The TikTokification of social media is very real. Short-form video content is abundant across Facebook, Instagram, X, YouTube, Snapchat, and more, with seemingly no end in sight. On the one hand, there’s a lot of creativity to be found from creators of short burst-style videos, but, as with everything good in life, there’s a catch: doom scrolling is demoralizing, and our attention spans are suffering day in and day out.
Back in October of last year, Google introduced a new feed limiter feature to help users reign in on their Shorts consumption. The feature has until now allowed for limits of 15, 30, 45, 60, and 120 minutes, with the company adding in a 0-minute option to its parental control suite in January of this year.
As per statements made to The Verge, it looks like Google is finally rolling out its 0-minute limiter option to all YouTube users, irrespective of whether they use parental controls or not. Unfortunately, for the time being, the feature is limited to YouTube’s mobile apps, with the desktop web-browser-based experience missing out on the setting altogether.
- notable shows
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Kitchen Nightmares, Merlin
- notable movies
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Clueless, Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, How to Train Your Dragon, Mean Girls, Star Trek
- Premium Subscription
-
Yes, $13.99 per month
- Originals
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No
- Live TV
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No
YouTube is one of the biggest internet video platforms of them all, with news content, viral videos, niche fandoms, and everything in between.
How to turn off YouTube Shorts on mobile
Short-form video content begone
To hide Shorts from your YouTube application on iPhone or Android, follow these steps:
- Launch the YouTube app.
- Navigate to Settings > Time management > Daily limits.
- From here, switch on Shorts feed limit.
- Lastly, select 0 minutes from the on-screen flyout menu.
In order to have 0 minutes appear as a feed limit option within your YouTube app, you’ll need to be running the latest version of the software. It looks like the feature is rolling out server-side, and so it may not appear right away on all your devices, even if you’re on the latest available software update.
And, just like that, short-form videos will stop appearing on your main YouTube feed. You’ll still be able to watch Shorts sent to you by other people, and they’ll still appear within your subscription feed and search results, but doom scrolling will be disabled entirely. When flicking to the next Shorts video, you see a prompt appear that reads: “You reached your Shorts feed limit.”
Additionally, the dedicated Shorts tab within the YouTube app will be removed from view when 0 minutes is enabled, as well as within the hamburger sidebar menu. If you change your mind at any point in time, you can jump back into Shorts by navigating to YouTube’s settings page and toggling the Daily limits feature off again.
