YouTube app glitch starts shorts automatically: Here’s a Simple Fix

Some YouTube app users are facing a strange problem where the app opens straight to Shorts instead of the usual homepage. YouTube has been pushing Shorts hard lately, giving this quick, TikTok-style feature its own spot in the mobile app. You can find Shorts in the Home and Subscription sections too. But for some people, a glitch is forcing the app to jump right into Shorts every time they open it, skipping the main page entirely.

For a while, users noticed that if they watched a Short before closing the app, it would reopen to Shorts the next time. Now, though, more people are saying the app starts with Shorts no matter what they looked at last. We tested this on a Nothing Phone (3a) and a Pixel 9 Pro Fold with the latest YouTube app. If Shorts had ever been opened, the app now skips the homepage and goes straight to them. Hitting the “back” button takes you to the homepage as it should, but little glitches in the display hint that the app is accidentally loading Shorts over the regular start screen. Posts on Reddit suggest this issue is popping up for more users in recent weeks, though it’s hard to tell how common it is.

Closing the app or forcing it to stop doesn’t help. However, resetting it by clearing the storage and cache fixes things—until you open Shorts again, and the problem comes back. We couldn’t check if this happens on iPhones. On Android, where YouTube comes built-in, you can’t fully remove it, but choosing “uninstall updates” from the Play Store does the trick, just like a reset. This glitch can be annoying, but these easy steps should get your app back to normal—until YouTube sorts it out for good!