Back in October 2023 I wrote about how “For You” wasn't for me, and my dislike for infinitely-scrolling algorithmically-suggested content. In that post I mentioned that I removed YouTube from my phone due to the “YouTube Shorts” feature which functions similar to TikTok.
That didn't last long. I enjoy many creators on YouTube, so eventually I ended up reinstalling the app. But my problem persisted: I would find myself opening up YouTube and occasionally scrolling through Shorts for longer than I wanted to.
What I wanted was YouTube without Shorts, but there didn't seem to be any way to disable them in the app. I was complaining about this to a friend, who out of nowhere mentioned that disabling your “Watch History” will disable the YouTube Shorts infinite feed. My mind was blown!🤯
No more YouTube Shorts! 🥳
- Open YouTube app, select “You” (bottom-right on iOS)
- Settings cog in the top-right
- Manage all history, wait for the Google Account page to load
- Select “Turn Off” for YouTube History
- Select “Manage History” and delete all history
- Go back to the home page and see that Shorts no longer loads!
- Might have to restart the app, if I remember correctly I had to?
Lesson learned: complain about hyper-specific problems to your friends more often.
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