How to Block Someone on YouTube — and How to Block YouTube on a Child's Device

Blocking someone on YouTube — the native social feature — is quick: open the person's channel, tap the overflow menu, and select the block option. That removes them from your comments and community interactions, but it does nothing to prevent anyone from opening YouTube itself.

If your goal is keeping a child off the platform entirely, YouTube's built-in parental settings rarely hold on their own. A determined kid can delete an app, switch to a browser, or log into a different account, and each of those moves bypasses a single-layer block in seconds. Reliable access control means locking down YouTube at the device or network level, and the right approach depends on which device you're dealing with.

YouTube's native block: what it does and what it doesn't

YouTube's "Block" is a social tool, not an access control. It manages who can interact with your channel — not who can watch YouTube. Households needing a clearer policy here can review monitor YouTube for the practical steps and common pitfalls.

What the Block feature actually does

Blocking an account on YouTube removes that account from two places:

• Comments: the blocked user can no longer leave comments on your videos or posts.
• Your recommendations: their channel stops appearing in your feed.

What it does not do: the blocked user can still find your public videos, watch them, and view your channel page without restriction. YouTube's block is one-directional visibility in specific contexts, not a wall. Current behavior can vary by account type or region as YouTube continues to revise how blocking works, so edge cases are possible. For parents who want this monitoring layer in place, phone call safety signals explains the setup and the trade-offs to expect.

"Don't recommend channel" vs. "Block"

These are two separate actions with meaningfully different effects.

Don't recommend channel — available from the three-dot menu on any video card — suppresses that channel from your Home feed only. It does not affect comments, and YouTube's algorithm may re-surface the channel as it updates. It is a feed preference, nothing more.

Block user — found on the channel's page via the three-dot menu near the Subscribe button — is account-level. It handles comments and recommendations simultaneously. This is the actual block.

The limit parents hit immediately

Neither action touches YouTube access on a device. A blocked account can still open YouTube, search freely, and watch any public video. If the concern is a child's screen time or the content they consume rather than social interactions on your own channel, the native block does not address it at all.

Step-by-step: Block Someone On YouTube

These steps use YouTube's built-in block tool — the account-level action that removes a user from your comments and recommendations.

1. Sign in to YouTube on desktop or mobile.
2. Open the channel page of the account you want to block. The fastest route: click their username on any comment they've left.
3. On their channel page, select the About tab, then click the flag icon or three-dot menu (⋮) near their channel name.
4. Choose Block user.
5. Confirm the prompt.

The block is immediate. That account can no longer comment on your videos, and their channel drops out of your recommendations. They can still view any of your public content — that is a platform-level limit and is not changed by the block.

"Don't Recommend Channel"

This is not the same as Block. Confusing the two leads to unmet expectations.

1. From your Home feed or an "Up next" panel, click the three-dot menu next to any video from the channel.
2. Select Don't recommend channel.

That's it — two steps, and the channel stops surfacing in your Home feed. But the account can still comment freely on your videos, and you may still see their content in search results or on other pages. If you need both outcomes — no feed appearances and no commenting — run the Block user steps above in addition to this one.

Blocking specific channels and content with browser extensions

Browser extensions give desktop users a level of channel-level precision that YouTube's own settings don't offer. The clearest option for this is BlockTube, available on the Chrome Web Store and on Firefox Add-ons at addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/blocktube/. It's open-source (github.com/amitbl/blocktube) and does not collect user data — worth noting for households that are cautious about what extensions can see.

What BlockTube can filter

Once installed, BlockTube lets you block by:

• Channel name or channel URL — removes that channel's videos from search results, recommendations, and the Home feed
• Keyword — hides any video whose title contains a term you specify
• Video length — useful for filtering out shorts or extremely long videos by runtime threshold

This is meaningfully different from YouTube's native "Don't recommend channel" option, which only affects the Home feed. BlockTube suppresses the channel across the interface — search, sidebar, and trending — within that browser.

The hard limit: extensions don't reach the mobile app

Browser extensions only run in desktop browsers. They have no reach over the YouTube iOS app, the Android app, or any mobile browser session. A child who switches from a laptop to a phone or tablet bypasses every extension rule instantly. For mixed-device households, extensions work well as one layer on a shared family computer but are not a standalone solution when a child has their own device.

How to block YouTube on iPhone and iPad

iOS Screen Time handles this in two separate steps — one for the app, one for the browser — and you need both to actually close the gap. To block the YouTube app, go to Settings → Screen Time → App Limits, tap Add Limit, search for YouTube, set the daily allowance to one minute, and enable Block at End of Limit. The child's device locks YouTube immediately when the timer fires, and dismissing it requires the Screen Time passcode.

Block youtube.com in Safari

Locking the app does not stop a child from opening youtube.com in Safari. To block the site, go to Settings → Screen Time → Content & Privacy Restrictions → Content Restrictions → Web Content, select Limit Adult Websites, then add youtube.com under Never Allow. Safari will refuse to load the page on any tab.

Third-party browsers — Chrome, Firefox for iOS, and others installed on the device — may not respect this restriction depending on the iOS version, so the web block can be incomplete if those browsers are present. The cleanest fix is to include them in the same App Limits rule, or remove them from the device. Switching Web Content from Limit Adult Websites to Allowed Websites Only is stricter but requires whitelisting every site the child needs, which becomes unwieldy for most households.

How to block YouTube on Android

Android's built-in option is Digital Wellbeing. Go to Settings → Digital Wellbeing & parental controls → Dashboard, tap YouTube, then Set timer and pick a daily limit. When the limit runs out, the YouTube icon grays out and the app won't open.

The important caveat: the grayed-out icon includes an "Ignore for today" option the child can tap themselves — no parent required. Without a Family Link supervised account backing the device, the timer acts more like a prompt than a hard block.

Google Family Link for an enforced block

Family Link closes that gap. When a child's Google account is supervised through Family Link, parents can:

• Block YouTube outright from the Family Link parent app
• Set enforced daily limits the child cannot override on-device
• Require parent approval before any app is downloaded or reinstalled from the Play Store

Setup requires the child to use a supervised Google account — automatic for children under 13, or manually configured for older teens. Once linked, the block holds even if the child restarts the phone.

Uninstalling YouTube directly is an option, but without Play Store restrictions via Family Link, the child can reinstall it immediately. Family Link handles both problems together.

Setting Up NexSpy to Cover Someone on YouTube

Family Link handles the YouTube app block and prevents reinstallation from the Play Store — that's the hard part. What it doesn't cover is the browser workaround: a child who knows the URL can open Chrome or any other mobile browser and reach youtube.com directly, bypassing the app block entirely. iOS Screen Time has a similar gap with third-party browsers depending on iOS version. Households with both Android and iOS devices also end up managing two separate dashboards with no unified rule, which means any change — relaxing the block on weekends, tightening it during exams — requires logging into each system separately.

NexSpy may fit better if the browser gap and the scheduling overhead are the actual friction points. When a parent wants YouTube access blocked on a consistent schedule rather than just during a single session, NexSpy's App Blocker enforces the rule during defined windows — school hours, bedtime, or whenever the parent sets — and on Android the app disappears from the home screen during those windows so there's no visible icon to tap. When a child tries to sidestep the app block by opening a mobile browser and navigating directly to youtube.com, the custom URL blacklist adds that address to the blocked list in supported browsers, closing the workaround without a separate router login. Both rules, along with any changes to them, live in the same Parent Dashboard.

How to set it up

1. Install the NexSpy Kids app on the child's Android or iOS device and create a Parent Dashboard account.
2. Pair the child's device to your parent account through the dashboard.
3. Open App Blocker, locate YouTube, and either apply an instant block or configure a recurring schedule for school hours and bedtime.
4. Open Website Restrictions, then add youtube.com to the custom URL blacklist to block the site in supported mobile browsers.
5. After the first week, review the weekly activity report to see YouTube screen time before and after the rule was applied — that data point is more useful in a conversation with your child than a recollection of how much they were watching.

Router and network-level blocking as a last resort

Router blocking makes the most sense in two situations: a school-issued Chromebook where MDM policies prevent installing extensions or changing system settings, and a household where several devices share one network and a single point of control is more practical than managing each device separately. In both cases, the router intercepts YouTube traffic before it reaches any device on the network.

DNS filtering: the quickest setup

The fastest approach is pointing your router's DNS to a filtering service rather than writing manual firewall rules. Two free options are worth knowing:

• Cloudflare for Families (1.1.1.3 / 1.0.0.2) — blocks malware and adult content by default; YouTube is not blocked out of the box, but the service is reliable and low-latency
• OpenDNS FamilyShield (208.67.222.123 / 208.67.220.123) — pre-configured for adult content filtering; YouTube can be added to the custom block list through the OpenDNS dashboard at no cost for basic filtering

To apply either, log into your router's admin panel (commonly at 192.168.1.1 or 192.168.0.1), locate the DNS settings under WAN or Internet configuration, and replace the default entries with the addresses above. Connected devices pick up the new DNS on reconnect.

The three gaps that matter

Router-level blocking has real limits that affect whether it's enough on its own:

• Mobile data bypasses it entirely. When the child's phone switches to LTE or 5G, the home network has no reach. This is network-only, not device-level coverage.
• VPNs tunnel around DNS filters. A free VPN app routes traffic through an encrypted connection the router's DNS rules cannot inspect or block.
• The block ends at the front door. District MDM that stops you from installing controls on a school Chromebook does not stop the child from tethering to a hotspot or connecting at a friend's house.

For home-network coverage alone, DNS filtering is a low-friction starting point. For a child who is motivated to get around controls, it works best as one layer alongside device-level rules — the router handles casual access, while app-level restrictions require more deliberate effort to circumvent.

After the section on blocking YouTube on a child's device, once iOS Screen Time

iOS Screen Time blocks the YouTube app and youtube.com in Safari reliably, but it does not automatically extend that block to third-party browsers. Chrome, Firefox for iOS, or any other browser app the child has installed may still reach youtube.com depending on the iOS version, even after the app restriction and Safari content limit are in place.

To close that gap:

• Go to Settings → Screen Time → Content & Privacy Restrictions → Allowed Apps and disable every browser except Safari
• Or set Content & Privacy Restrictions → Content Restrictions → Web Content → Allowed Websites Only so Safari can only load domains you explicitly permit

If removing all other browsers is not practical, setting Web Content to Limit Adult Websites at minimum filters explicit content through Safari while keeping your YouTube-specific App Limit or Downtime schedule in effect.

After configuring, open Chrome or Firefox directly on the device as a test. If the apps won't launch, the Allowed Apps restriction is working. If either browser opens and reaches youtube.com, return to Allowed Apps and confirm the toggle is off.

Finally, make sure the Screen Time passcode is set to something different from the device unlock PIN. A child who knows the device passcode can otherwise reach Settings → Screen Time and turn restrictions off entirely.