How to Block YouTube on Chrome but Keep Lectures
YouTube is built to keep you watching: autoplay, a sidebar of recommendations and a home feed that refreshes every visit. One video for work turns into an hour. Redirect, the Chrome extension, lets you block the site, keep the one channel you learn from, and land on your goals instead of the home feed.
By Monish Meher · Updated
Block YouTube 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 enter
youtube.com - 3
Choose how pauses work
Pick pause lengths and a task to finish first. Write a reason. Having to explain why you need YouTube right now is often enough to close the tab.
Why YouTube is hard to put down
YouTube rarely gives you a natural place to stop. When a video ends, autoplay starts another related video automatically. YouTube's help page says autoplay is turned off by default only for users aged 13 to 17, and on Wi-Fi it keeps going for up to four hours of inactivity before it stops on its own. Next to every video sits a column of recommendations, and the home feed reshuffles each time you load it, so there is always something new at the top. Every screen answers the question "what next?" before you ask it. That is why willpower alone tends to lose, and why removing the entry point works better.
A YouTube setup that holds up#
- Add a whole site rule for youtube.com and point it at your Focus dashboard, so your goals are the first thing you see.
- Add exceptions for the two or three channels or playlists you actually learn from.
- Choose the reason prompt as the pause task, with 10 minute pauses and a daily pause limit of two. That is at most 20 minutes of open YouTube a day, and every minute of it is a choice.
- If evenings are fine, add a schedule so the rule only runs on weekdays from 09:00 to 18:00.
If the home feed is the real problem and not YouTube itself, a homepage-only rule is lighter. A pattern rule of *://*.youtube.com/ matches only the home page, so watch pages, channels and search keep working. Point it at a custom URL like https://www.youtube.com/feed/subscriptions and you land on the channels you chose instead of the recommendations. If it is only Shorts that pull you in, use a path rule for Shorts instead.
Make it stick
- Add the channels you study with as exceptions, like youtube.com/@mitocw, so lectures still open while the feed stays blocked.
- Use a schedule for weekdays 09:00 to 18:00 if you only want YouTube gone during work hours.
- Set a daily limit of two pauses so a quick tutorial never turns into an evening of recommendations.
- The whole site rule also covers m.youtube.com and music.youtube.com, since every subdomain is included.
youtube.comBlockingWrite a reason. Having to explain why you need YouTube right now is often enough to close the tab.
Questions about blocking YouTube
Will blocking YouTube also block embedded videos on other sites?
No. Redirect only acts on pages you open in a tab. Videos embedded in articles or courses on other sites keep playing.
Can I block the YouTube home feed but keep search?
Use a path rule instead of the whole site, or keep the whole site blocked and add exceptions for the pages you rely on, such as specific channels or playlists.
What if I need one tutorial for work right now?
Take a pause. You finish the task you chose for the rule, such as writing a reason, and YouTube opens for the length you set, from 1 to 60 minutes. A small floating timer shows how much time is left. When the pause ends, any open YouTube tab is redirected right away, even in the middle of a video, so the tutorial does not quietly turn into the next recommendation.
Does Redirect work in Incognito windows?
Only if you allow it. Like any Chrome extension, Redirect runs in Incognito only when Allow in Incognito is turned on for it in chrome://extensions. If Incognito is where you tend to slip, turn that setting on.
Go deeper
The full guides behind this setup.
How to Stop the YouTube Rabbit Hole Without Quitting YouTube
YouTube is built to hand you the next video. Here is how to keep the useful parts and close the doors that lead to three lost hours.
Read the guide →How to Block the YouTube Homepage and Land on Subscriptions
The YouTube home page is where most unplanned watching starts. Here is how to skip it entirely, keep search and subscriptions, and pick between hiding and redirecting.
Read the guide →How to Limit Your YouTube Time on Chrome
There are two kinds of YouTube limits: a cap on minutes and a cutoff at a certain time. Here is how to set up either on Chrome, and which tool fits which goal.
Read the guide →Sources
- YouTube Help: Autoplay videos (checked September 2026)
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