Is there anyway to fully disable youtube shorts/reels/whatever that mess is called ...? I quite like youtube long form content but have found myself occasionally in short form rabbit holes (which are both very addicting and extremely unsatisfying and which motivated me to delete instagram to escape when i realized how much a time and emotion suck they are)
Turning off youtube watch history stops the shorts tab from working. And you can use a userscript to swap the "shorts" word to "watch" in the url to convert all shorts to normal videos.
For example:
// ==UserScript==
// @name Redirect YouTube Shorts to Regular Videos (Mobile-Friendly)
// @namespace https://example.com/
// @version 1.4
// @description Redirects YouTube Shorts URLs to regular video URLs on mobile
// @author YourName
// @match *://*.youtube.com/*
// @run-at document-end
// @grant none
// ==/UserScript==
//Written by GPT-4o Mini
(function () {
'use strict';
// Function to redirect Shorts to regular video URLs
function redirect() {
if (location.pathname.startsWith("/shorts")) {
const videoId = location.pathname.split("/")[2];
const newUrl = "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=" + videoId;
window.location.replace(newUrl);
}
}
// Observe changes to the DOM and check for navigation
const observer = new MutationObserver(() => {
redirect();
});
// Start observing the body for changes
observer.observe(document.body, { childList: true, subtree: true });
// Initial check in case a Shorts URL is loaded directly
redirect();
})();
