How to hide YouTube Shorts and the home feed

Route 1 · Built in · Wears off after 30 days

Tell YouTube you are not interested

On the home page, find the Shorts shelf, click the × in its top-right corner, and YouTube hides the shelf. This is the only native control that exists.

The catch: YouTube brings the shelf back after roughly 30 days, and the choice does nothing about Shorts in search results, the Shorts button in the sidebar, or Shorts on channel pages. You will be dismissing it again next month.

Route 2 · Built in · Blanks the whole home feed

Pause your watch history

Go to Google activity controls and pause YouTube watch history. With no history to feed the recommender, YouTube stops rendering the home feed at all. You get a nearly blank home page with a search bar, which for many people is exactly the goal.

The catch: this changes your account, not your browser. Recommendations degrade everywhere, including the good ones on watch pages, and "continue watching" stops working. It also does nothing about Shorts reached from search or channels.

Route 3 · uBlock Origin · Precise, until the site changes

Hide the elements with uBlock Origin filters

If you already run uBlock Origin, open its dashboard, go to My filters, and paste:

www.youtube.com##ytd-reel-shelf-renderer
www.youtube.com##ytd-rich-shelf-renderer[is-shorts]
www.youtube.com##ytd-guide-entry-renderer:has(a[title="Shorts"])
www.youtube.com##ytd-mini-guide-entry-renderer[aria-label="Shorts"]

That removes the Shorts shelves and the Shorts entry in the sidebar. To blank the home feed grid as well, add:

www.youtube.com##ytd-browse[page-subtype="home"] ytd-rich-grid-renderer

The catch: these selectors are tied to YouTube's current markup and to the interface language (the sidebar rules match the English word "Shorts"). When YouTube renames an element, the filter silently stops working and you get to find the new name yourself. That happens a few times a year.