If you’re tired of the Shorts rabbit hole, YouTube just made it easier to step away. The app’s time management settings now include an option to set a zero-minute time limit for Shorts—so the feature basically removes Shorts from your experience on both Android and iOS.
This new toggle builds on the Shorts timer YouTube originally announced in October. Back then, the smallest setting was 15 minutes, which… still left plenty of room for doom-scrolling. The new “zero minutes” option is the part people will probably actually use, especially if you’ve ever meant to watch one thing and somehow ended up 40 minutes later.
The Shorts timer was also expanded in January as a way to give parents more control over how long kids spend scrolling, with YouTube previously saying that a zero-minute option was “coming soon.” Now, according to YouTube spokesperson Makenzie Spiller, the option to set the timer to zero is “live for all parents, and is currently being rolled out to everyone,” including users with regular adult accounts. So it’s not just a kids-only tool.
Once the limit is hit, YouTube handles it pretty bluntly: the Shorts tab won’t show any videos. Instead, you’ll get a notification that you’ve “reached your Shorts feed limit.” In our tests, it went a step further and removed Shorts from the Home screen too. That means, if you set it to zero, you can basically ignore Shorts entirely—no extra temptation lurking there. Small real-world detail: I noticed the app kept that clean, empty “feed limit” pop-up vibe, like it was politely shutting the door rather than arguing with you.
Turning it on is straightforward. In the YouTube app, you go to settings, select “time management,” toggle on the Shorts feed limit, and then choose a time. If you set it to zero, the effect is immediate in how Shorts shows up—at least after it rolls out to your account.
The whole thing feels like a minor UI update, but it’s actually a pretty big behavior lever. People don’t always need a new app or a complicated workflow—they need one switch that stops the loop. And YouTube is basically betting that “zero” beats “a little less” for a lot of users. Whether you’ll love the control or resent how often you reach for it… well, that part might be up to you. I’m not sure it’s going to make everyone quit Shorts for good, but it gives you a clean off-ramp, and that’s not nothing.
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