Hide YouTube Shorts and distractions
Remove Shorts links and shelves, the home feed, related videos, comments and live chat from the interface. Keep the parts of YouTube you use.
Free · Open source · Local settings
YouTube Focus Extension
Hide Shorts and recommendations. Filter unwanted channels and keywords. Choose the videos you want to watch, with 298 appearance and behavior settings in one persistent panel.
YFE is an independent, free UnTrap alternative for desktop Chrome, Chromium, Firefox and Zen.
18-second side panel demo, recorded with YFE 0.6.3.
Make YouTube fit your focus
Filter channels and keywords
Hide matching video cards, comments and posts by channel, title, text, ID or regular expression. Add filter rules from YouTube menus.
Set focus sessions and limits
Choose a session length, inactivity timeout, breaks and weekly blocking schedules. Protect selected settings with a local password or confirmation phrase.
Also includes appearance presets, playback speed and quality preferences, autoplay controls, optional Google Fonts, and a Play all button for a channel's Videos tab. See all features on GitHub.
Install in Chrome or Chromium
Chrome/Chromium 120 or later on desktop. The extension is not yet listed in the Chrome Web Store.
- Download the Chrome ZIP from the latest GitHub release and extract it.
- Open
chrome://extensionsand enable Developer mode. - Choose Load unpacked and select the folder containing
manifest.json. - Reload YouTube and click YFE's toolbar icon to open the side panel.
English is the default language; Russian is available in settings. No build step is needed for the release package.
Test in Firefox or Zen
Firefox 153+ or Zen with a Firefox 153+ base. Download the Firefox ZIP from the latest release, extract it, and load its manifest.json using Load Temporary Add-on at about:debugging#/runtime/this-firefox. Click YFE's toolbar icon for the native sidebar.
The Firefox ZIP is unsigned and its temporary installation ends on restart. Version 0.9.0 has been submitted to Mozilla Add-ons; review and signing are pending.
Before you install
Is YFE a free UnTrap alternative?
Yes. YFE is an independent project under the MIT license, with no subscription or paid feature tier. It focuses on YouTube appearance, content filters and focus controls; summaries, translation and cloud sync are not included.
Does the Shorts blocker block every video?
The appearance controls hide selected YouTube interface elements. Content filters hide matching cards and comments; they do not block a video that is already playing. Session limits and temporary blocking are separate controls.
Does YFE send my settings anywhere?
Settings stay in your browser. No developer account, analytics or backend is used. Optional thumbnail replacement requests images from YouTube, and opt-in Google Fonts downloads request font files from Google. Read the privacy policy for the full details.
YouTube changes its layout, so some controls may need updates. Ad skipping is experimental. Known limits · Report a problem