Guide

Remove YouTube Shorts with a Chrome extension

YouTube now has a setting that empties the Shorts feed. It leaves the Shorts tab, search results, channel pages and the subscriptions feed alone. An extension removes all of it.

Updated October 2026.

What YouTube's own settings do

Since April 2026 there is a Shorts feed limit under Settings, then Time management, with a zero-minutes option. Set it and the Shorts feed stops. It is a limit on the feed, not a removal of Shorts from the site. Yahoo Tech's report on the rollout notes that Shorts can still show up in the subscriptions tab, and that the option had not reached every account yet. Shorts that surface in search results, on channel pages, and in the Up next column are outside what the setting controls.

The older method still works too. The Shorts shelf on the home page has an X that hides it for 30 days, after which it returns. Supervised accounts get a separate Shorts time limit in Family Center.

What an extension does instead

A content script runs on youtube.com and hides the Shorts elements with CSS before the page paints, so you never see them flash in. Calmer Web, our extension, has a Shorts and Reels toggle that hides:

• The Shorts shelf on the home page and in search results.
• The Shorts tab in the sidebar and on channel pages.
• Shorts links inside the Up next column and subscription feed.
• The same shelves on Instagram, Facebook and TikTok, since the toggle covers all of them.

The toggle sits next to four others: hide comments, hide recommendations and end screens, hide the home feed, and hide the trending sidebar. Turn on all five and YouTube becomes a search box and a player. Turn on one and nothing else changes. The popup shows how many elements each toggle is hiding on the page you are on, so you can see it working.

YouTube changes its markup every few weeks. The selectors are kept in one file and each category is wrapped so that one broken rule cannot take the others down with it. When YouTube renames something, the rest keeps working until the update ships.

If you only want Shorts gone on YouTube

Settings are per site. Turn the Shorts toggle on while you are on youtube.com and it applies there. Every other site keeps its own settings, so Instagram Reels stay unless you hide them too.

If you want to stop watching, not only stop seeing

Hiding the shelf removes the prompt. The Shorts URL still works if you type it. Calmer Web does not block URLs or lock you out. If you want a hard block, pair it with a site blocker like LeechBlock, which handles URLs, and let Calmer Web handle what the page looks like.