In 2023, I wrote an article explaining how to get around YouTube’s new ads policy. Since then, I haven’t seen an ad on YouTube. Recently, however, YouTube Shorts have started appearing in my YouTube searches. In this article, I will show you how to remove them from your YouTube searches.
YouTube Shorts
YouTube Shorts are short-form, vertical videos on YouTube that are up to three minutes long and designed for mobile viewing. Launched in July 2021 to compete with TikTok and Instagram Reels, they appear in a dedicated feed, on the YouTube homepage, and in search results.
These Shorts are annoying because:
- They are heavily promoted in the main feed and search results, cluttering the experience for those seeking long-form content
- They lack controls for quality adjustment, timestamping, and comments, which often block the view
- They are a low-quality, low-effort, repetitive format. The content encourages “brain rot” and viral trends
How To Remove YouTube Shorts
You can block these annoying YouTube Shorts! I will show you how to do this in the Brave browser using the Brave Shields. You do not need to log into a Google account. The browser’s built-in filtering works independently of user authentication. However, if you use a different browser or an extension like uBlock Origin, you may be able to do something similar.
Steps To Enable
Desktop
Click the hamburger icon in the upper-right corner and navigate to Settings.
Select Shields in the left column and Content Filtering in the right column.
Select Show full list.
From the filter list, select YouTube Shorts Blocker.
Mobile
In Brave mobile browsers, the steps are similar.
Go to Settings > Media (Android) or Settings > Shields & Privacy > Content Filtering (iOS) and toggle on Block YouTube Shorts.
Bottom Line
YouTube Shorts are extremely annoying short-form, vertical videos on YouTube. Fortunately, they can easily be removed using Brave’s Shields content filtering or a similar extension.
Have you noticed these YouTube Shorts? Do they annoy you? Let me know your thoughts in the comments.
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