Feature: Force Shorts to load in standard player.

[codefaux]

⚬ PROBLEM:
I loathe the Youtube Shorts interface on Desktop. It's less than worthless in my opinion. My current solution is implemented via a Tampermonkey script. It basically stops loading any page under https://www.youtube.com/shorts/* and forces it to load the standard https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=videoID instead. It makes Youtube Shorts look like any other video.

The working bits, essentially;

    window.stop();

    var newUrl = "https://" + window.location.host + "/watch?v=" + (window.location.href.split('/')[window.location.href.split('/').length - 1]);
    window.location = newUrl;

Why request a feature if I have a solution?

• First, I think others would appreciate this feature as well.
• Second, it's an easy implement for a plugin already hooked into all the right places such as this one.
• Third, on a personal note, I'd like to uninstall TamperMonkey as this is the only script I use with it, and I must manually transfer the text of the script between devices.

⚬ SOLUTION:
I'd love to see a simple toggle in the Player or General section akin to Force Shorts to play in regular video player which allows the equivalent function of the above javascript to be triggered on URLs such as https://www.youtube.com/shorts/*

⚬ ALTERNATIVES:
As described, the above TamperMonkey script. It requires the TamperMonkey plugin, as well as the script;

// ==UserScript==
// @name         YT Short redirector
// @namespace    http://tampermonkey.net/
// @version      0.1
// @description  Redirect the god awful short player to a normal one
// @author       codefaux
// @match        https://www.youtube.com/shorts/*
// @icon         https://www.google.com/s2/favicons?sz=64&domain=youtube.com
// @grant        none
// ==/UserScript==

(function() {
    'use strict';

    window.stop();

    var newUrl = "https://" + window.location.host + "/watch?v=" + (window.location.href.split('/')[window.location.href.split('/').length - 1]);
    window.location = newUrl;

})();

⚬ RELEVANCE / SCOPE:
I mean, nobody I know enjoys Youtube Shorts, but this feature makes them feel a lot less invasive. I'd speculate that literally anyone annoyed by Shorts would consider this feature valuable. I'm not socially connected enough to guess as to public reach there.

⚬ "SIDE EFFECTS":
With the default off, nobody will be adversely impacted without their knowledge. I'm unaware of other "functionality" to miss out on with it enabled.

⚬ CONTEXT:
I love you guys. I love Youtube, I'm paying them for Premium so I have your adblock features turned off. I just hate the Shorts interface, and the general concept.

SHORT Table	(Summary)
Problem	YT Shorts player sucks, can be overriden
Solution	Stop and Force reload with standard URL
Alternatives	Yet another f*ng extension, with a manually transferred config file
Scope	Anyone annoyed by YT Shorts integration
Side effects	Inconceivable!
Context	DFTBA

[ImprovedTube]

hi & thanks! @codefauxone
One can also replace the links before clicking them

#1701

hi & thanks! @codefaux.
#1701 (One can also replace the links before clicking them)

[codefaux]

(That's not my username.)

@ImprovedTube

I appreciate your time. I've seen #1701 and I disagree with link modification.

My first argument against using solely document parsing link modification is that this does not fix the behavior from externally shared links. How many other features of this plugin only work if you open a link from within a sire where this plugin has access to modify contents within Firefox? How will this fix the problem if I open, say, a link from a messenger app?

It also has a performance implications, when processing/rendering the page during updates and loading. Benchmarks such as https://browserbench.org/Speedometer3.0/ would definitely reveal impacts caused by such. If we're only modifying on load that's one thing, but Youtube has a tendency to do dynamic reloads on pages such as the Subscription page if you leave it idle, so you'd have to catch that every time.

I disagree that link modification is even a good solution, and request this be considered as an alternative means of "protection."

• This method has no lingering impact after a page has loaded, unlike processing live page updates required for link modification
• The processing isn't a global, recursive regex on the entire contents of every document
• Thus, this has no requirement of permission to modify site contents on Youtube or globally
• As a urther result, this has a smaller processing and memory footprint by A LOT
• The sole side-effect is a mandatory, momentary delay of a page starting to load before being redirected, which is not uncommon on the modern internet in the first place, nor is it a noteworthy impact to user experience