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YouTube Will Now Let You Filter Shorts Out of Search Results (theverge.com) 51

YouTube is updating search filters so users can explicitly choose between Shorts and long-form videos. The change also replaces view-count sorting with a new "Popularity" filter and removes underperforming options like "Sort by Rating." The Verge reports: Right now, a filter-less search shows a mix of longform and short form videos, which can be annoying if you just want to see videos in one format or the other. But in the new search filters, among other options, you can pick to see "Videos," which in my testing has only showed a list of longform videos, or "Shorts," which just shows Shorts.

YouTube is also removing the "Upload Date - Last Hour" and "Sort by Rating" filters because they "were not working as expected and had contributed to user complaints." The company will still offer other "Upload Date" filters, like "Today," "This week," "This Month," and "This Year," and you can also find popular videos with the new "Popularity" filter, which is replacing the "View count" sort option. (With the new "Popularity" filter, YouTube says that "our systems assess a video's view count and other relevance signals, such as watch time, to determine its popularity for that specific query.")

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YouTube Will Now Let You Filter Shorts Out of Search Results

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  • by Ritz_Just_Ritz ( 883997 ) on Thursday January 08, 2026 @10:14PM (#65911759)

    That would be a lot more valuable to me than bouncing the results from shorts....

    • Yeah some of the shorts are worth watching from indie creators. cooking, language, music etc.

      But it's the AI "7 obvious facts about", "10 1 hit wonders from the 19x0s", cats being cats, "5 foods you should eat", "10 historic photos that will blow your mind"...

      Oh and I'm not American, so if I hear a Yank AI accent I know to skip it.

    • by DrXym ( 126579 )
      The proper solution would be for YouTube to require uploaders to tag the sections that contain AI generated content - either video, audio or stills. Then overlay a warning when it is happening. And allow users to report abuse so the slop can be demonetized / nuked into oblivion. And then provide users with options to not see substantially AI generated content.
  • dear Youtube, please stop messing with my custom uBlock filters. i had that silly shit *solved*

  • Youtube needs a an easier way to browse it's catalog, by country, subject, ect. So far it's ridiculous and has been. Or open up their API for others to access it.
  • Just search? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by RitchCraft ( 6454710 ) on Thursday January 08, 2026 @10:48PM (#65911807)

    I use uBlock to remove shorts entirely from Youtube. Just removing shorts from search is nice, but I do not want to see them at all.

  • by Galactic Dominator ( 944134 ) on Thursday January 08, 2026 @11:12PM (#65911819)
    How far we have come.
    • How far we have come.

      Indeed. Why it seems like only yesterday I was adding the word “short” to my YouTube search query, confused as to what the fuck TFS is rambling on about..since it works exactly as one would expect.

      Shocking how YouTube didn’t realize this. It’s only an entire fucking chapter in the No Shit Sherlock Search trilogy.

  • Next, allow me to toggle Shorts on or off in the subscription part of the mobile app.

    And allow me to turn off community posts from people in the community pages of youtube channels. I don't want that cluttering up my phone or tablet.

    • I agree... I would really love to have a system setting that said "No shorts, ever, anywhere on the platform" but we must be grateful for the fact that it's only taken how many years for YT to finally listen to those of us who've been screaming for today's enhancement?

      As others have said... now it's time for a "No AI" filter but unfortunately YT doesn't ask uploaders whether their video is AI generated or not -- it asks far more vague questions that also require anyone who uses VFX (such as almost any mode

  • by Luthair ( 847766 ) on Thursday January 08, 2026 @11:24PM (#65911833)
    Its not a global setting, its something you explicitly have to add to the filters every time you search. Now an extension may be able to alter the URL to explicitly do this buut if you're searching on a TV you still need to deal with shitty vertical video nonsense being shoved down your throat.
  • by BenFenner ( 981342 ) on Thursday January 08, 2026 @11:27PM (#65911837)
    As a friendly reminder, this is the current list of uBlockOrigin filters to completely remove all Shorts across all of YouTube (except if you click the Shorts tab).
    I keep it up to date.

    www.youtube.com##ytd-guide-renderer a.yt-simple-endpoint[title="Shorts"]:upward(ytd-guide-entry-renderer)
    www.youtube.com##ytd-mini-guide-renderer a.yt-simple-endpoint[title="Shorts"]:upward(ytd-mini-guide-entry-renderer)
    www.youtube.com##ytd-browse #dismissible ytd-rich-grid-slim-media[is-short]:upward(ytd-rich-section-renderer)
    www.youtube.com##ytd-browse ytd-grid-video-renderer:has(span.ytd-thumbnail-overlay-time-status-renderer[aria-label="Shorts"])
    www.youtube.com##ytd-browse ytd-rich-item-renderer:has(span.ytd-thumbnail-overlay-time-status-renderer[aria-label="Shorts"])
    www.youtube.com##ytd-search ytd-video-renderer:has(span.ytd-thumbnail-overlay-time-status-renderer[aria-label="Shorts"])
    www.youtube.com##ytd-watch-next-secondary-results-renderer ytd-compact-video-renderer:has(span.ytd-thumbnail-overlay-time-status-renderer[aria-label="Shorts"])
    www.youtube.com##ytd-watch-next-secondary-results-renderer ytd-shelf-renderer:has(span.ytd-thumbnail-overlay-time-status-renderer[aria-label="Shorts"])
    www.youtube.com##ytd-browse[page-subtype="subscriptions"] ytd-video-renderer span.ytd-thumbnail-overlay-time-status-renderer[aria-label="Shorts"]:upward(ytd-item-section-renderer)
    www.youtube.com##ytd-reel-shelf-renderer
    www.youtube.com###content > .ytd-rich-section-renderer.style-scope
    www.youtube.com##grid-shelf-view-model.ytGridShelfViewModelHostHasBottomButton.ytd-item-section-renderer.ytGridShelfViewModelHost:nth-of-type(n+1)
    www.youtube.com###contents > grid-shelf-view-model.ytGridShelfViewModelHostHasBottomButton.ytd-item-section-renderer.ytGridShelfViewModelHost:nth-of-type(n+1)
    www.youtube.com##.ytd-item-section-renderer.ytGridShelfViewModelHost
    m.youtube.com##ytm-reel-shelf-renderer
    m.youtube.com##ytm-pivot-bar-renderer div.pivot-shorts:upward(ytm-pivot-bar-item-renderer)
    m.youtube.com##ytm-browse ytm-item-section-renderer ytm-video-with-context-renderer:has(ytm-thumbnail-overlay-time-status-renderer[data-style="SHORTS"])
    m.youtube.com##ytm-browse ytm-item-section-renderer ytm-compact-video-renderer:has(ytm-thumbnail-overlay-time-status-renderer[data-style="SHORTS"])
    m.youtube.com##ytm-search ytm-compact-video-renderer:has(ytm-thumbnail-overlay-time-status-renderer[data-style="SHORTS"])

    Source (free membership required): https://www.sr20-forum.com/bug... [sr20-forum.com]

  • by schwit1 ( 797399 ) on Thursday January 08, 2026 @11:48PM (#65911845)

    Hide shorts for Youtube
    https://github.com/Vulpelo/hid... [github.com]

  • by williamyf ( 227051 ) on Friday January 09, 2026 @12:00AM (#65911855)

    ... you can use "gisdev"'s filters and remove ALL shorts. Period.

    https://github.com/gijsdev/ubl... [github.com]

    • I feel exactly the opposite, I have no interest in watching long-form YouTube videos. These guys yammer on and on, repeating themselves, saying something in 30 minutes or longer, that could be said in under 5 minutes. Whenever somebody sends me a 30-minute or 1-hour video and asks me to watch it, my eyes immediately glaze over.

      • I feel exactly the opposite, I have no interest in watching long-form YouTube videos. These guys yammer on and on, repeating themselves, saying something in 30 minutes or longer, that could be said in under 5 minutes. Whenever somebody sends me a 30-minute or 1-hour video and asks me to watch it, my eyes immediately glaze over.

        I feel you brother. My trick is to watch everything in 1.5x and to use siberaly the skip forward button. And if the video has a "watched graph" use that to find the most interesting parts.

  • Why donâ(TM)t they allow searching based on video content. For example you should be able to search using queries like âoevideo where tan cat jumps on dogâ etc. ?

  • by anoncoward69 ( 6496862 ) on Friday January 09, 2026 @03:07AM (#65911951)
    If I want to rot my brain with stupid vertical video shorts I'll go to tiktok. I wish every platform would stop trying to do what every other platform does. I mean even Spotify has fucking videos now. Not just music videos which I could understand but all kinds of other random content.
    • They have it because shorts are addictive for our short attention spans. They'd be stupid to ignore that revenue stream.

      Go stand on a NYC subway where 90% of people are looking at their phone, check what they're looking at. It's literally 90% all vertical shorts, some mobile games, and the rare person has a downloaded anime or tv show.

    • Or how about get rid of the *long* videos! Usually, the long ones say in 30 minutes, what could be said in 5 minutes or less.

  • by ArithonUK ( 3916515 ) on Friday January 09, 2026 @03:16AM (#65911961)
    It's a step, all be it small, in the right direction, but it needs to be a global switch. Along with "Do no recommend videos I've already watched" as an option (come on YT, this is just BASIC stuff!)
  • by serafean ( 4896143 ) on Friday January 09, 2026 @05:57AM (#65912061)

    You just need to edit the feed URL manually.
    Replace the "UC" from channel_id with "UULF", and replace "channel_id" with "playlist_id".

    Sources:
    https://stackoverflow.com/ques... [stackoverflow.com]
    https://blog.amen6.com/blog/20... [amen6.com]

    • by Anonymous Coward

      The standard video player and shorts player are also independent of the content.

      youtube.com/shorts/[id]
      youtube.com/watch?v=[id]

      In a short you can select " shorts/ " and enter " watch?v= " to open the same video in the default player.

      The shorts player has no scrub bar, most keyboard shortcuts don't work, can't be resized, and auto-loop by default.

      You can search for "youtube short to watch javascript bookmarklet" and find a javascript one-liner that can be copy/pasted to a bookmark on the toolbar to do the fi

  • I don't want to shorts to "show less" (i.e. reappear constantly). I don't want to see them at all. Ever.
  • Shorts are crap. If you happen to watch one and inadvertently scroll too far up or down, the short disappears and is replaced by something else. But even worse, you can't go back to where you where. Hitting back on your browser does not return you to what you were watching.

    Granted, I hardly ever go to YT any more except for one or two select sites and to listen to music, but even that is becoming less and less worthwhile. Having to go through twenty or thirty scripts to figure out which ones need turned o

  • by reanjr ( 588767 ) on Friday January 09, 2026 @02:19PM (#65912872) Homepage

    It took them long enough. The app is infuriating when using Chromecast because shirts can't be cast and they will disconnect you from casting if you try to play them.

    Once you've clicked on the short, it completely forgets everything you were queued to watch. That playlist you put together over the last 20 minutes of browsing? Gone.

  • This is better than the way things are currently but I would still like the ability to just turn off shorts completely. I don't want to see them on my homepage or in searches. Shorts are low effort garbage that are mostly designed to be a waste of time. Further, youtube needs to stop suggesting media to rent or pushing their stupid games, I DO NOT WANT THIS CRAP. I'm not paying to "rent" a movie when I can go pirate it and keep it for the life of my digital media. The only positive thing Youtube has done re

  • All I really want is to know whether I've seen a short before. On long form videos there's that red line at the bottom of the thumbnail that shows how much I've watched. Shorts don't have that.

  • I created a script that hides all short videos. Most of them are NOT what I'm looking for. More importantly, they don't have media controls to skip ahead.

    I guess they must have reached whatever adoption goal they set for themselves if they're allowing people to get rid of them now.

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