I don't know about your online habits, but I am used to watching some clips on Youtube from time to time. I have no TV, and since Public Broadcasting in Germany is published there as well... why not.

A few years ago, Youtube introduced Shorts. Since then, the layout and concept of their services have changed iteratively to push Shorts right into your face.

I admit it: I observed myself several times becoming a zombie watching them. The reason is the design of such platforms. It's not a secret that dopamine is the reason we can become such zombies. And Google probably knows how much time we spend there since they implemented a "take-a-break"-reminder and even one for your bedtime. However, making the app less addictive was not on the table...

So, how to get rid of Shorts on Youtube?

Desktop Fix

You can't block the clips by filtering hostnames (like pi-Hole) because they're loaded from youtube.com. You can use uBlockOrigin. Luckily, the Brave Browser provides custom content filters by default. As I am already a fan of that browser[1], I don't need to install any other extension.

How to Set It Up with Brave?

  1. Open settings in Brave to add some custom filters: brave://settings/shields/filters

  2. Add these lines:

    www.youtube.com##a[title="Shorts"]
www.youtube.com###shorts-container

  3. That's it!

... and uBlock Origin

  1. If not already done, install uBlock Origin:
    for Chrome-based Browser
    for Firefox
  2. Paste the exact same lines in My Filters:
    www.youtube.com##a[title="Shorts"]
www.youtube.com###shorts-container

  1. Some are annoyed by cryptocurrency tools. You can disable them and hide all the unnecessary icons in the menu bar. ↩︎

Fix for Mobile

And here are the bad news: I was not able to find a better solution on iOS than using Adguard and Safari since it provides cosmetic filters.

The odds are better if you use an Android smartphone. Youtube Vanced seems to have an option to remove the Shorts