf, the Shorts tab, and Shorts in search results — without affecting the rest of YouTube. Installation takes under a minute, and the effect is immediate.

For uBlock Origin, you can manually add filter rules that target Shorts-related page elements, but this requires some comfort with CSS selectors and filter syntax. It's more powerful but demands more technical confidence.

Method 3: Mobile App — Limited But Possible 📱

This is where things get more constrained. YouTube's mobile app (iOS and Android) doesn't support browser extensions, and there's no in-app setting to disable Shorts. Your realistic options are:

• Ignore the Shorts tab — simply don't tap it. The tab itself can't be removed from the native app.
• Use YouTube in a mobile browser — accessing YouTube through Chrome or Firefox on your phone means some lightweight extension support (Firefox for Android supports add-ons, including Unhook and uBlock Origin). This works, but the mobile browser experience is less polished than the native app.
• Third-party YouTube clients — apps like ReVanced (Android only) are modified versions of YouTube that include options to remove Shorts from the interface. These are technically unofficial and require sideloading on Android, which involves enabling installation from unknown sources. iOS doesn't support this type of modification.

The tradeoff on mobile is real: the more control you want over the interface, the further you move from the convenience of the official app.

Method 4: YouTube Premium Doesn't Help Here

It's worth clarifying: YouTube Premium removes ads and enables background play, but it does not give you any additional control over which interface elements appear. Premium subscribers still see Shorts. This is a common misconception worth correcting before you consider that route for this specific problem.

What You Can't Block (At Least Easily)

Even with extensions active on desktop, some Shorts may still surface in:

• Search results — Shorts often appear mixed into keyword search pages
• Channel pages — when visiting a creator's channel, their Shorts tab is still visible
• Notification links — clicking a Shorts notification from email or push will still open the Short

Extensions like Unhook do offer search-result filtering, but the completeness varies by how aggressively YouTube updates its front-end code. Extension developers frequently push updates to keep pace with YouTube's interface changes, so checking that your extensions are up to date matters. 🔧

The Variables That Determine Your Best Path

How effectively you can disable Shorts depends on a few intersecting factors:

• Device type — desktop users have far more control than mobile users
• Browser vs. native app — browser access unlocks extension support
• Operating system — Android offers more flexibility than iOS for unofficial clients
• Technical comfort — uBlock Origin filters and sideloading apps require more hands-on setup than installing a simple extension
• How completely you want Shorts removed — reducing Shorts in recommendations is easy; removing every trace from the interface is harder

Someone on a Windows laptop using Chrome who's comfortable installing extensions can achieve a nearly Shorts-free YouTube experience in minutes. Someone using the native YouTube app on an iPhone is working with much narrower options, essentially limited to behavioral signals and self-discipline about which tabs they open. Those are genuinely different situations, and the right approach in one doesn't translate cleanly to the other.