Why Shorts is so hard to put down
A long YouTube video asks you a question before it starts: do I want to watch this? Shorts skips the question. The next video is already playing before you've decided anything, and each one is short enough that "just one more" always sounds reasonable.
That's why so many people who love YouTube — for tutorials, lectures, recipes, music, repair guides — end up wanting to get rid of Shorts specifically. Deleting the app throws away everything useful along with the feed. What most people actually want is YouTube minus the endless vertical scroll.
What YouTube's own settings can do
YouTube's options change between versions, but at the time of writing they look roughly like this:
- "Show fewer Shorts" — the three-dot menu on a Shorts shelf in your home feed lets you hide the shelf. It tends to come back after a while, and it doesn't touch the Shorts tab or the player.
- "Not interested" on individual Shorts — this tunes recommendations, but it doesn't stop the feed.
- Turning off watch history — with history paused and no prior history, YouTube may stop showing a personalized home feed. It's a useful trick, but it also changes how the rest of YouTube works for you.
- Take a break reminders — a gentle nudge after a set time, easy to dismiss.
None of these remove Shorts. They make it a little less prominent, sometimes, for a while.
What Reelless blocks on YouTube
Reelless works at the level of what's on your screen, so it doesn't depend on YouTube offering a setting:
- The Shorts player exits automatically. Whether you tapped a Short in search, opened one from a notification, or followed a link, Reelless presses back for you as soon as the vertical player appears.
- Shorts shelves get covered. The rows of Shorts mixed into Home, Subscriptions and search results are covered with a calm panel, so you can scroll past them.
- The Shorts tab won't open. Tapping it does nothing — you stay where you were.
- Optional: Search-only mode. If the home feed itself is the problem, Reelless can hide recommendations entirely and leave you with a search bar. See YouTube without recommendations.
Everything else stays: search, subscriptions, long videos, comments, playlists, your library and downloads.
How to set it up
- Install Reelless and choose YouTube in the list of apps to protect.
- Pick what to block — Shorts player, shelves and tab are on by default. Turn on Search-only mode if you want it.
- Turn on the Accessibility Service when Reelless asks. It explains exactly what the permission is used for before sending you to Android's settings. You can read the same explanation on our How it works page.
- Open YouTube and try to watch a Short. The player should close in a fraction of a second.
If Reelless stops working after a day or two, your phone's battery optimization is probably closing it. Our How it works page has fixes for Samsung, Xiaomi, OPPO, vivo and others.
A middle path: a daily Shorts allowance
Not everyone wants zero Shorts. Some are funny, some are genuinely useful. With a daily short-form allowance you can give yourself, say, ten minutes of Shorts a day. When the time's up, the player closes for the rest of the day. It's a limit you set once, in a calm moment, instead of a decision you have to make at midnight.
Private by design
To recognize the Shorts player, Reelless has to look at the structure of the screen. It does that on your phone and nowhere else: nothing about your screen is collected, stored or sent. The app has no ads and no analytics SDKs. Read the details in our Accessibility Service disclosure.
Reelless is not affiliated with Google or YouTube. "YouTube" and "Shorts" are trademarks of their owner and are used here only to describe what the app works with.