Does Family Link block YouTube Shorts?

The short answer

Family Link can now set a supervised account's daily Shorts feed limit to zero. That stops the child from scrolling the Shorts feed for the rest of the day. It does not remove Shorts from YouTube or hide every place a Short can appear.

Google added the zero option in March 2026. Advice that says Family Link has no Shorts setting is now out of date.

What Family Link actually controls on YouTube

To be fair to it, a supervised YouTube setup does real work:

• Content tiers. Google filters the catalog into broad age buckets (Explore, Explore More, Most of YouTube) and your child sees only the allowed tier.
• Autoplay defaults to off on supervised accounts.
• Device-level limits. Screen time, app blocking and bedtimes cover the device around YouTube.
• Exact-channel blocks. You can block a specific channel for a supervised account. Google's own documentation notes the catch: only that exact channel is blocked, so reuploads and copycat channels get through.
• A daily Shorts feed limit. Set it in YouTube Family Center under Time management. Google says the limit can be zero. When the child reaches the limit, YouTube stops further feed scrolling until it resets the next morning.

This is real format control, but it is narrower than full removal. Google's help page describes a limit on the Shorts feed. It does not say that the setting removes Shorts tabs, shelves, search results or direct links. Family Link also has no keyword or title rules.

Set the Shorts feed limit to zero

1. 1
   Open YouTube with the linked parent account.
2. 2
   Open Settings, then Family Center, and select the child.
3. 3

   Open Time management, then set the daily Shorts feed limit to zero.

4. 4

   Test the child's supervised account on the devices they use. The setting limits the feed. It does not clean Shorts out of the whole YouTube interface.

Restricted Mode is not a substitute. It screens some mature videos but does not target the Shorts format. YouTube Kids has no Shorts feed and remains a good fit for younger children who accept its smaller catalog.

Remove Shorts completely

Vidward is a browser extension for Chrome, Edge, Firefox, Safari and other browsers, controlled from a parent dashboard, and its Shorts blocker removes the shelf, the tab and short-form playback across YouTube in your child's browser:

1. 1
   Install the Vidward extension in your child's browser.
2. 2

   Create your parent account and link their device with the activation code from your dashboard.

3. 3

   Open your child's Filters tab and turn on Block Shorts. The feed, the tab and the shelf disappear immediately.

Go deeper

The full walkthrough, including what the built-in options do and do not do, is in how to block YouTube Shorts. For the bigger comparison of what each parental control tool covers, see the best parental controls for YouTube in 2026.