YouTube Plots A Way To Break Your Endless Shorts Habit

Google announced a bunch of new features for YouTube Shorts creators at the beginning of this month to help them create those bite-sized clips more effortlessly. This is part of Google’s plan to push its vertical video platform to more users, but the company is also well aware of its impact when someone consumes too much of it. And now, it looks like it has a plan to help users combat that problem.

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Google is currently working on a feature that might help you break your Shorts addiction. According to an APK teardown of YouTube version 20.15.32 beta conducted by Android Authority, the company’s plan is something we’re all familiar with: a daily timer that limit how much time users can spend endlessly watching Shorts.

YouTube’s upcoming feature is a daily timer to break your Shorts addiction

As per the string of codes revealed in the APK teardown, the daily timer triggers only when you’re scrolling through Shorts and doesn’t impact the general short video watching experience. In other words, it only pauses the scrolling when you hit that limit and doesn’t prevent you from watching more Shorts on the platform.

If someone shares a short YouTube video with you after you hit the daily limit, you’ll be able to watch it without any issue. Not only that, but you’ll be able to watch any YouTube Shorts videos that appear outside the scrolling feed after the timeout. However, it’s important to note that Google doesn’t decide how much users should spend on scrolling through Shorts daily. Instead, as per the codes, users will be able to set the timer duration in minutes or hours, depending on what suits them the best.

shorts_time_picker_bottom_sheet_title">Pause scrolling aftershorts_daily_timer_setting_summary">{number_of_hours, plural, offset:1 =0 {Scrolling is paused after {number_of_minutes} minutes
but you may still see individual Shorts} =1 {Scrolling is paused after {number_of_hours} hour but 
you may still see individual Shorts} other {Scrolling is paused after {number_of_hours} hours 
but you may still see individual Shorts} }

The APK teardown doesn’t say anything about whether it’ll be soft enforcement, allowing users to bypass the daily limit and continue scrolling through Shorts with, let’s say, a tap of a button. Instead of forcing a habit change, it might go the TikTok way and only help you limit your screen time, where you can continue scrolling after the daily limit is reached by entering a passcode. If this is indeed the company’s plan, the timeout feature is more about encouraging users to take a break than helping them set free from the Shorts addiction.