‘Kill’ Shorts in Zero Minutes: YouTube Gave Users an Emergency Brake But Forgot to Remove the Button Itself

In the YouTube mobile app, they’ve expanded the time management settings, and now a new limit for watching short vertical videos is available in the “Time Management” section — 0 minutes. Previously, the minimum was 15 minutes.

The new feature doesn’t remove the Shorts section from the interface, but when you activate the zero limit, the video itself stops playing in the player, and the endless feed scrolling is replaced by a static placeholder that says, “You’ve reached your Shorts feed limit.” Previously, the limit was pretty mild and just warned you that you’d hit it; now, once you hit the limit, watching is completely blocked.

The update, first announced by the company back in October, was originally positioned as a parental control tool. A Google representative confirmed that the zero timer is now available to all owners of child accounts, while adult users are getting access to the feature as it rolls out on Android and iOS servers — a process they promise will wrap up in the coming weeks.

How does it work in practice? After setting the limit to zero minutes, when you try to open the Shorts tab, the app doesn’t show any videos. Instead, it immediately displays an info window saying you’ve exceeded your daily limit — creating a barrier that makes you think twice before starting to waste time on short clips. To turn on the limits, you need to do the following: → “Settings” → “Time Management” → “Daily Limits” → the very bottom option, “Shorts Limits.”

It’s important to understand that this is a self-control tool, not a way to completely “clean up” the interface. If you go to the YouTube homepage, the algorithms may still suggest Shorts in the general recommendation feed — but clicking on such a video will also run into the active limit.

Are you okay with this halfway approach to disabling Shorts? Or do you think this “safety fuse” actually does a better job than removing the tab entirely? Share your thoughts in the comments.