I've never seen the point of YouTube Shorts. I go onto YouTube on my best Mac to watch certain channels(opens in new tab) in the early morning, or during my lunch break to catch up on Shark Tank and Dragons' Den videos - if I wanted to look at ten-second videos, I'd go on TikTok or look at Stories on Instagram(opens in new tab) for something similar.
Thankfully, Eat the Shorts is here. Created by Aaron Pearce, it's a Safari extension that will erase any mention of Shorts. You can grab it for a one-time purchase of $1.99 / £1.79 on the Mac App Store(opens in new tab). Looks like I'm not alone in my distaste for YouTube Shorts.
Eat the Shorts is Mac only and solves a big issue for me. I'd love to see a way that Eat the Shorts can arrive on iOS and iPadOS when I'm in YouTube's app as well. At the moment, you can hide them for thirty days by pressing on the three dots above the section, but I'd like things to go even further.
Unfortunately, the Apple App store guidelines dictate how apps interact, and it means that extensions like this can be a lot more locked down on mobile platforms. That makes things like Eat the Shorts harder to get working on Safari on iOS and iPadOS. It's not impossible, but for a one-person team you can see why it might be out of reach for now.
Regardless, Eat the Shorts is already solving YouTube's biggest problem for me as I browse the site to look for background music(opens in new tab) as I work today, and for that one-time price, it's all I need.