uBlock filter list to hide all YouTube Shorts

I’m paying over 40 dollars a month for YouTube but it doesn’t allow me to choose almost anything of what I see, despite trying hard to fine-tune my recommendations.

I can’t permanently turn off shorts - and this I find personally insulting. It really feels like encountering a drug dealer outside my house every time I come home, always expecting me to cave and try some of that good smack.

But apart from ignoring me when I say I’m not interested in whole genres of ‘fun’ videos, it also resets the streaming quality to the lowest setting every single day and then hides the quality setting deep inside a menu with several fiddly clicks.

And this isn’t for my benefit of course: I can easily stream 4K video to my screens. It’s to shave a few cents off each stream and max the gouging.

I’m sure I’ve clicked “show fewer shorts” every single time it’s shown me shorts. It seems to make zero difference.

Unhook[1] has been my go-to for this. Gives full customization over shorts, recommendations, comments, etc.

1a: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-recom...

1b: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/unhook-remove-youtu...

In addition to the unhook addon that others also recommended and is great, I would also suggest, as an alternative, setting a redirection rule from "www.youtube.com/shorts/XYWZ" to "www.youtube.com/watch?v=XYWZ". This will play the short but in the classical youtube video (landscape) format, with no infinite scrolling, or replay or autoplay (assuming these are in general disabled), which takes away a big part of the addictive aspect of shorts.

I wrote this little quick and dirty userscript for myself sometime back:

  // ==UserScript==
  // @name No Shorts
  // @match https://www.youtube.com/shorts/*
  // @match https://www.facebook.com/reel/*
  // ==/UserScript==
  window.document.body.innerHTML = ''

This isn't as comprehensive as the uBlock filter but it has worked pretty well for me so far.

I can confirm this works great, you are back to a mid 2010s kind of homescreen without any of the modern cellphone format crap.

I use Brave to watch YouTube. I was pleasantly surprised that they had so many YouTube related features, blocking shorts is one of them.

I've noticed other junk like 'games' and ads for paid 'premium' content getting through uBlock's filter list. Hope those are added to the list too.

I used uBlock's element zapper feature to block the youtube logo on top left, because it's often animated and always distracting (I desperately need fewer distractions when using youtube, not more, even if minor).

I know this won't help much, however, FreeTube can help with this. Yes, it is a standalone app, however...

Also, if you a Google/Youtube employee, rubbing your hands together, making fun of folks, and generally thinking negative thoughts, take it from a former veteran software engineer/manager (never had the desire to move up the ladder, and I am disabled now thanks to a tragic accident): There are a ton of negative comments about your UX, even from paid users. Nobody likes your shit. They only tolerate it because you currently have a monopoly. That will not always be the case. You are failing yourself, your job, and your users. Learn to put those users first. If Google had stuck to that early on, uBlock Origin wouldn't exist.

I know everyone at Google is tone deaf, so let me put this another way: Someone is ALWAYS left holding the bag. It could be you, the lowly programmer, or it could be you, the lowly manager. It could also be anyone in C-Suite. Once the numbers don't align with what investors want to see, someone will be blamed. As we reach the top of an AI bubble, those at the top are going to want to find a way to blame others down below, that means you will likely take the hit.

That takes care of the browser. Now I just need a way to filter out short videos in NewPipe (and ideally a way to specify that I only want very long ones)

I prefer using RYS <https://lawrencehook.com/rys/> which has this as a feature, but a lot more, too.

The easy way to do this is to hide them with custom CSS

- Install Stylebot extension for your browser

- make an entry for youtube.com

- enter this css: .shortsLockupViewModelHost { display: none}

Bam, no more shorts.

Just take the next step and stop going to youtube entirely, and pull the video from the url.

Is this really working on ALL shorts?

And if I click on the panel "no more shorts", is this setting then applied continuously?

I've been using invidious for a while now but I remember I had blocked all recommends and suggestions on YT so I never saw shorts anyways (I know the recommend block was thru ublock but I can't remember if I'd blocked suggestions through YT options or if that was also a ublock filter).

Also a great way to avoid mindless feed-surfing. I only watched videos from subs or that I have specifically searched for rather than getting sucked into the algo vortex.

Daily reminder that these tools are made possible by the power of general purpose computing, and corporate interests want to take it away. In a hypothetical future not too far from us where your devices become "trusted", you will have to view whatever they want you to see, with no recourse like blocking ads or undesirable content.

On the main page, shorts, as all the other videos, are served by the recommendation algorithm which should filter out general audience crap you'd see if you're not logged in or have view history disabled. You'd normally see the same stuff you're subscribed to there, plus a few random videos of cats. Maybe a wamen butt occasionally. Might as well hide the main page entirely if you're not that easily entertained. To be quite frank, the main page is such an echo chamber lately that I almost got myself unhooked from procrastinating on YouTube.

On the search page, shorts are mostly a mixed bag, but you do occasionally get useful results.

So what does this solve? Seems like a form of protest nobody important (those in power) cares about.

Another thing is, I have, to my own surprise, discovered a few decent channels that I like, that post their videos in form of shorts exclusively. That's a somewhat new trend and mostly relevant to humor-related or music channels, though.

Almost forgot to mention. YouTube recently added the scroll bar to the shorts so they aren't all that different from the other videos now.

Converted to 1Blocker format: https://gist.github.com/egze/7f672ebebecde0546ddb928e7f3adb4...

Blocktube extension does this with just a checkmark

can also hide other things

Canceled YouTube subscription and deleted the app. Don't miss it, surprisingly.

Just pause watch history and it will disable shorts recommendation. The only shorts you will see will be from your subscribed channels.

I have so many freakin' rules in ublock just to make youtube's UI acceptable

Wish we could use this as a proxy for phones that connect to internet !

was able to get these added to ublock origin lite, which works in chrome; just paste the content directly into the custom filter settings.

Finally, tired of creating this custom filter in all my devices lol. I wish it would all automatically apply the "videos" filter as well.

Anyone have any similar uBlock filter lists like this?

yt neuter has this and much more: https://github.com/mchangrh/yt-neuter

I’ve been using brave on mobile and it seems to work pretty well!

I love you!

is there a supply chain attack possible? What if some time later this list gets updated?

I really don't mind shorts, but I want to be the one that chooses to watch them.

is there anything that might work for the YT app on the Android?

I read this as "The default uBlock filter list will change to hide all YouTube Shorts".

Unpopular opinion, but I like youtube shorts. No ads, no rambling, no product placement. it forces brevity and getting to point. it is how youtube should be.

i can't even get youtube to load with ublock.. theres a years old thread with hundreds of comments on the github -- what are people actually using today to preserve their sanity on youtube?

edit: the issue with ublock is the black screen - sometimes the video loads after 10 or so seconds, sometimes it doesnt. i dont consider hiding the ad while still having to wait around for it to finsish playing behind an overlay the same as "blocking" :|

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Legit question, do you guys get really bad Shorts recommendations? Mine aren't half bad (really more of the same as with regular videos) plus creators don't insert ad spots. I get it, TikTok-style scrolling is annoying, but the format has its merits. At least less yapping and more to the point.