You did not open YouTube to lose an hour to fifteen second clips. Here is how to guard the Shorts feed while keeping the real videos, playlists, and channels you came for.
You cannot permanently delete YouTube Shorts from the app, but you can reduce it and guard it. Avoid tapping the Shorts tab, mark clips as not interested, and hide the Shorts shelf where you can. The most reliable move is to add a small pause when you open YouTube, so you skip Shorts on purpose instead of falling in. That way you keep normal videos and drop the endless scroll.
Regular YouTube has a natural stopping point. A video ends. Shorts does not. It is a separate feed built on the same pattern that made TikTok and Reels so hard to put down, and it lives right inside an app you already trust and open every day.
Three things make it stick. First, autoplay. The moment one Short finishes, the next one starts, so there is never a clean gap where you decide to stop. Second, the infinite vertical feed. You swipe up with your thumb, again and again, and the clips are short enough that quitting always feels like it can wait one more. Third, the algorithm. Shorts learns fast. After a few swipes it starts serving clips tuned to exactly what keeps your thumb moving, which is why five minutes turns into forty.
None of this is your fault. The feed is engineered to be hard to leave. The point is not to feel guilty. It is to put one small barrier between you and the reflex.
Be honest with yourself here, because it saves a lot of frustration. YouTube does not give you a single setting that removes Shorts for good. There is no clean "off" toggle. What you get instead are a few native tricks that reduce how often Shorts shows up and how loud it is. They help, but the feed tends to creep back over time, so treat them as maintenance rather than a permanent fix.
All of these share one weakness. They rely on you remembering to resist in the exact moment your thumb is already reaching for the Shorts tab out of habit. That reflex is the real problem, and it is the part these settings cannot touch.
Anása takes a different route. It does not lock YouTube, delete Shorts, or block anything. It notices the moment you open YouTube and steps in with a single breath and a calmer path forward. That tiny pause is exactly the gap the Shorts feed is designed to remove. In that gap, the reflex to tap Shorts loses its grip, and you get to choose what you actually came to watch.
Here is the key part. You keep normal YouTube. The video you were going to watch, the playlist, the channel you subscribe to, all of it still works. Anása is not trying to keep you off YouTube. It is trying to catch the reflexive dive into Shorts before it pulls you under, so the app stays useful and the trap stays closed.
Because it works by detecting when you open a targeted app and adding a mindful pause, Anása can guard a specific feed like Shorts rather than punishing you with a full block. Calls, maps, and everything essential keep working normally. And everything stays on your phone, with no camera, no trackers, and nothing sold. It is free on iPhone and Android.
Native settings are free and built in, but they are fiddly and temporary. You hide the shelf, mark clips as not interested, and it all slowly drifts back, because none of it stops the habit itself. App blockers and timers can be stricter, but most treat YouTube as one thing, so blocking Shorts often means blocking the videos you wanted too, which feels like too big a hammer. A mindful pause sits in between. It does not fight you or wall off the app. It just adds one breath at the door, so you skip Shorts by choice and keep everything else. For a feed as reflexive as Shorts, the choice matters more than the wall.
Not fully. YouTube does not give you a switch to delete Shorts from the app. You can hide the Shorts shelf for a while, avoid tapping the Shorts tab, and mark videos as not interested, but the feed tends to come back. The honest goal is to reduce and guard Shorts, not to erase it.
Once you are inside a Short, the next one autoplays as you swipe up, and there is no clean off switch for this. The only reliable fix is to not enter the Shorts feed in the first place, since the vertical swipe is designed to keep going. A pause the moment you open YouTube helps you skip the tab entirely.
Yes, that is the realistic aim. You keep watching normal videos, playlists, and subscriptions, and you guard the one part that pulls you into an endless scroll. Guarding the infinite feed is exactly what Anása is built for. It adds a breath when you open YouTube, so you catch the reflex to tap Shorts before it starts.
Anása does not lock YouTube or delete Shorts. It steps in with a single breath and a calmer path the moment you open YouTube, so the reflexive dive into Shorts gets interrupted. You can still watch the videos you came for, and everything stays on your phone.
Free on iPhone and Android. Everything stays on your phone.