How to Hide YouTube Shorts on a Computer: Extensions for Chrome, Firefox and Edge

Your options at a glance

What YouTube itself offers on a computer

Start here, because these cost nothing and need nothing installed. None of them removes Shorts, though.

• Not interested on Home. YouTube's help center describes a More menu next to titles on your Home page, with a Not interested option for videos, playlists, posts and sections. If the Shorts shelf has that menu, it removes the shelf from your feed, but YouTube doesn't say for how long. You can also pick Don't recommend channel on a Short from a channel you never want to see.
• Show fewer Shorts. The same help page describes this option above the Shorts grid on Home, but only for the YouTube app, not for the website. If you set it on your phone, you can undo it in My Activity under Other activity.
• Search filter. After a search, click Filter on the results page. YouTube's help lists content types such as video, short, movie, playlist and channel, so picking Video narrows that one search to regular videos.
• Turn off watch history. YouTube says that if your watch history is off and you have no significant prior history, features like recommendations on the homepage are removed. On a computer, open myactivity.google.com/product/youtube, go to Controls and select Turn off. It's a blunt tool: your recommendations on every device change, not just Shorts, and the help page doesn't say anything about Shorts specifically.

One option you may know from the app doesn't help here: the Shorts feed limit. YouTube's help describes it only in the YouTube app (You, Settings, Time management), and even there the reminder can be dismissed. We compare it in detail in YouTube's Shorts limit vs Dam It!.

Extensions that hide YouTube Shorts

If you want Shorts gone from the website every time you open it, an extension is the practical answer. Three established ones, described from their own store listings and project pages:

Unhook

Unhook is a general distraction remover for YouTube. Its options, each a switch in the extension's popup, include hiding the Shorts tab, the Home feed, the recommended sidebar, end screen suggestions, comments, and the Explore and Trending sections, plus turning off autoplay. Its Firefox listing says it is also available for Chrome and Microsoft Edge, and that it works on m.youtube.com through Firefox for Android. It suits you if Shorts are only one of several things pulling you deeper into YouTube.

Hide Shorts for YouTube

This one does exactly what the name says. According to its project page, it hides Shorts from the Home page, Subscriptions and search results, and can also hide the Shorts tab and Shorts in the notifications menu. You can limit it to certain pages, and the project lists experimental options such as opening Shorts in the regular video player. It's open source and published for Firefox (as Hide Youtube-Shorts) and Chrome. The project notes that Shorts are hidden rather than removed from the page, so a long session can slow down; reloading the page fixes it.

BlockTube

BlockTube is a content blocker with a Shorts option. Besides blocking YouTube Shorts, it can block channels and videos by name, comments by user or keyword, videos by length, and the Explore page. Its listing says it collects no data, has no analytics and keeps your settings only on your computer. It's open source, and its Firefox listing links a version for Chrome, Edge, Opera and Brave. It fits if you also want to block specific channels or topics, not just Shorts.

There are many other Shorts blockers in the stores. The same rules apply to all of them, see the checklist below.

How to install a Shorts blocker

The steps are nearly the same in every browser. In Chrome:

1. Open the extension's store page. Go to the Chrome Web Store and search for the extension by name. Check the developer and the description match what you expect.
2. Add it. Select Add to Chrome. When Chrome lists the permissions, select Add extension if you trust it. Extensions can't be added in Incognito or as a guest.
3. Turn on the Shorts options. Click the Extensions icon next to the address bar, open the extension and switch on the options for Shorts. Some extensions hide Shorts by default.
4. Reload YouTube. Reload any open YouTube tab so the extension can act on it.

Microsoft Edge can use extensions made for Chrome. Microsoft's instructions: open the Chrome Web Store in Edge, open the extension's page, select Get extension, allow extensions from other stores if asked, review the permissions and select Add extension. Many extensions are also listed in Edge's own add-ons store. In Firefox, open addons.mozilla.org, find the add-on and select Add to Firefox.

To remove an extension in Chrome, right-click its icon next to the address bar and select Remove from Chrome, or go to More, Extensions, Manage extensions and select Remove.

The do-it-yourself way: uBlock Origin's element picker

If you already use uBlock Origin, you don't need another extension. Its element picker can hide any part of a page: open the uBlock Origin popup, click the eyedropper icon, click the Shorts shelf, check the preview so you don't hide more than you want, and click Create. The filter is saved to your own list and applies every time you visit the site.

Two limits. First, YouTube changes its page structure from time to time, and a filter you made can stop matching; then you repeat the steps. Second, the full uBlock Origin no longer runs in current Chrome. Google disabled Manifest V2 extensions for all stable Chrome users in July 2025, and uBlock Origin's own project page lists it as removed from the Chrome Web Store on 2026-08-31. It still works best on Firefox, according to the project, and remains listed for Microsoft Edge and Opera. In Chrome, a dedicated Shorts extension from the list above is the simpler route.

Before you install: a short checklist

• Look at the permissions. A Shorts blocker needs access to youtube.com and little else. The three extensions above request access to YouTube's domains in their Firefox listings. Be wary of one that wants to read every site you visit.
• Limit site access in Chrome. Under Manage extensions, Details, you can set an extension's site access to On specific sites and allow only youtube.com.
• Prefer open source and a clear privacy statement. Hide Shorts for YouTube and BlockTube publish their code; BlockTube states it collects nothing.
• Check it's still maintained. YouTube's pages change, and an extension that hasn't been updated in years may have stopped working. The store page shows when it was last updated.
• One device, one browser. An extension in Chrome on your laptop does nothing in Firefox, on your work computer or in the YouTube app on your phone.

What about Shorts on your phone?

Most Shorts watching happens in the app, and desktop extensions can't reach it. On Android, the main options are YouTube's Shorts feed limit set to zero, Digital Wellbeing's app timer, and apps that block the Shorts feed inside the real YouTube app. We go through each, with what it misses, in how to block YouTube Shorts on Android, and compare the apps in apps to block Shorts, Reels and TikTok.

Dam It! is one of those apps. It blocks the swipe to the next Short, Reel or TikTok on Android 8.0 and above, so the feed stops while long videos, search and Shorts you open from a link keep working. It doesn't run on computers or on iPhone, so for the browser the extensions above are the right tool. If Shorts are part of a wider scrolling habit, our guide on how to stop scrolling covers what helps beyond blocking.