If you've ever found yourself accidentally falling into a YouTube Shorts spiral when you just wanted to watch one recipe video, there's finally a proper escape hatch. YouTube has updated its time management settings to let users set a zero-minute limit on Shorts - which effectively wipes the feed from your Android or iOS app entirely.
How it works
The update builds on a Shorts timer feature YouTube first announced back in October. At the time, the lowest limit you could set was 15 minutes - helpful, but not exactly a hard stop. The new zero-minute option takes things further, letting you remove Shorts from your experience altogether rather than just capping how long you spend on them.
YouTube had already expanded the parental controls version of this feature in January, giving parents the option to limit how long their kids scroll through Shorts. A zero-minute option for that parental tier was flagged as "coming soon" at the time, and it's now rolling out alongside the general update, according to The Verge.
Why this actually matters
Short-form video is genuinely designed to be hard to put down. The endless scroll format that powers Shorts - along with TikTok, Instagram Reels, and the rest - isn't accidental. It's optimized for engagement, which is a polite way of saying it's optimized to keep you watching longer than you planned.
Most digital wellbeing tools tend to work around the edges - nudging you with reminders or sending a notification when you've hit a limit. Removing the feed entirely is a more direct approach, and honestly a more honest one. If you know Shorts aren't serving you well, a soft nudge at 15 minutes probably isn't changing your habits much.
For parents especially, the zero-minute option closes a loophole that softer limits leave open. Kids are resourceful - a 15-minute limit can become 15 minutes, a quick reset, and another 15 minutes. An outright block is harder to work around.
Where to find it
The setting lives inside YouTube's time management tools in the app. If you're the kind of person who keeps YouTube around for long-form content - tutorials, documentaries, that cooking channel you love - but finds Shorts a constant distraction, it's worth a few seconds of your time to turn them off. Your future self, mid-documentary, will probably thank you.
