FocusTube: The YouTube Shorts Blocker

About

Take back control of your time on YouTube with YT Shorts Blocker – Hide YouTube Shorts. 

This extension is built for people who use YouTube to learn, focus, or relax intentionally, but keep getting pulled into an endless stream of Shorts, autoplay thumbnails, and distracting recommendations. With a simple, fast interface and smart content blocking, it turns YouTube into a calmer, more focused place.

Instead of trying to rely on willpower every time you open YouTube, YT Shorts Blocker changes the interface itself. When enabled, it can completely remove Shorts and many other visual traps that are designed to grab your attention. You decide which pieces of the interface stay, and which disappear.

What this extension can block:-
1) YouTube Shorts everywhere
    - Hides Shorts shelves and carousels on the homepage and watch pages.
    - Removes Shorts links from the sidebar and navigation.
    - If you ever land on a /shorts/... URL, you’ll be redirected back to the regular YouTube homepage.

2) Home feed clutter
   - Optionally hides the rich home feed grid so you don’t get spammed with endless     recommendations the moment you open YouTube.
   - Ideal if you only want to use YouTube via direct links, subscriptions, or search.

3) Playlist panel on watch pages
   - Removes the playlist sidebar when you’re watching a video from a playlist, so you can focus on the current video instead of constantly browsing what’s next.

4) Related / recommended videos
   - Hides the “Up next” and related videos column on the right side of watch pages.
   - Great for deep work sessions, study, or focused learning.

5) Comments section
   - Completely hides the comments section under videos, including comment threads.
   - Useful if you find yourself doom-scrolling comments or getting distracted by arguments.

6) End screen and “Next video” overlays
    - Hides the grid of suggested videos that appears at the end of playback.
    - Removes the “next video” thumbnail overlays and preview elements on the player so you’re not nudged to keep watching.
7) Ad and promo banners
   - Hides many in-feed and banner-style promotional elements and ad slots within the YouTube interface (where possible through the UI).
   - Helps declutter the page visually, even if it doesn’t replace a dedicated ad blocker.


Clean, focused viewing experience
All of these controls are exposed through a clean popup that appears when you click the extension icon:
1)  A main master switch (“Enable YT Shorts Blocker”) that quickly turns the whole extension on or off.
3) Individual toggles for each feature:
     - Block YouTube Shorts
     - Hide Playlist Panel
     - Hide Related Videos
     - Hide Comments
     - Hide Home Feed
     - Hide Endwall Videos
     - Hide Next Video Thumbnail
     - Hide Ads Banner

When the blocker is enabled, your preferences are applied across all open YouTube tabs. The extension automatically watches for YouTube’s dynamic layout changes and re-applies your chosen settings, so Shorts and other distractions don’t come back as you scroll or navigate around the site.

If you open the popup on a non‑YouTube tab, it clearly explains that the extension only affects youtube.com, so it stays out of your way elsewhere.

Privacy & performance
1) No accounts, no sign‑up, no tracking.
2) Your settings are stored only in Chrome’s built‑in extension storage and are applied locally in your browser.
4) The extension only runs on youtube.com and m.youtube.com, as declared in its permissions.
It is lightweight and designed to be as simple as possible while staying effective against common 
5) YouTube distractions.


If you want to keep using YouTube without getting hijacked by Shorts, recommendations, and visual noise, YT Shorts Blocker – Hide YouTube Shorts gives you a focused, distraction‑reduced version of YouTube with just a few clicks.