Short form content has been taking the internet by storm. People spend hours scrolling on phones and get stuck in a loop forgetting about the time. This addictive nature of short-form videos has become a growing concern, with research showing issues like poor time management, reduced focus, and even diminished learning ability.
Despite this concern YouTube Shorts continue to get more and more popular. According to Google, the platform now sees more than 70 billion views every day. This has led to a concern and finally YouTube might have started to acknowledge the downside of such easy access.
A recent APK teardown of the YouTube app (version 20.15.32 beta) shows that Google is secretly developing a new feature to help users better manage their time on Shorts. The beta code includes new strings that point to a dedicated daily timer for Shorts viewing.
YouTube is working on a new feature to save you from doomscrolling Shorts (APK teardown) https://t.co/1Uc0NBEJDU
— Android Authority (@AndroidAuth) April 11, 2025
The upcoming Shorts timer seems to be built with the goal of putting a pause to the endless scrolling habits once you’ve hit a user-set daily limit. According to code strings found in the latest beta, this feature would temporarily stop the continuous feed of Shorts once your time cap is reached.
However, it won’t completely lock you out from watching Shorts. You’ll still be able to view individual Shorts that show up in other parts of YouTube. This feature mainly aims to prevent people from doom scrolling and give a reminder of the time spent while watching short from content.
While there’s no official release date yet, the feature seems to be actively tested by YouTube. Whether it will be enough to break users out of their scrolling habits still remains to be seen.
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