Chrome Extensions to Block YouTube Shorts (2026)

Unhook is the most precise free extension for hiding YouTube Shorts. ZalipOff is the best free pick when Shorts are only one of several sites eating your day. News Feed Eradicator, LeechBlock NG and StayFocusd each cover a different corner of the problem, and BlockSite mostly covers your wallet. Here is how all six compare in 2026, with the weaknesses stated out loud.

How we picked these six

Every chrome extension to block YouTube Shorts on this list had to clear five bars:

• It actually affects Shorts: hides the shelf, blocks the page, or interrupts the binge. Cosmetic tweaks did not count.
• Free, or priced honestly. Five of the six cost nothing. The sixth is here as a warning.
• No account to start blocking. You should not need to hand over an email to stop watching videos.
• It does not break the rest of YouTube. Search, subscriptions and that one tutorial you legitimately need should keep working.
• Still maintained in 2026, judging by the Chrome Web Store listing and recent reviews.

This is a Shorts-specific spin-off of our bigger guide to the best website blockers of 2026. If you want the manual, no-extension methods too, the step by step guide on removing Shorts from the YouTube homepage covers those.

The six extensions at a glance

Why willpower alone loses this fight

Shorts are engineered around variable rewards: each swipe might be brilliant, so your brain keeps pulling the lever long after the average video stopped being worth it. The format also hides its cost. Nobody plans to watch 90 minutes of Shorts; they plan to watch one, 120 times. Add autoplay and an algorithm that learns your weaknesses faster than you learn its tricks, and "just be disciplined" becomes a plan that loses to a supercomputer every evening. We unpack the mechanics in our piece on why attention spans are shrinking, but the practical conclusion is short: change the environment, not the resolve. That is precisely the job these extensions do.

1. Unhook: surgical Shorts removal

Unhook has over 1,000,000 users and a 4.9 rating, the highest of any tool here, and its recent reviews hold a perfect 5.00 trend. It works like a wiring panel for YouTube: checkboxes to hide the Shorts shelf, the Shorts tab in the sidebar, recommended videos, comments, autoplay, basically any part of the interface you want gone. Tick two boxes and Shorts simply stop existing in your browser, while search and subscriptions keep working.

If YouTube is your only problem site, install Unhook and close this tab. Honestly.

Setup takes a minute: click the extension icon while on YouTube and a checklist appears in place. Most people start by hiding Shorts everywhere they appear, then discover the toggle for recommended videos and never look back. Nothing needs a restart, and unchecking a box restores the interface instantly, which makes it easy to loosen the setup for a lazy Sunday and tighten it again on Monday morning.

The weakness is in the name of its category: Unhook is YouTube only. It does nothing when you close YouTube and open TikTok out of muscle memory. It also removes temptation silently rather than changing the habit, so some people find the urge just migrates to another feed. If that is you, keep reading.

2. ZalipOff: for Shorts plus everything else

ZalipOff is a free Chrome extension that blocks any distracting sites you choose, and its angle is different from every other tool on this list: instead of a cold block page, a 3D coach character reacts when you drift. There are 12 characters with different styles, from a gentle zen master to a furious drill sergeant, so the interruption feels like being caught by someone you picked, not punished by software.

It has two modes that map well onto the Shorts problem. Soft mode shows a small reminder card in the corner: useful because you might genuinely need YouTube for a tutorial or a lecture, and a full block would just get disabled. If you keep drifting back, ZalipOff escalates automatically: first the reminder, then hard mode, where the screen dims under a blocking overlay and the coach makes their opinion very clear.

Honest placement: ZalipOff does not surgically hide the Shorts shelf the way Unhook does. It treats YouTube, or TikTok, or Reddit, as a site you have a complicated relationship with, and manages the relationship. In practice that looks like this: you open YouTube for a tutorial, nothing happens. Twenty minutes later you are three Shorts deep, and the card slides in with the coach looking pointedly at their watch. Most drifts end right there, because what autopilot needed was not a wall but a witness. It is the better pick when Shorts are one head of a many-headed hydra. It is free forever with no site limit, needs no account, and everything stays local in your browser. The limit worth knowing: it is browser only, so Shorts on your phone are out of its reach.

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

3. News Feed Eradicator: kill the feed, keep the search

News Feed Eradicator has around 200,000 users, a 4.7 rating, and is free and open source, which its fans rightly love. It replaces the feed on YouTube and other social sites with a motivational quote, so you can still search for a specific video but the infinite buffet is gone.

The honest limitation: it eradicates feeds, not sites. YouTube itself stays fully reachable, and a direct link to a Short still plays. It removes browsing momentum, which is often enough, but it will not stop a determined binge. Think of it as decaf, not quitting coffee.

4. StayFocusd: time budgets, with caveats

StayFocusd, with 700,000 users, takes the allowance approach: give yourself ten minutes of YouTube a day, and when the budget runs out the site locks. That model suits people who want some Shorts rather than zero. It also acknowledges reality: a total ban you resent gets disabled by Friday, while a budget you chose yourself has a fighting chance of being kept.

The caveats are real, though. Its lifetime rating is 4.4 but the recent review trend sits at 3.90, with users reporting bugs; one Spanish 2-star review says "A dejado de funcionar en Brave," it stopped working in Brave. The listing also states it is owned by Sensor Tower, a market intelligence company, which is worth knowing before you install a tool that watches which sites you visit.

5. LeechBlock NG: the tinkerer's option

LeechBlock NG has 100,000+ users, a 4.9 rating with a 5.00 recent trend, and is completely free. It is the only tool here that can block just the youtube.com/shorts path while leaving the rest of YouTube untouched, and it can do it on a schedule: Shorts allowed at lunch, blocked during work hours, blocked entirely after 10 pm.

The price you pay is the interface. Configuring LeechBlock feels like editing a spreadsheet of rules, and the manifest of options can eat an evening. If you enjoy that kind of tinkering it is the most precise rule engine on this list. If you do not, you will never finish setting it up.

6. BlockSite: the one to skip for this job

BlockSite is the most installed dedicated blocker on the Chrome Web Store, with 1,000,000 users and a 4.5 lifetime rating. But its recent review trend has slid to 3.20, and the reason is the business model: the free tier stops at three blocked sites, then asks for $49.99. A 1-star review from August 2026 puts it plainly: "only blocks 3 websites then ask for money." Others call it "difficult to cancel," and one sums the pattern up: "One of the more scammy extensions. So many things behind paywalls."

When five capable tools above cost nothing, paying $49.99 to block a video shelf is a hard sell. Skip it for this use case.

Can you combine them?

Yes, and the best stack is usually one narrow tool plus one broad one. Unhook removes the Shorts shelf so the temptation never even renders; ZalipOff guards the rest of your browsing so the freed-up urge does not simply migrate to TikTok or Reddit, which is exactly what it does when you close only one exit. The pairs to avoid are the redundant ones: News Feed Eradicator and Unhook overlap heavily on YouTube, and running two full blockers at once mostly produces two overlapping block screens and confusion about which settings page is in charge.

A sensible default for a Shorts problem that is really a general scrolling problem: Unhook with the Shorts boxes ticked, ZalipOff in soft mode for the other feeds, and hard mode reserved for deadline weeks.

Verdict by use case

• Only YouTube Shorts bother you: Unhook. Two checkboxes, done.
• Shorts plus TikTok, Instagram or Reddit: ZalipOff. One tool, every site, a coach instead of a wall.
• You want the feed gone but search kept: News Feed Eradicator, or Unhook's toggles.
• You want a daily Shorts allowance: StayFocusd, if you are not on Brave.
• You love configuring things: LeechBlock NG, the only one that blocks the /shorts/ path on a schedule.
• Skip: BlockSite, unless you enjoy paywalls.

One honest note about the day after

Whatever you install, expect the itch to spike for a few days. That is not the extension failing; that is the habit protesting. The people who stay unhooked treat this window as the whole game: they keep the blocker on, park the phone in another room, and give the urge somewhere else to go, a walk, a snack, an actual task. By the second week, a homepage without Shorts stops feeling empty and starts feeling quiet.

Whichever you pick, remember the habit itself has its own gravity: our guide on how to stop watching Shorts and Reels covers the behavioral side, and if you decide to go further than Shorts, here is how to block YouTube on Chrome entirely.

Ready to try the coach approach? ZalipOff is free, needs no account, and your data never leaves your browser. Add ZalipOff to Chrome and pick the character who gets through to you.