The short version: YouTube does not give you an official button to turn a Short into a normal horizontal video, but you can watch almost any Short in the standard player by swapping "/shorts/" for "/watch?v=" in the URL, or by using the share link and opening it in a browser tab instead of the app. It is a workaround, not a feature, and it will not change how creators decide to shoot their content.
Why YouTube Shorts even need a workaround
Shorts were built to be swiped through vertically, one after another, like TikTok. The whole design is meant to keep you scrolling, not reading descriptions, not checking comments, not clicking through to a channel. That is deliberate. YouTube wants Shorts to behave like a feed, because feeds keep people on the app longer than a normal watch page does.
The problem is that a lot of Shorts are useful, a recipe, a tutorial clip, a product demo, and you want to watch it the way you'd watch a normal video: full screen landscape if you're on a laptop, with a visible description, with easy access to the comments, or just paused on a real seek bar instead of a vertical scrubber that's fiddly to drag with a mouse.
The URL swap trick
This is the most reliable method and it takes about ten seconds:
- Open the Short, either in the app or in a browser.
- Copy the link. It'll look something like youtube.com/shorts/aBcD1234EfGh.
- Replace "/shorts/" with "/watch?v=" so it reads youtube.com/watch?v=aBcD1234EfGh.
- Paste that into your browser address bar and hit enter.
Say you run a small bakery account and someone sends you a 45 second Short showing a competitor's new croissant filling technique. On your phone it's cramped and vertical, half the frame is wasted on black bars if you rotate the screen. Do the URL swap and it opens in the standard watch page, same video file, but now you get the full video controls, the description box, related videos down the side, and a real comment section instead of the condensed Shorts comment drawer.
It works because a Short is, underneath the formatting, just a video uploaded to YouTube with a vertical aspect ratio and a tag that tells the app to display it in the Shorts shelf. The video ID is identical whichever URL format you use. You're not opening up hidden content, you're just asking YouTube to serve the same file through its older template.
Desktop browser versus the app
This trick works best on desktop or mobile browser (Safari, Chrome, Firefox). The YouTube app itself is stubborn, it tends to redirect "/watch?v=" links for known Shorts straight back into the vertical player, especially on iOS. If that happens to you, the fix is simple: open the link in your phone's browser instead of tapping it from within the YouTube app, or tap and hold the link and choose "open in browser" from the menu that pops up.
On a laptop or desktop this almost always works first time, which is handy if you're doing research, pulling clips for a presentation, or just prefer watching things full screen the normal way. If fullscreen still misbehaves once you're in the standard player, that's a separate and fairly common glitch, and there's a dedicated piece on fixing fullscreen when it won't cooperate that covers browser-specific causes.
Using playlists to force the landscape view
Another approach that a lot of people don't know about: add the Short to a playlist. Once a video sits inside a playlist, YouTube's playlist player tends to display it with standard controls rather than the Shorts swipe interface, even on mobile. You still get the vertical frame with black bars either side on a widescreen display, because the footage itself is vertical, nothing fixes that, but the controls, the progress bar, the speed settings and the description all behave like a normal video.
To do this: open the Short, tap the three-dot menu (or the share icon depending on your device), choose "Save to playlist," create a new playlist or add it to an existing one, then open that playlist from your library and play the video from there. It's a few extra taps but it's reliable, and it's a decent option if the URL swap keeps bouncing you back into the app's vertical mode.
Third-party sites and browser extensions
There are browser extensions and third-party sites that claim to convert Shorts into embedded normal players. Some work. Many are unreliable, slow to update when YouTube changes its code, or carry more ad trackers than you'd want on your machine. My honest view: for a one-off Short you want to watch, the URL swap or the playlist method does the job without installing anything. Save extensions for a genuine recurring need, not a single video.
The uncomfortable bit nobody wants to say
Here's what most guides on this topic skip over: creators often shoot specifically for the vertical Shorts format on purpose, and converting their video to look like a normal one can make it look worse, not better. A Short filmed close-up, with on-screen captions sized for a 9:16 frame and quick cuts timed for swipe behaviour, was never composed with landscape viewing in mind. Strip away the Shorts wrapper and you often get a video surrounded by ugly black bars, with text that's either too small or cropped at the edges, and pacing that feels frantic rather than engaging once it's sitting next to a normal 16:9 video library.
So if you're a creator wondering whether to just repost your Shorts as regular uploads to dodge this whole issue, think about why you made it vertical in the first place. If it was built for the scroll, forcing it into a landscape frame doesn't improve it, it just reveals the seams. The better move, if you want a piece of content to work both ways, is shooting two versions from the start, which is more effort but gives you a real landscape cut rather than a stretched or letterboxed one.
A worked example: checking a Short for research
Say you run a small marketing agency and a client sends you a Short claiming a competitor got "10 million views in a week" using a particular hook format. You want to read the description, check the upload date, and see the real comment thread before you believe the claim or repeat it in a client report.
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- Copy the Short's link from the share button.
- Swap "/shorts/" for "/watch?v=" in the URL.
- Open it in a desktop browser tab.
- Check the upload date and description in the standard watch page, where it's far easier to read than scrolling text in the vertical app view.
- Scroll the full comment section rather than the truncated drawer version, since nuance and pushback in comments often gets lost in the condensed Shorts view.
Five short steps, and you've turned a swipe-and-forget clip into something you can evaluate, the same way you'd review any other piece of competitive research before quoting it to a client.
What this means if you're the one posting Shorts
If you make Shorts yourself, know that some portion of your audience is going to do exactly what's described above, pull the link, convert it, and watch on desktop with full controls. That's generally good news: it means the content was worth a closer look. But it also means your description field matters more than you might think, because once someone's in the standard watch page, that description, your channel link, and your pinned comment are suddenly far more visible than they were in the swipe feed. If you're trying to turn Shorts viewers into subscribers or paying customers, that description box is doing more work than most creators give it credit for.
It's also worth remembering how engagement gets counted and paid once a viewer finds your Short through the standard player rather than the feed. The rules around monetisation differ between Shorts and long-form, and if you're building an income from either format it's worth reading up on how YouTube pay and HMRC rules work before assuming the numbers behave the same way across both formats.
And if a viewer lands on your converted Short and leaves a comment, it now shows up the same way a comment on any normal video would, which affects how and when you should respond. There's a separate guide on replying to comments on YouTube and who sees the reply that's worth a read if you're trying to build a community around a channel that posts a mix of both formats.
Checking how well it's doing
Once you've watched a Short the normal way, you might want to know whether it's performing well compared to your long-form content, retention, average view duration, where the audience drops off. That data lives in the same place regardless of format. The full breakdown is in the piece on checking YouTube analytics on computer and phone, which covers the specific metrics that behave differently for Shorts versus standard uploads, since Shorts retention percentages read quite differently to long-form retention and shouldn't be compared directly.
A quick note on mini player and mobile quirks
If you're trying to do this on mobile and the video keeps collapsing into a small floating window instead of opening, that's usually the mini player behaving oddly rather than the Shorts conversion itself failing. There's a dedicated explainer on when the YouTube mini player does and doesn't work that walks through the device settings that usually fix it.
And if you're exploring Shorts because you're thinking about collaborating on one, worth knowing that the Remix and Collab tools work differently to normal video features, and converting the URL afterwards doesn't change who gets credited. The mechanics are covered in the guide on how to collab on YouTube Shorts using Remix or Invite.
Frequently asked questions
Can you turn a YouTube Short into a normal video permanently?
No, not as the creator or the viewer. You can watch an existing Short through the standard watch page using the URL swap or playlist method, but this doesn't change the video file itself, its aspect ratio, or how YouTube categorises it in its own system. The only way to get a true landscape version is for the creator to upload a separate 16:9 cut.
Why does the URL swap trick stop working inside the YouTube app?
The app checks the video ID against its own Shorts database and redirects known Shorts back into the vertical swipe player, even if you typed the standard watch URL. Opening the same link in a mobile browser rather than the app usually avoids this redirect.
Does watching a Short in the normal player affect the creator's view count or payment?
The view still counts toward the same video, so the creator's total view count and watch time are unaffected. How that view is weighted for monetisation depends on YouTube's existing rules for Shorts versus long-form content, which are separate systems with different revenue pools.
Is there an official YouTube setting to always open Shorts in the regular player?
No. As of 2026 YouTube has not released a toggle or setting that changes this by default. Every method covered here is a workaround using existing URL structures and playlist behaviour, not a sanctioned feature.
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