Turning off YouTube Shorts made the app usable again
The author set YouTube Shorts' daily limit to zero minutes to remove short-form videos from their feed. YouTube Shorts has around two billion monthly active users, making it a major source of distraction. The change helped the writer use YouTube mainly for long-form content and subscriptions again.
The writer relies on YouTube for learning and following creators, so deleting the app was not an option. After setting Shorts’ daily allowance to zero, they could return to subscriptions and longer videos instead of an endless short-video stream.
YouTube Shorts reportedly reaches about two billion monthly users. The app has increasingly placed Shorts in prominent spots, and mobile sessions can begin with an autoplaying clip rather than the home screen. A time-management setting lets users remove this format from their feed.
This change may matter most to people who depend on YouTube for work, study, or subscriptions but find short videos hard to avoid. If more users adopt zero-minute limits, platforms could face pressure to make attention controls clearer and less buried. Creators focused on short-form clips might see reduced casual discovery, while viewers may regain time for longer content. The broader effect could be a small shift toward user-controlled feeds rather than default endless scrolling.