Shorts is YouTube's own short-form, vertical, endlessly-scrolling feed — mechanically almost identical to TikTok's For You page — but it has a specific quirk the others on this list don't: it lives inside the same app as ordinary long-form YouTube, reachable from the home screen without ever deciding to open a "Shorts app" at all. That makes it a genuinely different thing to block, because the habit doesn't start with opening Shorts. It starts with opening YouTube for something else entirely.
What actually makes Shorts hard to close
The vertical, swipe-to-next feed has no natural stopping point, for the same reason TikTok's doesn't — short clips, aggressive personalisation, and no "you're caught up" marker to signal a good place to stop. What's different here is the entry point: the Shorts shelf sits prominently on YouTube's home tab, so opening the main app to search for one specific video puts an endless feed directly in your path, one tap away, before you've even finished typing a search. A session that started with clear intent — "watch this one thing" — can slide into Shorts without ever involving a decision to open a feed-based app at all.
The built-in iPhone route, and where it gives way
iOS Screen Time treats YouTube as one app, which means an App Limit covers both long-form YouTube and Shorts together — there's no way to restrict the endless feed specifically while leaving deliberate video-watching alone. Reach the limit and, as with any app, a single "Ignore Limit for Today" button clears it instantly, needing only a Screen Time passcode you set and know yourself. The all-or-nothing nature of the limit here is a real gap: you either block a tool you use for legitimate lookups or leave the feed that's actually the problem untouched.
The built-in Android route, and where it gives way
Digital Wellbeing's App Timer has the same limitation — it counts time in the YouTube app as a whole, Shorts included, with no way to separate the two. The timer greys out at your limit and offers more time the moment you tap it, adjustable or removable from Settings whenever you like, same as every other app on this list.
What changes when the toll is three questions
Mr. Grummel's toll sits in front of opening YouTube itself, before the choice between "search a specific video" and "tap into Shorts" has even been made. The three questions cost a few minutes of real thought, and it doesn't need to know which of the two you're heading for — it just needs to interrupt the automatic reach for the app. Because the drift into Shorts usually happens after the app is already open, not before, breaking the habit at the point of opening the app catches both paths at once.
A realistic day
Right now: you open YouTube to look up one video, notice the Shorts shelf on the way, and twenty-five minutes later you're still scrolling it, the original video forgotten, and the search bar you meant to type into never actually got used. With the toll in place: opening YouTube runs into three questions first. The lookup you actually meant to do still happens, unchanged. What's interrupted is the automatic tap into Shorts that used to happen without you deciding to, because getting there again would mean answering another question first — and a habit that used to cost nothing to fall into now costs a few minutes of actual thought every single time.