Comment by freehorse
16 days ago
In addition to the unhook addon that others also recommended and is great, I would also suggest, as an alternative, setting a redirection rule from "www.youtube.com/shorts/XYWZ" to "www.youtube.com/watch?v=XYWZ". This will play the short but in the classical youtube video (landscape) format, with no infinite scrolling, or replay or autoplay (assuming these are in general disabled), which takes away a big part of the addictive aspect of shorts.
I use the rule
in uBlock Origin.
(Except that it doesn't work if you click on a short from YouTube's interface - it loads with JavaScript which bypasses the redirection.)
try tapermonkey script
``` // ==UserScript== // @name YouTube Shorts → Normal Player // @match ://www.youtube.com/ // @run-at document-start // ==/UserScript==
function redirectShorts() { const match = location.pathname.match(/^\/shorts\/([a-zA-Z0-9_-]+)/); if (match) { location.replace(`/watch?v=${match[1]}`); } }
// Catch initial page load redirectShorts();
// Catch SPA navigation early (fires before page renders) document.addEventListener('yt-navigate-start', redirectShorts);
// Fallback document.addEventListener('yt-navigate-finish', redirectShorts); ```
Replacing "shorts" with "v" also works, so the resulting URL is www.youtube.com/v/XYWZ
Oh great, didn't know that! Thanks! That makes things much simpler.
That's an awesome idea — sometimes I really do want to watch a short but not in that interface. Do you know how to set this up in general?
Redirector to the rescue: https://einaregilsson.com/redirector/
Been using it for annoyances like Slack pushing you to their desktop app, or fixing links when sites change domains (ahem, Anna’s Archive).
This is perfect, exactly what I was looking for. Thank you!
I use this addon for Firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/fi/firefox/addon/youtube-shorts-b...
I personally solved this by using revanced and disabling shorts completely.
Same here with FreeTube. YT has become a toxic experience on any browser and recently it has stopped working on my laptop with Firefox and uBlock Origin, no matter if I surf it as logged in in my main google account or not. The same arrangement works on my main desktop, but i mostly use FreeTube there as well.
I personally solved this by never clicking a short. We don't have to engage with every technology presented to us.
It is hard not to accidently click on shorts when they are interleaved in search results.
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Instead of directly clicking the short to play it, open the menu at the bottom right and click add to playlist. This will play out in the classic player without having to configure ublock rules. And if the rest of the playlist is playing at more than 1x, this will also apply to the short.
I personally solved this need with a simple bookmarklet: https://samulisuomi.github.io/youtube-unshortify-bookmarklet...
I have a userscript that does this, but one downside is that it refreshes the page, so if I go back in history (eg I misclicked), it resets the recommendation page