Love it or hate it, YouTube has been pushing Shorts heavily on its platform. Unfortunately, with no way to completely disable them, the only option most users have is to ignore them. In October 2025, Google introduced a daily Shorts timer, ranging from 15 minutes to 2 hours, to help curb your addiction. Now, it’s going a step further by letting you set the timer to 0 — effectively disabling Shorts.
In January this year, Google expanded the daily Shorts timer to parental accounts, allowing parents to limit their children’s exposure to Shorts. But even then, the same limits applied, with a minimum 15-minute timer.
At the time, Google promised to add a 0-minute timer to let parents fully control their kids’ Shorts exposure. Now, that option is available to parents and is rolling out to all Google account users (via The Verge).
This means you can turn off Shorts entirely, not just for your kids but for yourself as well, curbing your short-video addiction.
With the timer set to 0, the YouTube app will show a “You reached your Shorts feed limit” message and pause scrolling. It also removes all short videos from your feed.
Do note that this change only applies to your YouTube feed. Short videos will still appear in the Subscriptions section, and you can also watch individual short videos.
Time to put an end to your Shorts addiction
You can set the daily timer for Shorts by jumping into the YouTube app settings > Time management and enabling the Shorts Feed limit toggle. From there, you can set the timer to 0, provided the option is available for your account. If the 0-minute option isn’t available, you can set a timer from 15-minute intervals up to 1 hour, followed by a 2-hour option.
While this may seem like a small addition, it will help control your Shorts addiction and put an end to endless doomscrolling. For parents, the 0-minute timer adds a stronger layer of control over their kids’ short-video exposure. If anything, it will ensure their children don’t get hooked on Shorts in the first place.
