[somat]

I wrote a userscript that turns the links into a /v/ link. The whole "shorts" concept is sort of stupid. I mean the videos are fine, let people make whatever sort of video they want. the front page promotion is unwanted. But the thing I actively despise is the scrolling auto play interface. However youtube will play the video with a sane interface when the /short/ link is modified into /v/

Or I should say, I nearly wrote a userscript to do this, it mostly works but I still find myself manually changing urls. I am not good with JS.

[brokenmachine]

My tampermonkey script (credit to the original author, I forget where I got it from):

  // ==UserScript==
  // @name         Youtube shorts redirect
  // @namespace    http://tampermonkey.net/
  // @version      0.3
  // @description  Youtube shorts > watch redirect
  // @author       
  // @match        *://*.youtube.com/*
  // @icon         https://www.google.com/s2/favicons?domain=youtube.com
  // @grant        none
  // @run-at       document-start
  // @license      GNU GPLv2
  // ==/UserScript==
  var oldHref = document.location.href;
  if (window.location.href.indexOf('youtube.com/shorts') > -1) {
      window.location.replace(window.location.toString().replace('/shorts/', '/watch?v='));
  }
  window.onload = function() {
      var bodyList = document.querySelector("body")
      var observer = new MutationObserver(function(mutations) {
          mutations.forEach(function(mutation) {
              if (oldHref != document.location.href) {
                  oldHref = document.location.href;
                  console.log('location changed!');
                  if (window.location.href.indexOf('youtube.com/shorts') > -1) {
                      window.location.replace(window.location.toString().replace('/shorts/', '/watch?v='));
                  }
              }
          });
      });
      var config = {
          childList: true,
          subtree: true
      };
      observer.observe(bodyList, config);
  };

[somat]

For completeness here is mine. I will try yours and see if it works better.

  // ==UserScript==
  // @name         eat my shorts
  // @namespace    http://tampermonkey.net/
  // @version      0.1
  // @description  change links to youtube shorts to reguler site
  // @author       jrs
  // @match        https://www.youtube.com/*
  // @icon         none
  // @grant        none
  // ==/UserScript==
  
  (function() {
      'use strict';
      function eat_shorts() {
          const root = document;
          const shorts_re = /^\/shorts\/(.*)/;
          const ae = root.getElementsByTagName("a");
          for (var i = 0; i < ae.length; i++) {
              const this_a = ae[i];
              const short_match = shorts_re.exec(this_a.getAttribute("href") );
              if (short_match) {
                  this_a.setAttribute("href", "/v/" + short_match[1]);
              }
          }
      }
  
      const config = {
          attributes: false,
          childList: true,
          subtree: true
      }
  
      //timer resets every time the returned function is called
      function make_reset_timer(cb, timeout) {
          var timer = setTimeout(cb, timeout);
          function reset_timer(mutation_list, observer) {
              clearTimeout(timer);
              timer = setTimeout(cb, timeout);
          }
          return reset_timer;
      }

      const short_observer = new MutationObserver(make_reset_timer(eat_shorts, 10));
      short_observer.observe(document, config);
  })();

[efilife]

A little nitpick, it's ?v= not /v/

[somat]

shorts have a link like youtube.com/shorts/XXXXXXX changing that to youtube.com/v/XXXXXXX works. and the video is still stupid, but now you have a sane environment to watch it in.

[efilife]

I had no idea, thanks!

[Phiwise_]

I think both redirect to the video, no? At least I think they used to.