The New Way to Filter YouTube Shorts: Search Updates and Community Workarounds

For years, the YouTube search bar has felt less like a tool for finding answers and more like a slot machine dispensing dopamine hits. You type in a query looking for a detailed hardware review or a documentary, and instead, the algorithm serves you a wall of vertical, looping clips. The user base has been vocal about this frustration, often resorting to clumsy hacks like setting duration filters to "Over 20 Minutes" just to escape the noise.

That changes now. YouTube has rolled out a significant update to its search functionality, specifically addressing the demand to filter YouTube Shorts. This isn't just a simple toggle; it involves a restructuring of how the platform categorizes content types and ranks popularity. While the official update is a welcome quality-of-life improvement, long-time users and community modders argue that for a truly clean experience, you might still need third-party tools.

Finally: Using Official Tools to Filter YouTube Shorts

The headline feature of the latest interface update is a dedicated mechanism to separate short-form content from traditional long-form video. Previously, these two distinct media types were mashed together in the search results, often making it difficult to find in-depth content among the "Shorts" clutter.

The Shift from "Sort By" to "Prioritize"

YouTube has retired the old "Sort By" menu. In its place, you will now see a menu labeled Prioritize. This is where the ability to filter YouTube Shorts lives.

When you execute a search, the new menu allows you to explicitly choose between "Shorts" and "Videos." Selecting "Videos" effectively scrubs the vertical, TikTok-style clips from your results page. This is a direct response to users who found the mixing of formats counterintuitive. If you are looking for a tutorial on changing a tire, you likely want a step-by-step guide, not a 15-second sped-up clip set to trending audio.

Why "Popularity" Replaced View Count

Alongside the ability to filter YouTube Shorts, the platform has tweaked how it measures success in search rankings. The familiar "Sort by View Count" option has been rebranded and re-engineered as "Popularity."

This is not just a semantic change. "View Count" was a raw metric that could be easily gamed by clickbait thumbnails or misleading titles. "Popularity" appears to be a composite metric. It likely weighs watch time, engagement (likes/comments), and retention rates alongside raw clicks. The goal is to surface videos that users actually found valuable, rather than just videos that successfully tricked users into clicking. This shift aligns with the move to separate Shorts, as Shorts naturally rack up inflated view counts that skew search results when compared to standard videos.

When the Official Filter YouTube Shorts Option Isn't Enough

While the "Prioritize" menu is a step forward, the user community—particularly on platforms like Reddit—has pointed out significant flaws in Google’s execution. The new system is binary: it separates "Shorts" (the specific product format) from "Videos." However, this creates a "baby with the bathwater" scenario.

The "Baby with the Bathwater" Problem

The main issue with the current implementation to filter YouTube Shorts is that it doesn't distinguish between "Shorts" and simply "short videos."

A "YouTube Short" is a specific technical format: vertical aspect ratio, under 60 seconds, and displayed in the Shorts player. A "short video" might be a 30-second clip of a meme, a television show intro, or a quick technical fix uploaded in standard landscape format. When you use the official filter to remove Shorts, you may unintentionally hide these legitimate, useful short landscape videos.

For users trying to find a specific vintage clip or a sound bite that happens to be under a minute long, the new filter might be too aggressive. This lack of granularity forces users to toggle the filter on and off, disrupting the search flow.

Community Solution: The ReVanced Approach

Because of these limitations, many power users continue to rely on ReVanced, a modified Android client that offers granular control over the playback experience.

Unlike the official YouTube app, which merely hides Shorts in specific search scenarios, ReVanced allows users to filter YouTube Shorts at the application level. Users report setting the app to completely remove Shorts from the home feed, subscription lists, and suggested videos. For those who find the format entirely distracting, this "nuclear option" remains superior to YouTube's new search toggles.

The ReVanced community argues that the official implementation is a compromise. Google wants you to watch Shorts because they drive ad revenue and time-on-site; therefore, they will only let you hide them when you specifically ask via a search filter. Third-party tools like ReVanced or browser extensions (such as "Short Blocker") cater to users who want to forget the Shorts format exists entirely.

What Users Actually Want: Beyond Basic Filtering

The feedback surrounding the ability to filter YouTube Shorts has opened a broader conversation about what users need from a search engine in 2026. The consensus is that while filtering format is good, filtering content quality is better.

The Demand to Filter AI and Ad Content

With the introduction of tools like Google’s Veo 3 engine, the volume of content on the platform has exploded. Unfortunately, much of this is "AI Slop"—automatically generated videos with robotic voiceovers and stock footage.

Users are now asking for a "Exclude AI" button alongside the option to filter YouTube Shorts. The frustration is no longer just about vertical vs. horizontal video; it is about human vs. automated content. Similarly, there is a strong demand to filter out videos that are essentially long-form advertisements. The current "Popularity" metric helps slightly by favoring engagement, but it doesn't solve the issue of search results being dominated by SEO-optimized spam.

Fixing the Infinite Loop Player

Another user experience issue tied to Shorts is the player behavior. Even when users tolerate Shorts, they detest the playback mechanics. The current player loops the video infinitely. Users have expressed a strong preference for an "Auto-Play Next" feature for Shorts, similar to TikTok’s flow or a standard YouTube playlist.

The rigidness of the interface contributes to the desire to filter the content out entirely. If the viewing experience was less repetitive and more user-controlled, the demand to filter YouTube Shorts from search results might be less aggressive.

The "Prioritize" Era: A Shift in Search Logic

The transition to the "Prioritize" menu signals a deeper change in how YouTube organizes the world's largest video library. It is moving away from objective data (dates and raw numbers) toward subjective "relevance."

Why Upload Date and Rating Were Removed

In this update, two longstanding features were removed: "Upload Date - Last Hour" and "Sort by Rating."

The removal of "Last Hour" filtering is a blow to users who used YouTube for real-time news gathering. However, from a platform perspective, this filter was often abused by spammers trying to flood search results for trending topics.

The removal of "Sort by Rating" is less surprising. YouTube removed public dislike counts years ago, making the rating metric largely invisible and functionally broken for search purposes.

The new logic focuses on "Popularity" and filtering YouTube Shorts because these are metrics YouTube can control and monetize. By grouping content into "Shorts" and "Videos," YouTube acknowledges that these are now two separate products living in the same app. One is for quick entertainment, and the other is for information or immersion. The "Prioritize" menu is the bridge between these two differing user intents.

FAQ: Filtering YouTube Shorts and New Search Features

Can I permanently filter YouTube Shorts from all search results?

No, the official YouTube app does not have a global setting to permanently hide Shorts. You must select the "Videos" option in the "Prioritize" menu every time you perform a search to filter them out.

Why did YouTube change "Sort By" to "Prioritize"?

The name change reflects a shift in algorithm logic. "Prioritize" suggests a curated ranking based on relevance and format (like excluding Shorts), whereas "Sort By" implied a strict ordering based on raw data like dates or view counts.

Does filtering Shorts remove all short videos?

In many cases, yes. The filter targets the "Shorts" format (vertical video under 60 seconds). However, older short clips uploaded in landscape mode may still appear under "Videos," though some users report inconsistent results where legitimate short clips get hidden.

What is the difference between "Popularity" and "View Count"?

"View Count" strictly ranked videos by the number of clicks. "Popularity" is a smarter metric that factors in watch time, user retention, and engagement, ensuring clickbait videos with high views but low watch time don't dominate the results.

Are there apps that block Shorts better than the official features?

Yes, third-party Android apps like ReVanced or browser extensions like "BlockTube" allow for more aggressive blocking. These tools can remove Shorts from your home feed, subscriptions, and search results entirely, rather than just filtering them per search.

Outlook: The Future of Content Discovery

The introduction of the tool to filter YouTube Shorts is an admission by YouTube that their "everything, everywhere, all at once" strategy was hurting the core user experience. By giving users a choice, they are attempting to retain the audience that comes to YouTube specifically for long-form analysis, documentaries, and tutorials—the content that Shorts simply cannot replicate.

While the "Prioritize" menu is imperfect and the loss of "Last Hour" sorting is a step backward for real-time utility, the ability to clean up search results is a necessary evolution. As AI-generated content continues to flood the platform, the next battleground won't just be about format duration, but about filtering for human authenticity. For now, being able to silence the noise of Shorts with a single click is a good start.