NoShorts

Disables YouTube Shorts from outside the YouTube app, no patching or root

A standalone Android app that kills YouTube Shorts without modifying, patching or replacing the YouTube app. YouTube stays the stock Play Store build and keeps updating normally.

What it actually does Stock Android gives no way to inject code into another app's process, so nothing can stop Shorts from existing inside YouTube. What this app does instead, from the outside:

Behaviour How Shorts player closes itself An AccessibilityService sees the reel view ids appear and presses Back once, then waits ~900ms and re-checks before pressing again. The wait matters: YouTube keeps reel views in the tree for its whole exit animation, so reacting to every matching event fires extra Back presses that pop the screens behind Shorts and walk you out of the app. Shorts shelves vanish from feeds Black, touch-transparent overlays drawn over the shelf bounds. The feed still scrolls normally under them. youtube.com/shorts/… links Intercepted and rewritten to youtube.com/watch?v=…, so a shared Short opens in the regular player. Or open in the browser, or drop it entirely. In practice: tapping the Shorts tab flashes for a fraction of a second and dumps you back where you were.

Privacy accessibility_service_config.xml pins android:packageNames="com.google.android.youtube". The framework will not deliver this service events from any other app, so it is structurally incapable of observing anything you do outside YouTube. There is no network permission in the manifest — nothing can leave the device.