YouTube recently updated its in-app time management settings, allowing users to directly set the daily viewing time limit for Shorts (short videos) to "zero minutes," which is equivalent to completely "turning off" this short video feature in Android and iOS clients. This adjustment is based on the Shorts timer feature that YouTube launched last October, when users could set a short video viewing limit for themselves, but the lowest option was 15 minutes.
In January of this year, YouTube expanded this feature to parental control scenarios, allowing parents to set the viewing time of Shorts for their children, and promised at the time that a "zero minute" option would soon be added. According to YouTube spokesperson Makenzie Spiller, the zero-minute option is now available to all parent accounts and is gradually being made available to all adult users.
Regardless of age, this feature is quite useful for users who want to reduce their obsession with watching short videos. When a user reaches the set Shorts browsing limit, the Shorts tab in the app will no longer display any videos, but will prompt the user that "Shorts information flow limit has been reached." Actual tests show that after the duration limit is triggered, the Shorts content on the YouTube homepage will also be removed. This means that if the upper limit is set to zero minutes, users can basically "completely ignore" Shorts in the app.
To enable this feature, users need to enter the settings menu in the YouTube app, select "time management", turn on the Shorts feed limit, and set the duration to zero or other appropriate value.