How to Block Reddit on Chrome (Keep Subreddits)

Reddit is easy to open for one answer and hard to leave. The front page, r/all and comment threads are designed to pull you one click deeper. Redirect, the Chrome extension, blocks Reddit, lets you keep specific useful communities, and sends you back to what you meant to do.

By Monish Meher · Updated September 2026

Add to Chrome, free to start

3 steps

Block Reddit in under a minute

1
Install Redirect
Add Redirect to Chrome from the Chrome Web Store. Blocking one site is free and needs no account.
2
Add a rule
Open the dashboard, choose whole site and enterreddit.com
3
Choose how pauses work
Pick pause lengths and a task to finish first. Type a paragraph. Copying a passage exactly takes a minute and gives you time to notice the urge.

Why Reddit is hard to put down

Reddit's Home feed is not just the communities you picked. By default it includes machine learning recommendations for posts and communities you are not subscribed to, and it ranks the ones you do follow in a personalized order, taking into account things like what you have upvoted or commented on before. Add comment threads that branch into hundreds of replies, votes that reward checking back, and a front page that changes every time you look, and a search for one answer easily becomes an hour. You can switch those recommendations off in Reddit's preferences, which helps, but the feed and the threads are still one click away.

A Reddit plan that still lets you learn#

Reddit is often genuinely useful, which is why an all or nothing block tends to fail. (If you want to cut back for good, our guide on how to quit Reddit without deleting your account goes further.) Try this instead:

Add a whole site rule for reddit.com. It covers old.reddit.com and every other subdomain.
Add exceptions for the subreddits you use for work or study, such as reddit.com/r/learnprogramming.
Choose the typing challenge as the pause task and a 5 minute pause length. Five minutes is enough to read one thread from a search result, not enough to wander off into the front page.
Set a daily pause limit of three, so the most Reddit you can get in a day is 15 minutes.
Check your Focus page after a week. It shows how often you were redirected and when you paused, which is usually more telling than any rule.

If that feels too strict, use the homepage-only rule from the FAQ below and keep the rest of Reddit open. It also helps to turn off Show recommendations in home feed in Reddit's own preferences, so what you do see comes from communities you chose.

Watch the video: How to quit Reddit on your computerA 32 second walkthrough of this setup

Tips for Reddit

Make it stick

Add work subreddits as exceptions, for example reddit.com/r/learnprogramming, so research stays possible.
Use a pattern rule like *://*.reddit.com/r/all* to block only r/all and the popular feed if you want a lighter touch.
If you mostly land on Reddit from search results, keep the whole site blocked and pause for five minutes when you truly need a thread.

reddit.comBlocking

Sends you to your Focus dashboard

Type a paragraph. Copying a passage exactly takes a minute and gives you time to notice the urge.

Questions about blocking Reddit

Does this block old.reddit.com too?

Yes. A whole site rule for reddit.com covers every subdomain, including old.reddit.com and new.reddit.com.

Can I read a Reddit thread from Google without unblocking everything?

Take a short pause for the rule, or add that subreddit as an exception if you visit it often for work.

Can I block only the Reddit front page and keep subreddits?

Yes. Use a homepage-only rule: a pattern rule of *://*.reddit.com/ matches only the front page, not any /r/ community. Point it at a custom URL, such as the one subreddit you actually use. Clicking back to the front page from inside Reddit is caught too.

What happens to an open Reddit tab when my pause ends?

It is redirected right away, even if you are in the middle of scrolling a thread. Redirect checks open tabs when a pause expires, when you switch tabs and every 30 seconds, so a five minute pause stays five minutes.