How I Hide YouTube Shorts and Recommendations in My Browser

I use YouTube a lot, and that is exactly why I wanted fewer things competing for my attention. My problem was rarely the one video I opened intentionally. It was the home feed, suggested videos, Shorts, comments, and autoplay that turned one planned video into a much longer session.

The browser setup I use

I installed Unhook, a third-party browser extension designed to hide parts of the YouTube interface. Its current Chrome Web Store listing includes controls for recommended videos, Shorts, comments, home recommendations, end-screen suggestions, trending, autoplay, and other distractions.

I hide the Home feed first

This made the biggest difference for me. When the home page is not a wall of recommendations, I am more likely to open YouTube with a specific destination: Subscriptions, Watch Later, a saved playlist, or a video I searched for deliberately.

I hide the suggested-video sidebar

The sidebar is useful when discovery is the goal. It is less useful when I am trying to finish one tutorial and go back to work. Hiding it removes the easiest next click.

I hide Shorts in the desktop interface

Unhook can hide Shorts surfaces in the browser. The important correction to the old version of this article is the word permanently: this is not a permanent YouTube account setting. It is a browser-side customization, so behavior can change when the extension or YouTube changes, and it does not automatically carry over to every device or app.

I also turn off autoplay

Autoplay removes a stopping point. Turning it off means the end of a video becomes a decision rather than an automatic transition.

YouTube also has official recommendation controls

If you do not want a third-party extension, YouTube's own help documentation describes controls such as “Not interested,” “Show fewer Shorts,” and managing or turning off watch/search history. Those controls influence recommendations but do not provide the same clean, element-by-element browser interface that I use Unhook for.

What changed for me

The useful change was not that YouTube became impossible to browse. It became more intentional. I can still search, open subscriptions, and watch what I came for; I just removed several default invitations to continue watching.

Should you use the same setup?

If recommendations are useful to you, hiding all of them may make YouTube worse. Start with the one surface that wastes the most time—often Home, Shorts, or the sidebar—and see whether removing it changes your behavior.

For me, the goal is simple: choose the video before YouTube chooses the next video for me.