How do I block Youtube entirely?

Help
1

I have a problem with my kids who simply won't listen to reason. I'm a reasonable fellow (that's my opinion), all I ask is that they do their schoolwork, revise and read books. I find that too many times Youtube is stopping them from progressing educationally despite its internet opinionated followers. So rather than lose my temper and yell at them - I'd rather block the entire household including myself until things settle down. Am I able to do this with pihole?

2

I know I can also use MAC address filtering to block them from the internet but my intent is to allow them to use Google for research, check their mail etc. Its an addiction to streaming videos that I want to cut.

3

Just block youtube.com ?

4

I tried (both .ca &.com), but since it uses https as well and seems like Google is also streaming, I tried the router and at the opendns level.

5

Wildcard block youtube.com

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6

As above, on the blacklist screen, on the very right of the URL entry bar, select wildcard to block the entire domain

7

YouTube also distributes their videos from *.googlevideo.com as seen in this thread. But if you wildcard block access to YouTube, that should suffice.

8

Works nicely for now. Complaints are coming in .... Summer is around the corner - lets see the grades before youtube reinstatement

1 Like
9

Is there any feature where I can do a timed blacklist disable like the feature where you can disable pihole entirely for a given time period thru the Web UI? (I also watch youtube ....)

10

We currently don't have a timed blacklist feature.

11

No Problem - using my newshosting VPN bypasses pihole for now. Thank goodness my kids don't know about VPNs.

12

yet .... they will learn if they are determined

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13

LOL. Suddenly your words, a new realisation dawns upon me .... they are my kids ergo they think like me!

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14

I have tried all the above suggestions and I am STILL able to get to youtube. Have *youtube.com and when I go to www.youtube.com...it happily loads the page.

Are we quite sure that youtube is not a virus or something? :slight_smile:

15

Try the pcWRT router. It worked for me. You can put a timer on YouTube too. How to put parental lock on YouTube - pcWRT

16

I'm having the same issue. I opened a Youtube video, then went to the Query Log page, blocked all the links that were related to youtube, and still, Youtube worked when reloading the page.

Update:
After a lot of blocking, I was able to block Youtube videos from loading, though Youtube pages were loading normally. I tried even blocking google domains, but Google and Youtube pages kept loading normally.

18

Try to to add youtube.com and googlevideo.com as regex blacklist

19

Try to to add youtube.com and googlevideo.com as regex blacklist

Can these domains be added in Adlists as regex and not just in Domains? I have another domain list and is setup as an adlists. If I want to disable it, all I need to do is go to one place and not have to jump around to domains and adlists to disable them.

(\.|^)googlevideo\.com$
(\.|^)youtube\.com$
20

No. Adlist URLS lead to individual domains only, not regex. Regex is for the domain lists only.

21

Looks like YouTube really is a resilient virus. (\.|^)googlevideo\.com$ and (\.|^)youtube\.com$ are not enough. Still getting a response:

Non-authoritative answer:
Name:    youtube-ui.l.google.com
Addresses:  2a00:1450:4001:800::200e
          2a00:1450:4001:801::200e
          2a00:1450:4001:808::200e
          2a00:1450:4001:81b::200e
          172.217.10.110
          172.217.165.142
          172.217.7.14
          172.217.9.238
          172.217.10.46
          172.217.10.14
          172.217.12.174
          172.217.12.142
          172.217.3.110
          172.217.10.238
          172.217.10.78
          172.217.6.206
          142.250.64.110
          172.217.11.46
Aliases:  www.youtube.com

I am testing with those now:

(\.|^)googlevideo\.com$
.*youtu\.?be.*

The later blocks anything with "youtube" and "youtu.be" strings in it.