How to block YouTube Shorts without losing YouTube
Shorts is the most annoying version of this problem, because the app around it is genuinely useful. You go in for a tutorial and leave forty minutes later having watched sixty clips you won't remember. Google has made Shorts increasingly hard to remove, but there are still real methods that work - and the strongest ones are not inside YouTube.
Quick Answer
On mobile you can't fully delete the Shorts tab, but you can suppress it: tap the three dots on any Shorts shelf and choose to hide Shorts (a temporary dismissal you'll need to repeat), mark Shorts as Not Interested to starve the recommender, turn off Watch History so the feed has nothing to personalise, and use YouTube in a browser instead of the app. For a durable fix, block or gate the YouTube app itself - FightMode keeps it locked until you win a 60-second boxing round.
Why Shorts is stickier than regular YouTube
Regular YouTube has a shape: you pick a video, it ends, you decide again. That decision point is your natural exit, and it's exactly what Shorts deletes. A vertical, algorithmic, endless feed has no ending, no choosing, and no moment where a conscious version of you gets consulted. It's a different product in the same app. See the loop explained.
Method 1: suppress Shorts inside the app (free, partial)
- Dismiss the shelf. On the Home feed, tap the three dots on a Shorts shelf and choose to hide it. It typically comes back after a while, so this is maintenance, not a fix.
- Not Interested, repeatedly. Long-press Shorts thumbnails and mark Not Interested. This does move the recommender over time.
- Pause Watch History. In your Google Account, YouTube History, pause it. Recommendations degrade a lot - which is the point. The Shorts feed gets much less compelling when it doesn't know you.
- Use Subscriptions as your home. Open the Subscriptions tab instead of Home. It's chronological and finite, which is everything Home isn't.
- Turn on Remind me to take a break / bedtime reminders. Weak, free, one more layer.
Method 2: use the browser instead of the app
On iPhone, m.youtube.com in Safari plus a content blocker extension gives you options the app doesn't. Several Safari content blockers can hide Shorts elements by CSS rule. It's fiddlier than the app and playback in the background is worse - which, for this purpose, is a feature.
On desktop, browser extensions that remove the Shorts shelf and redirect Shorts URLs to the regular player are the cleanest fix available anywhere. If most of your Shorts time is on a laptop, start here.
Method 3: an alternative client (Android)
On Android there are third-party YouTube clients and patched builds that strip Shorts entirely. On iPhone, Apple's rules mean nothing comparable exists on the App Store, so iOS users are limited to the methods above plus app-level blocking.
Method 4: gate the whole app (strongest on iPhone)
Since you can't reliably remove Shorts on iOS, the durable answer is to make opening YouTube itself deliberate. That sounds heavy-handed until you notice how many of your YouTube opens weren't for a video you wanted - they were for the feed.
- Screen Time App Limit on YouTube specifically. Free, and easily bypassed with the Ignore tap.
- Downtime across your worst window.
- An earn-it-back blocker. FightMode locks YouTube until you win a 60-second boxing round. If you actually came for a tutorial, sixty seconds is nothing. If you came for the Shorts feed, you'll usually change your mind halfway through - which is precisely the sort you want to catch.
Method 5: the settings that quietly matter most
Four switches worth more than they look
Autoplay off. Every autoplay is a decision made for you. Turning it off restores the exit point.
Watch History paused. The recommender's fuel supply. Cut it and Home becomes boring, which is the goal.
Notifications off. All of them. You will not miss a video that matters.
Subscriptions as home. Trains you out of the habit of opening a slot machine and calling it "checking YouTube."
The realistic outcome
You probably can't delete Shorts on an iPhone. You can make it much less rewarding (pause history), much less visible (Subscriptions tab, dismiss shelves), and much more expensive to reach (app-level gate). Stack those three and Shorts stops being a place you end up by accident - which is the only way anyone ends up there. See also how to stop doomscrolling.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can you permanently turn off YouTube Shorts?
Not in the official iPhone app - Google doesn't offer a real off switch, and shelf dismissals expire after a while. You can get close by pausing Watch History, using the Subscriptions tab as your home, and marking Shorts as Not Interested. On desktop, browser extensions can remove the shelf entirely, and on Android some third-party clients strip Shorts completely.
Does pausing Watch History stop Shorts?
It doesn't remove Shorts, but it substantially reduces how compelling the feed is, because the recommender has far less to personalise with. Most people find the Shorts feed becomes noticeably easier to close once it's showing generic content rather than a stream tuned to them. It's the single highest-leverage in-app change available.
How do I stop watching Shorts on my iPhone?
Combine three things: make it less rewarding by pausing Watch History, less visible by using the Subscriptions tab and dismissing Shorts shelves, and harder to reach by gating the YouTube app itself with Screen Time or a toll-based blocker. The gate matters most, because almost nobody opens YouTube intending to watch Shorts - they end up there.
Is YouTube Shorts as addictive as TikTok?
Structurally, yes - it's the same infinite vertical algorithmic feed with a reward interval measured in seconds. The practical difference is that Shorts lives inside an app you have legitimate reasons to open, so the usual advice of deleting the app is a much bigger sacrifice. That's why the effective approach is suppressing Shorts specifically rather than removing YouTube.
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Scope
This is a practical guide to iPhone settings and third-party apps as of iOS 18 and August 2026. Apple changes Screen Time behavior between releases, so menu names may shift. FightMode is made by the author of this site.