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I went through the same, but I will report now at about 28 months it has completely stopped.

At first, I would redirect by literally picking him up and moving him, which didn't work. What worked (eventually) was me backing off and explaining to the other parent that I was trying to let the kids of equal age work it out themselves. Every parent was fine with this approach and eventually, the novelty of it all wore off.

Hope it helps, but I totally understand if you don't want to go down this road.

We did timeouts. Just a minute were I walked away. It allowed me to settle down and he wanted me so it was a negative consequence. It was also logical because people don't want to play with people who hurt them. Then I would return (within. 2 minutes) and tell him I didn't like hitting. It hurt.

We have also spent lots of time working on gentle hands. We have him practice when he gets a little less gentle

I went through my daughter wanting to hit probably around 15 or 16 months, luckily she got over it but it was rough. I could tell when she was getting geared up so I'd go over and try and catch her hand in the act and tell her no, that it's going to hurt the other kid and he'll be sad if she hits him, if she didn't look like she could calm down then I'd try and take her away to another activity, if she was fairly calm I'd give her another chance but if she started hitting again then I'd take her to something else.

I found I had to be incredibly consistent, there was no letting it go when she was just playing with a friend and they were both squabbling, because the next day she'd be worse. I left a couple play group meet ups when she kept misbehaving. And when she was calm I'd try to talk to her about it but she was pretty young then so I'm not sure how much she really understood. She stopped luckily after not too long but for her I really had to be on top of it right away or she'd end up getting worse for a bit.

Ah, such a hard phase! At that age, it seemed like DS wasn't hitting because he was mad or upset but more because he was just trying out what he could do. I would just explain that when he does that it makes me sad, so sad I could cry. Which, I never really cried but I could tell it worried him. Luckily, after that he stopped and went to giving me kisses non-stop!

Does it seem like your LO is hitting or biting because of a tantrum or just randomly? A lot changes between 2 and 2.5, they start to learn emotions better and pick up on more words to communicate rather than physically be displeased about something. Also, DS was 2.5 before we put him in a time-out but before that age, it wouldn't have been that helpful.

Hitting is an automatic timeout for us. We'll sit him down in a spot where he can't reach any fun things, walk away (not out of the room, just not interacting with him) for about 30-60 seconds, then come back and talk to him for a minute or so about how we don't hit people, and hitting hurts, and it makes them sad, and it is never ok, and what else he can do, etc. Then we ask him to say sorry to whoever he hit and give them a hug, which he is always happy to do unless he's having a total overtired meltdown and just can't handle life, in which case we handle things differently and usually just remove him from the situation entirely. Timeouts work really well for us if he's just pissed about something but otherwise ok, or if he's boundary testing. If he's having a meltdown, I mainly just take him to a calm, quiet place (even if that's just the car) and try to get him to relax.
We also do a lot of having him repeat rules back to us, like "no hitting people" or "no biting people" (we have to specify because LO will go around hitting the couch and the floor and figuring out if that's ok, so "no hitting" doesn't quite fit the bill)
We also like the book "Teeth are not for biting" and I think there's a "Hands are not for hitting" version