How to Disable YouTube Shorts on Mobile and Desktop

Mobile app: the realistic options

The YouTube app is where this gets messy. There is no permanent off switch in the standard app, but you have several ways to reduce Shorts to a minimum.

Hide the Shorts shelf temporarily

1. Open the YouTube app and make sure it's updated to the latest version.
2. On your home feed, find the Shorts shelf and tap the X in its top corner.
3. Tap Hide. The shelf disappears, typically for around 30 days, then returns and needs hiding again.

Turn off Shorts in search and watch history

Shorts feed on your activity. Pausing history starves the recommendations:

1. Tap your profile photo > Settings > Manage all history (or History & privacy).
2. Pause Watch history and Search history.
3. With less behavioral data, YouTube surfaces fewer tailored Shorts.

Remove the Shorts tab from the bottom bar

On many app versions you can't delete the Shorts button outright, but newer builds occasionally let you customize the bottom navigation. Check Settings > General for any bottom-bar or Shorts options; availability varies by version and region.

Pro tip: The most reliable way to never see Shorts on a computer is a browser extension that blocks the Shorts shelf and redirects Shorts URLs to the normal player. Extensions like these strip Shorts out completely, which the native settings can't fully guarantee. Just vet any extension's permissions before installing.

Comparing the methods

Each approach trades effort against how thoroughly it removes Shorts. Here's how they line up.

If you only use YouTube on a computer, the desktop shelf toggle plus an extension gets you a Shorts-free experience. On mobile, expect to re-hide the shelf periodically unless you switch to a third-party client.

The shelf keeps coming back on mobile

This is expected, not a failure on your part. The mobile Hide action is deliberately temporary, suppressing the shelf for roughly 30 days before YouTube reintroduces it. There's no setting to make it stick permanently in the standard app. Your realistic options are to re-hide it each time it returns, lean on paused history to thin out recommendations, or move to a third-party client. It's annoying, and it's a deliberate design choice by YouTube to keep Shorts in front of you.

I turned it off but Shorts still appear in search

The shelf toggle only governs the home feed. Search is a different surface, and individual Shorts can still appear there when they match your query. There's no clean per-surface switch for search results, so a blocking extension on desktop is the only way to fully scrub them from every view.

What disabling Shorts does and doesn't do

Hiding the Shorts shelf removes the prominent block from your home page, but it doesn't wall Shorts off entirely. You can still:

• Open a Short by tapping a direct link someone sends you.
• Find Shorts on a creator's channel under their Shorts tab.
• Encounter the occasional Short in search results.

In other words, disabling Shorts is about reclaiming your home feed, not erasing the format from existence. For most people, killing the autoplaying shelf is 90% of the relief they were after.

Warning: Pausing your watch history to reduce Shorts also makes your regular recommendations less personalized, so your home feed may feel more generic. It's a genuine trade-off. If you rely on YouTube's suggestions for long-form videos, the shelf-hide method alone is the gentler choice.

The nuclear options for a truly Shorts-free experience

If hiding the shelf isn't enough and you want Shorts genuinely gone, you have a few heavier choices, each with trade-offs:

• Browser extensions (desktop). Tools built specifically to strip Shorts will remove the shelf, hide the sidebar Shorts link, and even redirect any youtube.com/shorts/ URL into the standard video player so a Short plays as a normal clip. This is the most complete removal on a computer.
• Third-party mobile clients. Alternative front-end apps for YouTube often let you disable Shorts entirely, along with ads and other clutter. The catch is they sit outside Google's official ecosystem, so reliability and updates vary.
• A separate, history-paused account. Some people keep a "focus" Google account with watch history off and the shelf hidden, used only for intentional viewing, while their main account stays personalized.

For the vast majority of users, though, a desktop extension plus the native shelf-hide on mobile covers it. You rarely need to go further than that.

What about kids' accounts and supervised profiles?

If your real goal is keeping Shorts away from a child, the regular toggles aren't the right tool. YouTube Kids is a separate app with its own content controls and no standard Shorts feed, and supervised accounts for older children give parents content-level settings through Family Link. Those parental controls are far more durable than hiding a shelf that reappears every month, so reach for them rather than fighting the main app's settings.

Re-enabling Shorts later

None of this is permanent. If you change your mind, the path back is the reverse of whatever you did:

1. On desktop, return to Settings and re-enable Show Shorts, or simply wait for the shelf to reappear.
2. On mobile, the hidden shelf comes back on its own after about a month.
3. Resume your watch and search history under History & privacy.
4. Disable or remove any blocking extension.

So there's no risk in experimenting. Turn Shorts off, see how your YouTube feels without the endless scroll, and flip it back if you miss it.

Why this matters

Short-form video is designed to be hard to put down, and that's not an accident. The autoplay, the vertical swipe, the constant fresh hit, all of it is tuned to maximize time on screen. If you open YouTube to watch a specific tutorial and lose twenty minutes to a Shorts rabbit hole, the feature is working as intended and quietly costing you. Disabling the shelf is a small act of taking your attention back.

The practical reality in 2026 is that YouTube doesn't offer one clean permanent switch, especially on mobile. But between the desktop shelf toggle, paused history, and a good browser extension, you can get remarkably close to a Shorts-free experience. Pick the methods that match how you actually use YouTube, accept that the mobile app needs occasional re-hiding, and enjoy a home page that shows you what you came for instead of what's engineered to keep you scrolling.