> Yes, I know Shorts can be viewed with the regular video viewer by changing the URL, but that's a pain to do that on every video

There is a Chrome extension to do that automatically [1]. Here’s one for Firefox [2].

[1] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/youtube-shorts-blo...

[2] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-short...