How to hide YouTube Shorts on desktop and phone
TL;DR
- In the YouTube phone app, setting the Shorts feed limit to 0 minutes stopped the Shorts tab and removed the Shorts shelf from Home. The Shorts shelf in Subscriptions stayed.
- The desktop site has the same setting, but at 0 minutes the Shorts shelves on Home and the Shorts feed kept working.
- In Subscriptions, the app's Videos filter drops Shorts. To go without Shorts everywhere, you can use another service such as Plainfeed.
You open YouTube for one long video, start flicking through Shorts, and an hour is gone. So you search for how to turn Shorts off, but I couldn't find a switch in YouTube's settings that turns them off entirely. What there is instead is a setting for how long you can scroll Shorts each day, and setting it to 0 blocks a fair amount.
This post is what happened when I turned that setting on and checked where Shorts actually disappear. I checked the phone on November 6, 2026 in the Android YouTube app (21.44), and the desktop on November 5 on YouTube's website in Chrome, both signed in. I couldn't check an iPhone, and YouTube's screens change often, so yours may differ a little by device or app version.
1. Phone app: set the Shorts feed limit to 0 minutes
In short: on a phone, this one setting stops the Shorts tab and Shorts on Home.
- Signed in to the YouTube app, tap You at the bottom, then Settings (the gear) at the top right
- Time management, then Shorts feed limit under Daily limits
- Pick 0 minutes from the list of times
YouTube's help center describes the Shorts feed limit with nearly the same path (it skips the Daily limits heading) and lists 0 minutes as an option. With it at 0, this is what happened.
- Shorts tab: as soon as I tapped it, a screen said "You reached your Shorts feed limit." Scrolling stops, with Go to Home and Ignore for the day buttons.
- Home: after one refresh the Shorts shelf was gone. It didn't come back however far I scrolled.
- Subscriptions: the Shorts shelf stayed. Shorts in Subscriptions need method 3.
There are limits. The setting's own note says scrolling pauses but you may still see individual Shorts. That means Shorts you open one at a time, like one someone sends you as a link, can still play. And the Ignore for the day button is right there, so getting past it takes one tap.
To turn it off: use the switch on the right of the same row. The list of times has no "off", which is easy to miss.
2. Desktop: the same setting, but it had no effect in my test
In short: on the desktop site, this setting didn't make Shorts go away.
The desktop site also has the setting (in the Korean UI I used: Settings → Time management → Daily limits → "Shorts feed"), with 0, 15, 30, 45 minutes, 1 hour and 2 hours. But at 0 minutes, both Shorts shelves on Home stayed, and the Shorts feed kept scrolling.
On desktop you can try these instead.
- Open Subscriptions instead of Home: bookmark
youtube.com/feed/subscriptionsand you skip the Shorts shelves on Home. On this account the desktop Subscriptions page had no Videos filter, though, so a Shorts shelf was mixed in. - Show fewer Shorts: the ⋮ on the right of a shelf lets you cut them down, as in section 4.
3. Drop Shorts from Subscriptions (the app's Videos filter)
In short: in the phone app, tapping Videos at the top of Subscriptions drops Shorts.
The app's Subscriptions tab had filters at the top: All, Today, Videos, Shorts, Live and Podcasts. With Videos selected, no Shorts showed up however far I scrolled. Streams that were live right then were still mixed in. The filters may be missing or named differently depending on your device and app version.
4. Cut down the Shorts shelf on Home
In short: the shelf menu can only reduce Shorts, not remove them.
The ⋮ on the right of the Shorts shelf on Home had just one option, Show fewer Shorts (on both the desktop site and the app). The X button that some guides say hides the shelf for 30 days didn't appear on this account. Since it only reduces them, don't be surprised if they come back.
5. Use Plainfeed
In short: you can see new videos from your subscriptions on a screen with no Shorts at all.
Plainfeed is a separate website, not an official YouTube service. Paste in YouTube channel URLs and new videos from those channels stack up in the order they were posted. It works the same in a phone browser and on desktop, with no sign-in needed.
- Shorts are left out from the start. It treats videos posted as Shorts and videos 3 minutes or shorter as Shorts, so regular videos of 3 minutes or less are left out too. Replays of live streams stay even when they're short.
- There are no recommendations, so there's nowhere to drift off to from a Short.
- Videos play in YouTube's player. To comment or subscribe you still go to YouTube.
Comparing the options
| Method | Home | Subs | Feed |
|---|---|---|---|
| Feed limit 0 (app) | ○ | ✕ | ○ |
| Same setting (web) | ✕ | ✕ | ✕ |
| Videos filter (app) | — | ○ | — |
| Show fewer (both) | △ | — | — |
| Plainfeed (both) | ○ | ○ | ○ |
○ Shorts gone · △ fewer · ✕ still there · — not applicable. Subs is the Subscriptions tab, Feed is the Shorts feed. The Shorts feed limit can be skipped for the day in one tap, and Shorts sent as links still open. Plainfeed doesn't change YouTube's own pages; it shows a separate list of the channels you add, with Shorts left out.
Wrapping up
On a phone, setting the Shorts feed limit to 0 and tapping the Videos filter in Subscriptions gets rid of most Shorts. On desktop the setting had no visible effect in my test, so the habit of opening Subscriptions instead of Home does more. If Shorts still creeping in somewhere bothers you, a screen that never had them is the quicker fix.