On Android, I disabled the YouTube app and use Firefox for YouTube, entirely because of the shorts. It lets you remove the shorts for 30 days in the browser. I did have to switch text messaging apps because the default option wouldn't work without YouTube enabled whenever someone sent a YouTube link.

It's indeed infuriating how these services try to cram TikTok style crap down our throats.

The stupid thing is: they try to get more popular than TikTok. How the hell do they expect to become popular with users that don't want this stuff? I'm not on TikTok, I hate YouTube shorts and Instagram reels. Just allow me to turn that shit off and I'll be a lot happier and use the service more because it's not pushing me away.

How do they think forcing it on unwilling users is in any way beneficial??

Thanks, I'll have a look into that!

My biggest beef with Shorts is that it's the equivalent of having the shelves full of lollies and junk food if you're trying to be healthy; it's far better not to have any available if you want to stay lean.

I love long form YouTube videos as much as I loathe the short form, whose promotional algorithms are skewed towards content that's rubbish for the brain - and society.

Edit: On Samsung Internet, could browse to the mobile app and indeed hide the shorts for 30 days (little X in top right of Shorts content panel, not a setting). Furthermore, if I disable "open links in apps" under settings/useful features, I now get the YouTube icon to open the current video in the app - this lets me browse for videos without being bugged by Shorts, and I can then open in the app if I want some of its features such as play in background etc. Thanks again, great tip.

Yes I too would love an option to disable shorts. Like hide it behind 50 buttons for all I care but please let me disable shorts.

Shorts is the digital content equivalent of cigarettes. I'd love an option to hide shorts forever.

I disagree. There is a lot of good and information dense content on YouTube. Shorts as a format though mostly tends to be dopamine rich garbage.

Agreed. Also stop shoving news channels in my face. Every few weeks/months they come back, usually after some horrific event.

“Welcome to YouTube! Would you like to watch 40 videos on todays slaughter of innocent people?”

No. The answer is always no.

Every time a news channel comes up in recommendations, click the three dots menu on it and choose "do not recommend videos from this channel" (or w/e).

After a short while of doing this the supply of news channels starts drying up, though the algo occasionally attempts to push increasingly unlikely ones on you; just continue mopping them up.

For desktop there is a chrome extension, but no options for the app.

Ironically I'm removing shorts using u-Block origin.

The one thing I don’t like is incognito mode in the YT app disables YT Premium.

From time to time I turn it in to look something up quick. Maybe a recipe or something. A topic I don’t want recommended to me constantly for the next few weeks.

But it also turns all ads back on. Instead you can watch it normally and remove it from your history, but I’m not sure that works.

Ok, work with me here… It’s incognito mode, the mode created such that it explicitly doesn’t carry over cookies from regular mode, or between sessions.

What exactly are folks expecting here? Google to break out of the explicitly requested sandbox?

You don’t have to be snarky.

I want the app to keep a single boolean flag in memory: user is authorized to not see ads.

They don’t need to know who I am, just that I don’t need to see ads.

That seems imminently doable.

Yes, they do. YouTube distributes your premium funds to creators by watch time. If they can’t associate your views with your subscription, they can’t compensate creators fairly.

Not to mention, it’s imminently not possible. Not without poking holes in what is and is not shared between regular and incognito mode (across 5+ browsers owned by different businesses, no less). And breaking this barrier would earn Google a ton of backlash, and rightfully so.

> across 5+ browsers owned by different businesses, no less

I don’t care about that. I agree this would be impossible in the browser.

I’m talking about the official app specifically, they should be able to do it there.

Premium funds is a good point I hadn’t thought of. I’d be fine if that didn’t happen while in incognito. Treat me like incognito mode for any other random user, just without ads.

I don’t run it all the time. And I wouldn’t if they did this. It’s extremely rare I want to do this.

But if I look up a recipe I’m likely to be bombarded with cooking channels. Home DIY fix? Similar. God forbid I look up a news video on a current event.

Huh? How will they know whether to set that bit if they don't know who you are?

They knew before I turned on incognito in the YT app. I just don’t want that one bit erased.

I dislike YouTube as much as the next person, but do you understand how unreasonable of an ask this is when you are explicitly going into incognito mode? I echo everyone else's sentiment here.

I don't know why everyone is fixated on the term incognito. I believe what GP wants (and me too) is to pause watching history or to at least exclude a viewing session from the recommendation algorithm.

Let's discuss this feature some more?

The reason users such as yourself want this feature is because you don't have faith in the recommendation algorithm, right? If you watched a video and Google started pushing related videos that you don't want to constantly see, and you clicked on the "do not recommend this kind of video" option, and it actually worked, would you be satifised without this "exclude from recommendation algorithm" mode?

If yes, the better solution here would be to have a recommendation system that isn't garbage. I admit I kind of fancy this described mode, but the only reason is I don't currently trust Google to actually respect my expressed discontent. And if we don't trust Google to have a faithful recommendation system, why would we be willing to trust YouTube Premium?

If that bit is a literal bit, there will be an extension that just sets that bit, thereby bypassing ads when you didn't actually pay a subscription.

If that bit is some sort of encoded identifier that an extension couldn't generate, then they will know who you are.

Yes, I would happily pay more for the ability to remove shorts.