FocusTube: A Chrome extension that hides YouTube Shorts

I wish there was something for the app. I haven't tried it recently but you could kind of stop the shorts being displayed for a brief period of time before it re-asserted itself. And I already pay for ad-free youtube wish it was at least a premium feature but obviously makes no sense from corporate point of view.

If you turn off history and disable the few toggles under privacy related to your usage, it disables recommendations (including shorts)

I’ve had to do this but miss recommendations now.

I don’t get shorts at all. They’re just such a bag of shite. Like at least reels and TikTok have decent content sometimes. YT shorts are always so crappy.

For Android, you can hide all shorts stuff by patching the apk via ReVanced Manager.

Yeah Shorts seems to be the most filled with AI slop, its not even the funny/edgy AI slop. But mundane fake stories.

seriously. there is nothing more infuriating then an app (which you pay a subscription for) gaslighting you into feeding you more slop even if you click "i dont want to see this" a thousand times. nice placebo button.

i can imagine the smug face on some manager at google that gets himself off to engagement metrics at night because his life is so miserable. i wish these people could be named and shamed, but they hide behind a faceless corporation

Begs the question - why don’t you stop paying for it?

I've installed ScrollGuard a month ago. Great success in preventing doomscrolling.

https://scrollguard.app/

Right, at some point shouldn't we shame the people giving money to these companies, enabling them?

i think my situation is quite niche - i host a lot of social gatherings for friends at my place and most of the time we like to play music videos on the TV either in the background or actively sharing our music tastes with each other

adblocking YT on a TV is a PITA. i'd rather have it just work, to not interrupt the vibes

Not to worry, you soon won’t be able to do that in the next version

Pretty easy if you just hook a laptop to the TV. Honestly way nicer ux queueing up videos with an actual keyboard vs tapping out single characters at a time with a remote.

If you have an android smart tv, you can install TizenTube. Takes a couple of hours to figure out the installation (poorly documented), but works flawlessly after that. https://github.com/reisxd/TizenTube

Not quite true AFAICT. You'll have to register as an android developer and use your own signing keys, or use some sketchilly acquired/disseminated signing keys. The apps don't have to be actually published/acquired through the app store, but their authorship signature has to be able to be tracked back to _someone_ in Google's big DB. Someone may even just decide to include their keys into Revanced manager to allow it to keep working; we don't know what Google will do if someone just brazenly says "sure, I'm a registered android developer, and yeah, my signing keys are used to sign tons of apps that all seem to be named 'Revanced' on many people's phones. What of it?" Maybe Google will try to ban them, maybe they won't. They've not released any explanation of what they'll actually do once all apps have to be signed.

Please correct me if I'm wrong, that was how I understood the recent announcements.

I wish there was something for the app on the AppleTV.

I’m a Premium subscriber as well. In theory, they have nothing to gain from pushing shorts on me or increasing my engagement. It should be all about making the user happy. Yet paying users seem to have to deal with these decisions that are driven by ad-funded users.

I tend to want videos that are about 4 minutes long (what used to be the norm). Now it seems like most of the videos recommended to me are 10-60 minutes long, with the average one being 15-20 minutes. When I’m looking for something shorter it seems like Shorts are the only option. However those are usually either too short, or too long to be in the Shorts format without having control over the video on the TV.

Their perverted incentive structures created this mess. They should just have the one normal format for videos, have auto-play that people can opt-in to if they’re into that, and let people making videos of whatever length is best for the content without forcing videos to either be artificially long or short in an effort to optimize for the monetization algorithm.

YouTube has gotten so bad recently, I started to watch it in Firefox mobile instead. On Android, I have Tampermonkey with GoodTube installed, and it not only blocks ads, but also removes Shorts, and a few other annoyances.

Thanks for clarification, but it sounds quite true to me if I'm reading "Maybe Google will try to ban them, maybe they won't." correctly...

not to worry i have been running custom roms since 4.2.1 and you should too

Just do as the other commenter pointed out and install an alternate youtube frontend on your TV. I'd recommend https://github.com/yuliskov/SmartTube. Then you'll never see another ad again (including those sneaky ones that are embedded in the videos).

And you can use the youtube app on your phone to search for videos and prepare playlists.

How many developer accounts can you register, once Google starts requiring enough personal information including callback to phone numbers?

Because the banhammer is coming down, sooner or later.

What you linked is for Tizen (Samsung) TVs, not for Android.

You can just install APKs via adb and it will work like before without fiddling with keys or verifications.

For me it didn't take long for the algorithm to zero in on what I find interesting and only show me that. Part of the reason I disabled history, I find shorts waaaay too addictive. I blink twice and two hours went by, no thanks.

Youtube with ads would be even worse