How to Remove Shorts From the YouTube Homepage

There are three real ways to remove Shorts from YouTube: dismiss the Shorts shelf with its built-in X (works, but only for about 30 days), hide Shorts everywhere with a free extension like Unhook, or put a blocker with a coach between you and the vertical feed so the reflex itself fades. The first takes five seconds, the second takes a minute, and the third is the one that changes the habit. Here is how to do each, plus the honest truth about the phone app.

The built-in way: hide the Shorts shelf

On the desktop homepage, the Shorts shelf has a dismiss button: click the X in its corner and YouTube hides the shelf for about 30 days. That is the entire built-in offering, and it is worth doing right now, but know its limits:

• It is temporary. The shelf quietly returns in a month, usually when you least expect it.
• It only affects the homepage shelf. Shorts still appear in search results, on channel pages, and in your subscriptions feed.
• Clicking any Short still opens the vertical feed, where the next one autoplays and the swipe loop begins.

So treat the X as first aid, not a cure. For anything durable you need a browser-side tool.

Method 1: a browser extension

Two extensions cover the two different jobs here, and honesty demands we name both.

For pure YouTube cleanup, Unhook is the best tool, including compared to us. It is free, sits at a 4.9 rating with over 1,000,000 installs, and gives you simple toggles to hide Shorts, the homepage feed, recommended videos and more. If your only problem is YouTube and you just want the interface stripped of temptation, install Unhook and you are done. Its one limitation is in the name of the category: it works on YouTube only, and it hides things rather than stopping you.

For actually staying off Shorts, use a blocker with a coach. Hiding fails for one stubborn reason: the muscle memory survives. You type the address, click through from search, follow a link from chat, and the vertical feed is rolling again. ZalipOff, a free Chrome extension, takes a different approach: add youtube.com to your list and a 3D coach reacts when you land there during focus time. In soft mode a small reminder card appears in the corner, so a tutorial or a lecture stays perfectly watchable, but the coach catches the moment a legitimate video slides into a Shorts binge. Keep drifting and ZalipOff escalates automatically to hard mode: the screen dims under a blocking overlay. No account, no site limit, data stays local. Pick the coach whose tone actually works on you: some people respond to the zen master's calm, others need the drill sergeant, and switching takes seconds.

Try ZalipOff free: 12 character coaches, soft nudge or hard block, no account needed. Your data never leaves your browser. Add to Chrome.

Method 2: block the /shorts/ path

Every Short lives under one URL pattern: youtube.com/shorts/.... That makes surgical blocking possible: kill the path, keep the rest of YouTube. The free tool for this is LeechBlock NG (4.9 rating), which supports wildcard patterns like youtube.com/shorts*. Add that pattern to a block set and the vertical feed dies while normal videos, search and subscriptions keep working. The honest tradeoff: LeechBlock's interface is a dense settings table, so budget ten minutes and some patience for the setup.

Note that path blocking pairs well with the shelf dismissal or Unhook: the path block stops playback, but Shorts thumbnails still decorate the homepage unless something hides them. If your Chrome is managed through enterprise policies, an administrator can add the same pattern to the URL blocklist, though for a personal machine an extension is far less hassle. A full comparison of these tools lives in our roundup of Chrome extensions to block YouTube Shorts.

Method 3: on your phone

The uncomfortable truth: most Shorts are watched in the YouTube app, and no browser extension, ZalipOff included, can reach inside a mobile app. What you can do on the phone:

• Long-press a Short on the home feed and tap Not interested, or dismiss the whole shelf. Like on desktop, it is temporary.
• Turn off autoplay and watch history features that feed the recommendation loop.
• Set an app timer for YouTube in iOS Screen Time or Android Digital Wellbeing.
• Move the YouTube app off your home screen so opening it becomes a choice instead of a reflex.

It is whack-a-mole, and we would rather say that plainly than pretend otherwise. The phone side of this fight is covered in how to stop watching Shorts and Reels.

What actually works long-term

Shorts are engineered so that no single video costs anything: sixty seconds, who cares? But the unit is the swipe, not the video, and thirty swipes disappear an evening. Nobody opens Shorts planning to watch forty of them, and almost nobody stops at one. Researchers keep linking this format to shrinking attention spans, which we unpack in why your attention span is shrinking.

That is why removal alone relapses: YouTube reshuffles its interface, the shelf returns, a link sneaks through, and the loop reboots. The durable setup is layered. Hide what you can (Unhook or the X), block the path or the site during focus hours, and let a coach handle the moments when you drift anyway, gently at first, firmly on repeat. If YouTube as a whole is the problem rather than just Shorts, start with our guide to blocking YouTube on Chrome, and the whole method family is collected in how to block any site on Chrome.

Give the reclaimed minutes somewhere to go, too. Shorts fill gaps: the kettle boiling, the file uploading, the awkward minute before a call. If those gaps get a designated filler, a book tab, a language app, even just looking out the window, the pull of the feed weakens noticeably within a couple of weeks.

Ready for the coached version? Add ZalipOff to Chrome: free forever, 12 coaches, no account, nothing leaves your browser.