{"id":835818,"date":"2025-03-21T16:13:42","date_gmt":"2025-03-21T21:13:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2025\/03\/21\/youtube-app-bug-opens-and-auto-plays-shorts-by-default-heres-how-to-fix-it\/"},"modified":"2025-03-21T16:13:42","modified_gmt":"2025-03-21T21:13:42","slug":"youtube-app-bug-opens-and-auto-plays-shorts-by-default-heres-how-to-fix-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2025\/03\/21\/youtube-app-bug-opens-and-auto-plays-shorts-by-default-heres-how-to-fix-it\/","title":{"rendered":"YouTube app bug opens and auto-plays Shorts by default, here\u2019s how to fix it"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<figure>\n\t<img width=\"1600\" height=\"800\" src=\"https:\/\/9to5google.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2024\/11\/YouTube-Android-app-1.jpg?quality=82&#038;strip=all&#038;w=1600\" alt  decoding=\"async\" fetchpriority=\"high\"><\/figure>\n<p>A bug with the YouTube app is causing Shorts to open as soon as the app starts up for some users.<\/p>\n<p>YouTube has put a lot of emphasis on Shorts in recent years, with the TikTok-like experience getting a dedicated tab in the YouTube app for mobile devices, showing up in Home and Subscription feeds, and more. For some users, though, an ongoing bug is causing the YouTube app to open directly to Shorts rather than opening to the homepage.<\/p>\n<p>For some time now, users <a href=\"https:\/\/www.reddit.com\/r\/youtube\/comments\/1bwxcrv\/why_is_my_youtube_app_now_automatically_opening_a\/?rdt=45245\">have noticed <\/a>that YouTube will directly open to Shorts if the last thing viewed the last time the app was opened was from Shorts. More recently, though, there\u2019s been a growing trend where the YouTube app opens to Shorts regardless of what was previously viewed.<\/p>\n<p>We\u2019ve noticed on a Nothing Phone (3a) and a Pixel 9 Pro Fold that, with the current YouTube app version, Shorts will open by default if the Shorts experience has been opened at all. Going \u201cback\u201d shows the homepage as expected, and UI artifacts when the first Short loads implies that the app is simply opening Shorts immediately, by error, \u201cover\u201d the normal homepage. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.reddit.com\/r\/youtube\/comments\/1j0h4ih\/opening_youtube_to_shorts\/\">Reports <\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/www.reddit.com\/r\/youtube\/comments\/1j7yfbm\/youtube_app_opens_to_shorts\/\">on <\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/www.reddit.com\/r\/youtube\/comments\/1j4uqn6\/playing_shorts_the_moment_the_app_opens_is_not\/\">Reddit <\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/shorts\/oBuUw23V65U\">show <\/a>that this is happening to more and more users in the past couple of weeks, though it\u2019s not clear how widespread it is.<\/p>\n<p>Closing and force stopping the app has no impact on this behavior, but a \u201creset\u201d (clear storage\/cache) does revert this problem. Once Shorts are opened again, though, the issue returns. We\u2019ve not been able to confirm if this is happening on iOS. Since YouTube is pre-installed on Android, a full uninstall isn\u2019t possible, but \u201cuninstall updates\u201d via <a href=\"https:\/\/play.google.com\/store\/apps\/details?id=com.google.android.youtube&#038;hl=en_US\">the Play Store<\/a> works the same way.<\/p>\n<p>Are you running into this issue? Let us know in the comments below.<\/p>\n<figure><video autoplay loop muted src=\"https:\/\/9to5google.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2025\/03\/youtube-shorts-bug.mp4\"><\/video><\/figure>\n<h2 id=\"h-more-on-youtube\">More on YouTube:<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/9to5google.com\/2025\/03\/05\/youtube-music-premium-lite\/\">YouTube committed to music, saw more full Premium upgrades than downgrades to Lite<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/9to5google.com\/2025\/03\/05\/youtube-app-for-tvs-looks-at-redesign\/\">Report: YouTube eyes redesign for TV app as more users are watching than ever<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/9to5google.com\/2025\/03\/05\/youtube-premium-lite-price-ad-free\/\">YouTube Premium Lite now rolling out, makes \u2018most\u2019 videos ad-free for $7.99\/month<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><em><strong>Follow Ben:<\/strong>\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/NexusBen\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Twitter\/X<\/a>,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.threads.net\/@nexusben\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Threads<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/bsky.app\/profile\/nexusben.com\">Bluesky<\/a>, and\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/nexusben\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Instagram<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<p>\n\t\t<a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/news.google.com\/publications\/CAAqBwgKMMqA-Qow-c_gAg?hl=en-US&#038;gl=US&#038;ceid=US:en\"><br \/>\n\t\t\t<em>Add 9to5Google to your Google News feed.<\/em>\u00a0<br \/>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t<\/p>\n<div>\n<p><em>FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links.<\/em> <a href=\"https:\/\/9to5mac.com\/about\/#affiliate\">More.<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/bit.ly\/4aSyWvz\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/9to5google.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2025\/02\/Roborock-Feb-2025.jpg?quality=82&#038;strip=all\" alt width=\"750\" height=\"150\"><\/a><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/9to5google.com\/2025\/03\/16\/youtube-app-bug-opens-and-auto-plays-shorts-by-default-heres-how-to-fix-it\/\" class=\"button purchase\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A bug with the YouTube app is causing Shorts to open as soon as the app starts up for some users. YouTube has put a lot of emphasis on Shorts in recent years, with the TikTok-like experience getting a dedicated tab in the YouTube app for mobile devices, showing up in Home and Subscription feeds, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":835819,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2481,49,104640],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-835818","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-opens","8":"category-youtube","9":"category-youtube-videos"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/835818","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=835818"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/835818\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/835819"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=835818"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=835818"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=835818"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}