How to Use Kivvie to Block YouTube Shorts and Comments
A whitelist player never loads the Shorts feed or comments. How to set up Kivvie per child and why the feed removal holds.
A block YouTube Shorts and comments app works by never loading YouTube's recommendation feed in the first place, so Shorts and comments simply do not exist on the screen your child holds. Kivvie does this the direct way: you approve channels, and the player shows only those. What follows is the setup we walk parents through, the mechanism that makes it hold, and the mistakes that quietly undo it.
Key points
- A whitelist player never loads YouTube's recommendation feed, which is the surface Shorts and comments live on, so nothing needs blocking after approval.
- Setup takes a few minutes per child: create a profile, approve channels, then hand over the device with the app open.
- The trade-off is discovery: a child cannot find a new creator inside the app, so requests happen outside it and you approve them in the dashboard.
- Removing Shorts and comments is not a setting you toggle inside YouTube; it is a change of player.
What a whitelist player changes about Shorts and comments
A whitelist player is an app that shows a fixed set of parent-approved YouTube channels and nothing else, so the surfaces that carry Shorts and comments are never built. That is the whole definition, and it is worth being precise about it, because most of what gets called "blocking Shorts" is really filtering a feed that still exists underneath.
The distinction matters. Filtering assumes the feed loads and something downstream hides parts of it. A whitelist assumes the opposite: no feed, no channel suggestions, no comment thread to moderate, because the app only asks one question when your child opens it, which approved channel do you want.
Who this serves is narrower than a general parental control app. It fits households where the goal is a small, known library rather than a sanitized version of the whole platform. If your child needs to browse and discover, this approach will feel restrictive, and that is the point rather than a defect.
Kivvie is a parent-controlled YouTube content filtering app built around exactly this model, on iOS and Android with a web dashboard for parents. If you want the native YouTube and Family Link Shorts steps instead, see how to block YouTube Shorts for kids.
Setting it up for each child
The setup is short, and the order matters less than most guides imply. What matters is that each child ends up with their own profile and their own approved list.
- 1Install the Kivvie app and sign in with your Google account, which is how we verify you and how channel search works during approval.
- 2Open the parent dashboard at kivvie.app on the web, where approving channels is faster than on a phone.
- 3Create a separate profile for each child. Approvals, and therefore the library, stay isolated per child.
- 4Search for the channels you want and approve them one at a time, or start from a curated channel pack and prune it.
- 5Hand the device over with the app open. Your child taps their profile and sees only approved channels.
Some families run this in a single sitting; others spread approval over a week as requests come in. If you want a fuller look at how this category compares across devices, our comparison of the best parental control app for YouTube covers the platform-level differences between iPhone and Android.
Setup takes a few minutes. The channel list is the part that takes real thought.
Why removing the feed removes the problem
Shorts are not a content category you can filter out of a feed. They are a presentation of the feed itself: a full-screen vertical viewer that pulls the next item from the same recommendation system that fills the home page. Comments are a second surface on the same object. Remove the feed and both disappear together, because neither has an independent address in the app.
This is why toggling restrictions inside YouTube produces uneven results. Any setting you apply is applied on top of a system whose job is to keep serving. The moment a restriction is loose, mis-scoped, or signed out of, the feed is back with everything it carries.
A whitelist inverts the default. The player has no recommendation graph to draw from, so the only thing it can resolve is a channel ID you approved. There is no algorithmic feed and no suggestion rail, which is a limitation we accept rather than a feature we work around. The consequence for a child is a flatter experience: they pick a channel, watch a video, pick another.
Curated channel packs help with the cold start, since approval is manual by design. A pack gives you a starting set to accept or trim rather than an empty search box.
What separates a workable setup from a fragile one
Once you accept the whitelist model, the differences between implementations come down to a handful of testable things. Judge any option on these.
| What to check | The evidence to look for |
|---|---|
| Where approval happens | A parent-side dashboard or web app, not the child's device |
| Per-child separation | Distinct profiles with distinct channel lists, not one shared list |
| Shorts handling | Absence of a short-form surface, not a toggle you must trust |
| Comment handling | No comment section rendered at all, versus hidden on some videos |
| Suggestion behavior | No recommendation rail inside the player |
| Platforms covered | The devices your household actually uses, mobile plus web |
| First-run effort | Whether a pack exists to shorten manual approval |
Two rows carry most of the weight. If approvals can only happen on the child's device, the setup depends on your child handing the phone back at the right moment. And if Shorts removal is a setting rather than an absence, you are trusting a switch to stay flipped.
Common mistakes to avoid
Treating channel approval as a one-time task is where most setups decay. A list approved in September does not reflect what your child watches in January, and the app can only show what is on the list. Schedule a short review, say monthly, and prune as well as add.
Approving a channel because your child asked for it, without watching anything on it, is the second failure mode. Approval is the entire safety mechanism, so an approval made under time pressure is the whole system under time pressure. Open the channel, check what it publishes now rather than what it published when you last looked.
If the open YouTube app is still on the tablet, the whitelist is a preference rather than a boundary. Decide which device is the YouTube device and be consistent.
Assuming siblings need the same list is common and usually wrong. A nine-year-old and a thirteen-year-old have different requests and different judgments attached to them, and one shared list forces the older child's approvals onto the younger one. Separate profiles exist for this reason.
Letting the list drift upward without review is the slow version of the same problem. Approvals accumulate, nobody removes anything, and the library quietly becomes a mirror of the platform. Removing a channel is one tap, and it is the half of the job most parents never do.
If your household needs YouTube search to stay open so your child can find new creators on their own, a whitelist player will fight you, because it is designed to. That is a real trade-off, not a rough edge we plan to file down. Where a smaller library is the point, building a channel whitelist for kids covers how to populate one without over-approving. Pricing and plan details live on the pricing page.
About Kivvie
We built Kivvie as a whitelist-only YouTube player, which means we made a specific bet: the reliable way to remove Shorts and comments is to remove the feed that contains them. You approve channels, and everything else disappears, including Shorts, comments, and ads. It runs on iOS and Android with a web dashboard, and each child gets an individual profile with their own approvals. Setup takes a few minutes and requires a Google sign-in.
If your goal is spotting risky conversations across messaging apps and social networks, this is not that product and we would rather say so than stretch the claim. Our scope is YouTube, and within YouTube our scope is the channels you have approved. Curated channel packs shorten the cold start, but the approvals are yours.
FAQ
Can I block Shorts and comments using YouTube's own settings?
Not reliably. YouTube's restrictions apply filters and modes on top of a recommendation system that keeps trying to serve content. Shorts are a rendering of that feed rather than a separate section with its own switch, and comment visibility is handled per-surface. Any setting you rely on can be loosened by an update, an account change, or simply signing out. A player that never loads the feed has nothing to loosen.
Do I need a separate app for each child?
One app installation handles multiple children through individual profiles. Each profile carries its own approved channel list, so an older child's approvals do not appear for a younger sibling. That separation is the reason to keep profiles distinct rather than sharing a single login pattern across the household. On the child's device, choosing a profile is the first and only step before watching.
What happens when my child wants a channel that isn't approved?
They ask you, and you approve it from the dashboard. There is no in-app request button and no discovery surface, so the conversation happens outside the app. Search the channel on the web dashboard, review what it publishes, then add it. This is slower than an algorithmic suggestion, and that friction is deliberate: every addition gets a human decision behind it.
Does removing comments break anything my child needs?
Comments rarely carry information a child needs to watch a video, and they are one of the harder surfaces to moderate at scale. Removing them means no comment threads, no reply chains, and none of the recommendation pressure that comment sections create. If your child uses comments to follow a creator's updates, channel pages and video descriptions still exist inside the approved channel.
Will this work on a phone and a tablet at the same time?
Kivvie runs on iOS and Android, with the parent dashboard on the web, so approvals you make on a laptop apply to the phone and the tablet. Channel lists are tied to the child's profile, not to a single device. You approve once per child, then sign in on whichever device they use.
Want YouTube without Shorts or comments?
Kivvie is a whitelist-only YouTube player for iPhone and Android. Parents pick the channels. Kids do not get Shorts, comments, or the open recommendation feed.
See how Kivvie worksWant to try the whitelist approach?
Kivvie takes about 2 minutes to set up. You pick the channels, your kids see nothing else.
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