How to Block YouTube on Chrome

Why block YouTube on Chrome

YouTube is the single most-visited site after Google itself. The platform is engineered for time-on-page — autoplay, infinite recommendations, Shorts that scroll like TikTok, the next-up sidebar that follows you everywhere. None of that is accidental.

Most people don't actually want YouTube gone. They want one of these:

• Productivity — keep YouTube out of work hours so the 5-minute "quick break" doesn't turn into 90 minutes.
• Study focus — students who use YouTube to learn but lose hours to recommended videos.
• Parental control — block YouTube on the family Chrome profile, or just block YouTube Shorts and Kids-mode bypasses.
• Self-discipline — stop yourself from opening YouTube at 1 AM when willpower has clocked out.
• Doomscroll fix — kill Shorts specifically without losing access to long-form content you actually chose to watch.

The methods below cover all of these. Pick the one that matches your reason — most people only need the first or second.

Block all of YouTube in one click

The nuclear option. One click, the whole domain goes dark — homepage, videos, Shorts, comments, channel pages, everything under youtube.com.

Block only YouTube Shorts (keep regular videos)

Shorts is YouTube's TikTok clone — vertical video, infinite scroll, algorithm tuned for retention. Most "I lost an hour on YouTube" stories from the last two years are actually Shorts stories.

The fix is surgical: block the Shorts URL pattern, leave everything else alone.

Block the YouTube homepage and recommendations

You don't want to block YouTube — you want to block YouTube the algorithm. Subscribe-only YouTube is great. Algorithm-driven YouTube is where the time goes.

Block these paths:

• youtube.com/$ — the homepage with its recommendations row
• youtube.com/shorts/* — Shorts feed
• youtube.com/feed/trending — what's trending right now
• youtube.com/feed/explore — the explore page

Leave these unblocked:

• youtube.com/feed/subscriptions — only channels you chose
• youtube.com/playlist?list=* — your saved playlists
• youtube.com/watch?v=* — direct video links

Now YouTube only opens when you click a subscription, a saved playlist, or a direct link from somewhere else. The infinite-scroll surfaces are gone.

Block YouTube only during work hours

Most people don't want YouTube blocked forever. They want YouTube blocked from 9 to 6, Monday to Friday.

Block YouTube during Pomodoro focus sessions

Different from a schedule: Focus Mode blocks YouTube only during the 25-minute Pomodoro you just started. Outside the focus session, your normal blocklist behavior is unchanged.

Use this when YouTube is generally fine — but right now, for the next 25 minutes, you need to ship.

1. Open the popup, switch to Focus Mode.
2. Add youtube.com (or the specific paths you care about) to the focus blocklist.
3. Pick a preset — Pomodoro 25/5, Short 15/3, Long 50/10 — or set custom intervals.
4. Hit Start. YouTube is now blocked. The timer counts down.
5. When the focus phase ends, YouTube unblocks automatically. Take your 5-minute break.

The mental model that matters: schedule = recurring rules, Focus Mode = "this session, right now."

Block YouTube channels and topics by keyword

YouTube uses URLs like youtube.com/@channelname for channel pages and youtube.com/results?search_query=topic for searches. You can block individual channels and topics by keyword.

Examples:

• @drama — block any channel handle containing "drama"
• politics — block any URL or page title containing "politics"
• conspiracy — block conspiracy content across YouTube and beyond
• shorts — bonus: blocks Shorts URLs across the whole web, not just YouTube

Open Settings → Block by Words and add the keywords. Website Blocker checks each navigation against your keyword list and redirects matches to the block screen.

Blocking YouTube on phone (iOS / Android)

Honest answer: a Chrome extension can't help here. The extension only runs in Chrome on desktop and laptop. Mobile Chrome doesn't support the same extension model.

For phones:

• iOS: Settings → Screen Time → App Limits → add YouTube. Or use Content & Privacy Restrictions → Web Content → Limit Adult Websites and add YouTube to the never-allow list.
• Android: Settings → Digital Wellbeing & parental controls → App timers → set YouTube to 0 minutes. Or use Family Link if it's a kid's device.
• Both: a router-level DNS filter (NextDNS, Pi-hole) blocks YouTube on every device on the network — including phones, smart TVs and consoles.

Combine the Chrome extension on desktop with Screen Time / Digital Wellbeing on mobile and you've covered every YouTube surface in your day.

How to make the YouTube block bypass-proof

If you're blocking YouTube for self-discipline, the weakest link is you. At minute 18 of a writing session, present-you will hate past-you for the block — and present-you can simply disable the extension. The fix is password protection.

In Website Blocker, open Settings → Password Protection:

• Set an 8+ character password.
• Save the one-time recovery code in a password manager.
• Done. Adding, removing, or disabling any blocked entry now requires the password.

This is the same mechanism used for parental control: kids who don't know the password can't unblock YouTube from the extension UI without uninstalling it. For self-discipline, present-you doesn't have the patience to dig out the recovery code mid-doomscroll, which is the whole point.

FAQ — Blocking YouTube on Chrome