You can now switch YouTube Shorts off without losing the rest of YouTube
When Barnevakten tested YouTube's separate time limit for Shorts in April, it leaked. A child told their time was up could leave Shorts, come straight back in and pick up a few more videos. Barnevakten reported it to Google, and in a fresh test in September the limit holds. It can be set all the way down to zero.
YouTube has given the Shorts feed a daily time limit of its own, separate from the limit on the rest of YouTube. You set it in Family Center under Time management, anywhere from zero minutes to two hours, and zero removes Shorts entirely while ordinary videos stay exactly where they were. The limit needs a supervised account and follows the account rather than the device. Barnevakten found holes in it in April, but in their September test it works as intended.
What changed
Shorts now has a time limit of its own, separate from the one covering the rest of YouTube. You set it in Family Center, under “Time management”, anywhere from zero minutes to two hours a day. Zero is the interesting number: the Shorts feed disappears, while ordinary YouTube videos stay exactly where they were. The zero option arrived in March this year.
For a parent, that separation is the whole point. YouTube is the place where children learn to plait hair, solve a Rubik's cube and make sense of fractions, and at the same time a feed of short videos built to the same recipe as TikTok. Until now you either took a view on both at once or trusted your child to leave Shorts alone.
Asking a twelve-year-old to stop swiping is asking for something most adults can't manage.
How to set it
- The account has to be supervised. For children under 13 that means Family Link; for teenagers it means a supervised account.
- Open Family Link, or the YouTube app while signed in as the parent, and go to Family Center.
- Pick your child's account, then “Time management”.
- Set the daily limit for the Shorts feed. Zero minutes switches it off.
The limit resets every morning and applies on every device your child is signed in on. If nothing seems to happen at first, restarting the app is worth a try.
Two things it doesn't solve
The limit follows the account, not the device. If your child signs out, or opens YouTube in a browser without signing in, Shorts is back. That isn't a flaw in this particular setting, it's how every account-based limit works, but it's worth knowing before you file the problem away as solved.
It also depends on the account genuinely being supervised, and a teenager over 13 can choose to end that supervision themselves. So this is still an agreement you make together, with a switch that keeps the agreement, rather than a lock you fit while nobody's looking.
It's also a limit that lives in the system rather than in willpower. Switching the feed off is a decision you make once, at a calm moment, instead of forty times a day.
Know a parent who has given up the fight against Shorts? Send them this. The switch exists now, which is the part nobody knows.
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