How to Block Websites on Chrome

Why block websites on Chrome

The average person spends over two hours a day on social media, and Chrome is where most of it happens. Blocking distracting sites at the browser level is the fastest, lowest-friction way to reclaim that time — no router config, no admin rights, no separate device.

People usually block websites on Chrome for one of three reasons:

• Productivity — knock out deep work without YouTube, Reddit or X breaking your flow.
• Parental control — keep kids off categories like games, social media or adult content during school hours.
• Self-discipline — stop yourself from doom-scrolling at 2 AM, even when willpower runs out.

The methods below cover all three. The first one — installing a Chrome website blocker extension — is the only one most people will ever need.

Method 1: Use a Chrome website blocker extension

This is the recommended method for 99% of people. A good extension installs in 30 seconds, blocks any site in one click, and gives you everything you'd otherwise have to wire up by hand: schedules, categories, password protection, statistics.

We're going to use Website Blocker — an open-source-style extension that runs entirely in your browser, with no account and no data collection. Here's how to block your first website:

How to block a website on Chrome in 30 seconds

If you only need to block a single site right now — Facebook, YouTube, Reddit, your news site of choice — here is the fastest path. Three steps, no settings menus, no admin rights, no account.

That's it. To unblock later, click the icon and toggle the entry off. To block more sites, repeat the process on each one — or paste a list of domains into Settings if you want to do it in bulk.

Method 2: Block specific URLs (YouTube Shorts, Reddit /r/all)

Sometimes you don't want to nuke an entire site — you want to keep the useful parts and kill the distracting ones. YouTube is the obvious example: regular videos are fine, but YouTube Shorts is engineered to be a TikTok-grade time sink.

Instead of blocking the whole domain, block by URL pattern with a wildcard:

• youtube.com/shorts/* — blocks Shorts but lets you watch normal videos
• reddit.com/r/all — blocks the doomscroll feed but keeps niche subreddits
• twitter.com/explore — blocks the algorithmic feed
• news.ycombinator.com/newest — blocks "fresh" submissions, keeps the front page

In Website Blocker, open Settings → Blocklist → Add, paste the URL pattern, and save. The extension will redirect any tab that matches the pattern, leaving the rest of the domain untouched.

Method 3: Block by keyword

This one's underrated. Type casino once and every gambling site in the world goes dark — you don't need to know the names. Same trick works for poker, shorts, onlyfans, or any other word you don't want to see in a URL again.

How it works: Website Blocker checks each navigation against your keyword list. If the URL or page title contains the keyword, the page is redirected to the "blocked" placeholder.

Use cases:

• Adult content — block any URL containing common adult keywords across all sites at once.
• Gambling — keywords like casino, bet, poker.
• Vertical video — shorts, reels, tiktok.
• News topics — block specific topics that send you doomscrolling.

Method 4: Block by category

Adding sites one by one gets tedious when you want to block, say, all social media. Website Blocker ships with five curated category packs covering 60+ sites between them:

• Social Media — Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Snapchat, Threads, Mastodon, Bluesky and others.
• Games — 14 popular gaming domains, from Steam to browser-game portals.
• News — major news sites where you tend to lose 30 minutes "just checking the headlines."
• Video — YouTube, Twitch, Netflix, Hulu, Disney+ and other streaming platforms.
• Shopping — Amazon, eBay, AliExpress, marketplace impulse-buy hubs.

Each category is one toggle. You can also create custom categories — for example, a "Newsletter dashboards" pack so you only check Substack, ConvertKit and Beehiiv during a specific window.

Method 5: Block websites only during work hours

Blocking by schedule is the difference between a tool and a habit. You don't need willpower if the websites are physically unreachable from 9 AM to 6 PM.

In Website Blocker, open Settings → Schedule. You can:

• Pick specific days of the week (Mon-Fri vs. weekend).
• Add multiple time intervals per day (e.g. 9-12 deep work, 14-18 deep work, 22-23 wind-down).
• Use overnight ranges that wrap past midnight (e.g. 23:00 → 07:00 to enforce sleep).
• Pick from quick presets: Workday 9-18, Evening 18-23, Always.

Schedules apply to the whole blocklist — all your blocked sites become accessible outside the scheduled window, and locked again inside it. If you want some sites to be permanently blocked regardless of schedule, mark them as "Always blocked" in the entry settings.

Method 6: Block sites during Pomodoro focus sessions

Some sites you don't want gone all day — only during the 25 minutes you've committed to deep work. Twitter is fine at lunch; Twitter at minute 14 of a Pomodoro is a disaster.

Website Blocker has a separate Focus Mode blocklist that activates only during a Pomodoro session. The flow:

1. Open the popup, switch to Focus Mode.
2. Add the sites you want blocked only during focus (your "willpower assassin" list).
3. Pick a preset — Pomodoro 25/5, Short 15/3, Long 50/10 — or set custom intervals.
4. Hit Start. Your focus list is now blocked. Your normal blocklist is unchanged.
5. When the focus phase ends, the focus list automatically unblocks. Take your break.

This separation matters: most people don't want to ban Reddit forever, they want to ban Reddit during the next 25 minutes. Focus Mode does that without touching your regular blocklist.

Method 7: Edit the hosts file (advanced, not recommended)

This is the old-school method. The hosts file lives at /etc/hosts on macOS/Linux and C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts on Windows. You add a line like:

127.0.0.1   facebook.com
127.0.0.1   www.facebook.com

Save the file (with admin/sudo rights), flush DNS, and Facebook now resolves to your local machine — i.e., nothing.

In short: hosts file is a hammer when what you need is a scalpel. Use it only if you have a specific reason to block at the OS level (e.g. a shared family computer where you want every browser blocked at once).

Comparison: extension vs hosts file vs router DNS

For most use cases, the extension wins on every dimension that matters for blocking websites on Chrome. Router DNS is interesting if you want to block at the network level for an entire household, but it's overkill if you just want to stop yourself from opening Twitter at work.

How to bypass-proof your website blocker

If you're blocking websites for self-discipline, the weakest link is you. At 11 PM, present-you will hate past-you for setting up the block — and present-you can simply disable the extension. The fix is password protection.

In Website Blocker, open Settings → Password Protection and enable it. You'll set:

• An 8+ character password required to add, remove or disable any blocked site.
• A one-time recovery code, shown once. Save it in a password manager.

Now you can't quickly disable the blocklist in a moment of weakness. Even uninstalling the extension takes more clicks than the willpower drop usually allows. For parental control use cases, the password is your enforcement mechanism — kids who don't know the password can't unblock from the extension UI without uninstalling it.

FAQ — Blocking websites on Chrome