Some really weird product decisions this year. E.g. they are also hellbent on showing me "shorts" in my search results. I can't think of a single occasion lately when I didn't want to see the full description and comments and they make it hard to get directly to the video. Worse still they are applying this "shorts" concept retrospectively to any video that happens to be short in length, meaning I get videos that were never intended for that format by the creator.

Fortunately this bookmarklet (which i've named "eat my shorts" in my bookmarks) does the job:

  javascript:(function()%7Bwindow.location.href %3D window.location.href.replace(%2Fshorts%5C%2F(.*)%2F%2C "watch%3Fv%3D%241")%7D)()

  window.location.href = window.location.href.replace(/shorts\/(.*)/, "watch?v=$1")

Recently they have iOS YouTube (or some A/B test of it) automatically opening shorts on full screen when you launch the app. Totally obnoxious.

I strongly recommend using iOS Safari, 1Blocker and Vinegar. Between them you get pure HTML video with picture-within-picture support etc and no ads. Feels like you YouTube used to be.

[1]: https://github.com/qnblackcat/uYouPlus

[2]: https://sideloadly.io/

[3]: https://altstore.io/

[4]: https://sponsor.ajay.app/