The free tools that used to hide Shorts started charging and buried the feature
behind onboarding quizzes. ShortsBlock does one thing: it removes Shorts from the home shelf,
sidebar, search and channel tabs — and can send any /shorts/ link to the normal
player. Install once and they're gone.
Counting…
An actual screen recording — Chromium with ShortsBlock loaded, browsing live YouTube:
Shorts disappear from the shelf, sidebar and search, and a direct /shorts/ link lands
in the normal player.
Hiding Shorts is table-stakes — yet the popular tools monetized it, gated it behind sign-up quizzes, and got bloated. ShortsBlock is the opposite: single-purpose, instant, and open so you can read every line it runs.
Install and Shorts are gone — no quizzes, no sign-up, no configuration screens. The default is the state most people actually want.
No subscription, no trial countdown, nothing locked behind "Pro." An optional one-time tip funds development without ever blocking the core function.
Home shelf, sidebar, search results, channel tab, recommendations — and a redirect for
direct /shorts/ links. Every surface, covered.
No accounts, no identifiers, no IP logging, never your browsing. The only thing it sends is an anonymous, opt-out usage count — and you can see every number we hold at /api/stats.
One small content script, no background bloat, and the full MIT-licensed source is public on GitHub. Trust is the whole point — so you can verify exactly what it does.
Want to keep the sidebar link but kill the shelves? Toggle any surface independently from the popup. It all stays on by default.
No remote code, no accounts, no network calls — just a content script that runs on youtube.com.
A stylesheet injected at document_start hides every Shorts surface, so shelves never even flash in.
It matches Shorts by their /shorts endpoints and attributes — robust across languages and YouTube tweaks.
A MutationObserver + navigation hooks re-apply on every in-app route change, catching late-rendered tabs and chips.
Open a /shorts/<id> link and it lands you in the normal /watch player instead. Toggle it off anytime.
Works in Chrome, Edge, Brave and any Chromium browser. It won't be on the Chrome Web Store (why?) — you load it unpacked, which takes about a minute and lets you read every line of the open source first. On Firefox, grab the .xpi build instead (how?).
Go to chrome://extensions and turn on Developer mode (top right).
Click Load unpacked and select the unzipped shortsblock folder.
Reload any YouTube tab. Shorts are gone. Tweak surfaces from the toolbar popup if you like.
Only anonymous, aggregate usage stats, and you can turn them off in one click. About once per
browsing session it sends a tiny snapshot: the extension version, which of the five toggles are on, and
two counters (how many pages it cleaned, how many /shorts/ redirects it did). That's it —
no account, no identifier, no IP stored, no URLs, never your browsing. It funds nothing and
feeds no ads; it just tells us which features people actually use. Flip off
“Share anonymous stats” in the popup and nothing is ever sent. Every number we hold is public
at /api/stats.
It's free, with no catch and no subscription — that's the entire point. It was built because the previous free option started charging for a one-line feature. If it's useful, an optional one-time tip funds future updates, but the core function is never gated.
Because Google won't allow it. An extension that hides Shorts cuts against YouTube's own product, so we don't expect it to pass review — and we'd rather not gamble the project on Google's approval. So ShortsBlock ships as an unpacked install from the zip (which also lets you read every line before installing). It's tiny, MIT-licensed, and the full source is public on GitHub.
Yes — download
shortsblock-firefox.xpi.
It's the same code as the Chrome build with a Firefox MV3 manifest, and it passes Mozilla's
official add-on linter cleanly. To try it now, open about:debugging →
This Firefox → Load Temporary Add-on… and pick the .xpi (it stays until you
restart Firefox). A permanent, one-click install needs Mozilla to sign it, so an
addons.mozilla.org submission is the next step — since Mozilla's policies are friendlier to
this kind of tool, we expect it to land there. Watch
shortsblock.zlef.fr for the AMO link.
YouTube changes its markup often. ShortsBlock matches Shorts by their /shorts links
rather than fragile labels, and a watchdog re-applies after navigation. If something new appears,
reload the tab from the popup; updates ship to keep coverage complete.
Yes. Each surface — shelves, individual items, the sidebar entry, the channel tab/chips, and the redirect — is an independent toggle in the popup. Everything is on by default; turn off whatever you'd rather keep.
No. It's a single small content script that hides elements with CSS and does light DOM checks on navigation. There's no measurable performance footprint.
No account. No paywall. No personal data. Just YouTube without the Shorts.