- Why there's no simple off switch
- What works, step by step
- A worked example: say you run a small marketing team
- Parental controls get you further than personal settings do
- The uncomfortable bit nobody selling you a "fix" wants to say
- What about on smart TVs and tablets
- If you're trying to cut down your own screen time
- Frequently asked questions
- Primary sources
The short version: you can't fully switch off YouTube Shorts from Google's end, but you can hide the Shorts shelf on the home feed, block the dedicated Shorts tab on some devices, and use browser extensions or parental controls to get close. There's no official "Shorts off" toggle inside the YouTube app itself, and that's by design, not an oversight.
Why there's no simple off switch
People search "disable YouTube Shorts" expecting one setting buried in a menu somewhere. There isn't one. YouTube has built Shorts into the core app the same way Instagram built Reels in: not as a bolt-on feature you can switch off, but as a growth engine the whole product now leans on. Shorts gets billions of daily views and YouTube has said publicly it's central to keeping younger viewers on the platform rather than losing them to TikTok. A company doesn't give you an easy way to turn off the thing it's betting its future on.
So what you're really looking for isn't a disable button. It's a set of workarounds that reduce Shorts to something closer to invisible. Some work well. Some are half measures. Worth knowing the difference before you spend an evening fiddling with settings that won't fix it.
What works, step by step
On the YouTube mobile app (iOS and Android), you can't remove the Shorts icon from the bottom bar, and you can't delete the Shorts shelf from your home feed permanently through a setting. But you can train the algorithm and limit exposure:
- Open a Short, tap the three dots, and select "Not interested." Do this five or six times in a session and the shelf starts thinning out within a day or two.
- Go to your Watch History, filter by Shorts, and delete that history. Shorts recommendations are built heavily from what you've watched, so a clean slate reduces how often they appear.
- In Settings, under "General," turn off "Shorts recommendations based on your history" if it's showing for your account. Not every account sees this option, Google rolls it out unevenly.
- Use a browser instead of the app. On desktop, YouTube Shorts shows up as a horizontal row on the homepage, but it doesn't follow you into a dedicated swipeable tab the way the app does. That alone removes most of the addictive scroll behaviour.
On desktop specifically, browser extensions such as "Unhook" or "DF YouTube" (both free, available for Chrome and Firefox) let you hide the Shorts shelf completely, strip it from search results, and even remove related Shorts suggestions from the sidebar. These aren't made by Google, so they can break after an update, but they're the closest thing to a genuine disable switch that exists right now.
A worked example: say you run a small marketing team
Say you run a five-person marketing team and you've noticed two junior staff losing chunks of their afternoon to "research" on YouTube that's really just Shorts scrolling. You can't block YouTube outright, the team needs it for competitor research and tutorials. Here's what a sensible policy looks like: install Unhook on company laptops to strip the Shorts shelf from the browser version, set YouTube to open in browser rather than the desktop app by default, and ask the team to log out of personal YouTube accounts on work devices so recommendations aren't personalised to their TikTok-adjacent viewing habits at home. That combination won't make Shorts vanish from existence, but it removes the one-tap trigger that turns five minutes of research into forty minutes of scrolling. Takes about twenty minutes to set up across five machines.
Parental controls get you further than personal settings do
If the goal is limiting a child or teenager's exposure rather than your own, YouTube's parental tools are more effective than anything available on a standard adult account. Through Google Family Link or a YouTube Kids profile, you can block the Shorts shelf entirely on a supervised account, set time limits specifically for Shorts content, and restrict autoplay. This is worth doing rather than relying on the "not interested" button, because a child's account learns fast and the Shorts algorithm is tuned for exactly the kind of short, high-dopamine loop that's hardest to self-regulate against. If you haven't set this up yet, it's worth working through how to set up parental controls on YouTube rather than patching it together from memory.
The uncomfortable bit nobody selling you a "fix" wants to say
Even with every workaround stacked together, Shorts will creep back. Google updates the app roughly every few weeks, and third-party extensions that block the shelf today can stop working after one of those updates without warning. I've watched this pattern play out with every ad-blocking and content-filtering tool I've used over the years, not just on YouTube: the platform wins the long game because it owns the code and you don't. If your goal is a permanent, guaranteed-forever disable, that doesn't exist and nobody can sell it to you no matter what a YouTube tutorial title promises. What you can realistically get is "mostly gone, most of the time, with occasional maintenance." That's a less satisfying headline but it's the truth, and it's worth knowing before you spend hours chasing a permanent fix that a software update will undo in a month.
The flip side of this, if you're a creator rather than a viewer, is that fighting Shorts is often the wrong instinct anyway. If you're trying to grow a channel, you're better off learning how to clip a YouTube video into Shorts-length content than trying to avoid the format altogether. The algorithm rewards it whether you personally enjoy scrolling Shorts or not.
What about on smart TVs and tablets
Smart TV apps (Samsung, LG, Fire TV, Android TV) show Shorts less aggressively because the vertical format doesn't suit a horizontal screen well, so YouTube displays them in a row you can usually scroll past without much friction. There's no dedicated settings menu to remove that row on most TV apps as of 2026, so your best option there is simply not clicking into it. Tablets behave like phones: Shorts gets its own tab and a dedicated shelf, and the same "not interested" and watch-history-clearing tricks apply.
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If you're trying to cut down your own screen time
Rather than chasing a perfect technical block, it's often more effective to change your habits around when and how you open the app. Turning off push notifications removes a big chunk of the trigger, since YouTube does send Shorts-specific alerts designed to pull you back in during idle moments. It's worth working through how to turn off YouTube notifications as a companion step, because a quiet phone is often more useful than a perfectly configured feed. Pair that with moving the YouTube app off your home screen so you have to search for it rather than tap it automatically, and you'll cut down exposure more reliably than any single setting change.
And if your Shorts feed looks oddly stretched or cropped when you do watch one, that's a separate display issue worth sorting too, covered in why does my YouTube keep zooming in, which is unrelated to disabling Shorts but comes up for the same frustrated users.
Frequently asked questions
Can I turn off YouTube Shorts completely on my phone?
Not completely and not permanently through an official setting. You can reduce how often Shorts appear using "Not interested," clearing your Shorts watch history, and (on some accounts) turning off Shorts-based recommendations in Settings, but the Shorts tab itself stays in the app.
Is there a YouTube setting to hide Shorts from the home feed?
There's no single toggle, but using "Not interested" repeatedly and clearing Shorts-specific watch history will shrink the Shorts shelf significantly within a day or two. Browser extensions like Unhook remove it entirely on desktop.
Does Family Link let you block Shorts for kids?
Yes, this is the most reliable option available. A supervised account through Family Link or YouTube Kids can block the Shorts shelf outright and set separate time limits for Shorts, which goes further than anything available on a standard adult account.
Why does YouTube make it hard to disable Shorts?
Because Shorts drives a large share of daily watch time and is central to YouTube's competition with TikTok and Instagram Reels, so there's no business incentive to make it easy to switch off. The workarounds that exist are workarounds, not official features, and they can break after app updates.
Primary sources
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