{"id":289290,"date":"2026-07-14T06:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-07-14T10:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/07\/14\/i-changed-these-12-youtube-settings-to-limit-shorts-stop-autoplay-protect-my-privacy-and-more\/"},"modified":"2026-07-14T06:20:08","modified_gmt":"2026-07-14T10:20:08","slug":"i-changed-these-12-youtube-settings-to-limit-shorts-stop-autoplay-protect-my-privacy-and-more","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/07\/14\/i-changed-these-12-youtube-settings-to-limit-shorts-stop-autoplay-protect-my-privacy-and-more\/","title":{"rendered":"I changed these 12 YouTube settings to limit Shorts, stop autoplay, protect my privacy, and more"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.zdnet.com\/article\/12-youtube-settings-i-always-change-privacy-security-quality-autoplay\/\">I changed these 12 YouTube settings to limit Shorts, stop autoplay, protect my privacy, and more<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.zdnet.com\/article\/12-youtube-settings-i-always-change-privacy-security-quality-autoplay\/\">https:\/\/www.zdnet.com\/article\/12-youtube-settings-i-always-change-privacy-security-quality-autoplay\/<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Publish Date: <a href=\"publish_date]\">2026-07-14 06:00:00<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Source Domain: <a href=\"www.zdnet.com\">www.zdnet.com<\/a><\/p>\n<p>    <span class=\"c-shortcodeImage_credit g-outer-spacing-top-xsmall u-block\">Elyse Betters Picaro \/ ZDNET<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Follow ZDNET: <span class=\"c-commerceLink\"><span>Add us as a preferred source<\/span><\/span> on Google.<\/p>\n<h3>ZDNET&#8217;s key takeaways<\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li>YouTube&#8217;s default settings don&#8217;t equal the best experience.<\/li>\n<li>A few changes can really improve privacy and usability.<\/li>\n<li>Here&#8217;s how I make YouTube more enjoyable to watch.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>YouTube is great. It&#8217;s one of the best places to learn a new skill, figure out how to fix something around the house, follow the news, find a new recipe, or watch a favorite celebrity eat incredibly spicy wings or play with puppies while promoting a new movie. Still, the default experience can be a lot. It can feel noisy, disruptive, and, dare I say, intrusive. <\/p>\n<p><strong>Also:\u00a0<\/strong><strong>I tried DuckDuckGo&#8217;s new video player, and it blocks YouTube ads for free<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>But I&#8217;ve found that spending just a couple of minutes toggling a few settings on or off makes YouTube far better to use. Here are the viewing, privacy, security, and feature controls I change, and why. <\/p>\n<h2> 1. Limit Shorts <\/h2>\n<p>For whatever reason, YouTube won&#8217;t let me disable Shorts entirely. I hate that because it&#8217;s a never-ending feed of AI slop and absolute trash. (Sorry, not sorry.) The mobile app does, however, include a daily limit, including for zero minutes.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Also:\u00a0<\/strong><strong>YouTube Premium vs. Premium Lite: Is the cheaper tier still your best deal?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>To set a daily limit in the YouTube app, go to Profile  Settings  Time management  Shorts feed limit  0. The issue is this reminder can be easily dismissed, so it&#8217;s more of a speed bump. Still, it may be worth enabling if a child sometimes uses YouTube on the same phone, as mine likes to do. In that case, I also reduce Shorts recommendations in the mobile app and from my desktop. <\/p>\n<p>In the Shorts shelf on the Home screen, tap the three-dot menu and select Show fewer Shorts. <\/p>\n<p> <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\" alt=\"1. Limit Shorts\" width=\"1280\" height=\"737.1489512975471\" fetchpriority=\"low\"\/>   <span class=\"c-shortcodeImage_credit g-outer-spacing-top-xsmall u-block\">Elyse Betters Picaro \/ ZDNET<\/span><\/p>\n<h2> 2. Turn off autoplay <\/h2>\n<p>I never want to watch the next video YouTube decides to serve up. They&#8217;re usually very loosely related to the video I just watched or not interesting to me at all. Because I&#8217;d rather find something else to&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.zdnet.com\/article\/12-youtube-settings-i-always-change-privacy-security-quality-autoplay\/\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I changed these 12 YouTube settings to limit Shorts, stop autoplay, protect my privacy, and&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":289291,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.zdnet.com\/a\/img\/resize\/ff8cc1d6eb5f537511159611855088bb3fc62d8a\/2026\/07\/13\/86e6d3b8-c2a9-4902-93c5-07a5acdd809b\/51.jpg?auto=webp&fit=crop&height=675&width=1200","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-289290","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-privacy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289290"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=289290"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289290\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":289292,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289290\/revisions\/289292"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/289291"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=289290"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=289290"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=289290"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}