YouTube for desktop removed ability to hide shorts from Subscriptions feed

YouTube recently swapped view count for comments or likes on homepage videos for some users, and it seems the platform is now playing another game of hide and seek with its latest update. The popular “Hide” option for Shorts seems to have mysteriously disappeared for some users, leaving them with no easy way to tidy up their Subscriptions feed.

Usually, when you hop into the Subscriptions tab on YouTube’s mobile app, you’re greeted with a neat strip of filters at the top — All, Today, Videos, Shorts, Live, Posts, and the like. Tapping on “Shorts” brings up a grid of vertical videos, each with a handy 3-dots menu in the top right corner of the thumbnail. Here, the “Hide” option would let you banish any unwanted Shorts from your feed with a simple tap. This option is also available on the desktop version.

But not anymore — at least, not for everyone. Some users are reporting that the “Hide” button has gone missing after the most recent update. A quick test on Android and iOS revealed that while the option is still available in the Subscriptions feed for me, it’s nowhere to be found on the desktop version. As you can see from the screengrab below, tapping on the 3-dots menu on Shorts only lets you send feedback.

This puzzling change has cropped up on the desktop version of YouTube, but the option to hide Shorts is still there on mobile. Could this be another case of YouTube’s infamous A/B testing, where features are quietly rolled out (or rolled back) to see how users react? If so, the platform might want to brace for impact — removing the ability to curate your feed could be a move that doesn’t sit well with many, and some of the reports doing rounds on Reddit and X are testament.

But here’s the million-dollar question: Have you noticed this change on your end? Are you still able to hide YouTube Shorts from the Subscriptions feed, or has the option done a disappearing act? Let us know — your feedback might just be the key to unraveling this latest YouTube mystery.

Beyond Shorts, YouTube is also experimenting with mid-roll PiP ads on live streams.