How Can I Block a Channel on YouTube? (A Few Easy Steps)

Woman blocking with hand

The internet is the best thing that has probably ever happened to us and the second best thing is probably YouTube. We all love watching videos on YouTube about anything and everything. The creators on YouTube love their job, because it is rewarding, allows room for one to be creative, and most importantly work on their terms.

Trolling

It’s all a fairytale until a troll comes along and ruins your entire day.

Now fast-forward, the troll won’t leave you alone and has initiated a subculture of trolls in the comment section of your video. The video that you worked very hard to film, edit and optimize. Sounds unfair right?

The best way to handle the negativity on YouTube is by blocking it. If you block someone on YouTube or block their channel, you ensure that they are unable to leave hateful and derogatory comments on your videos. This also ensures that the hateful comments they have left on your videos in the past are also no longer visible.

Recommendations

But what if you are the viewer, and you are sick of getting recommendations from a channel you hate. You are embarrassed to open your YouTube home screen at work because you have their videos listed. You can’t help but think, how do I get rid of this person?

You can also block a channel to prevent seeing videos recommendations of theirs on your YouTube feed anymore. By blocking a YouTube channel you ensure that the YouTube settings reflect your choice of videos on all of your devices through your Google Account. So if you block a site on your desktop, you will find that it is blocked on your Ipad and your Phone automatically.

Mature or inappropriate content

Blocking a channel also helps you ensure that a certain channel is no longer accessible on YouTube Kids apps so long as you are signed in. You can clear blocked videos and channels in the setting if later on, you change your mind.

By blocking a channel you are simply ensuring that you don’t see anything from that channel again. You cannot affect the visibility of the channel in general. People will still be able to view the content posted by that specific channel. The channel will still appear on external sites and in search recommendations elsewhere as you have only blocked it from your YouTube feed.

If a video is seriously inappropriate or harmful you can also report it, so that YouTube can take necessary action for striking it out completely so that it is not available for anyone to see and nobody is able to profit off of it. 

Does YouTube notify users or channels when they are blocked?

Thankfully no. YouTube does not notify anyone that you blocked them. You can block as many people as you want, without offending anyone. Your YouTube is your space. You should enjoy using it as you see fit.

How to Block a Channel on YouTube?

Here’s how you can block a YouTube channel:

  1. Go to the YouTube homepage and find a video from the channel you wish to block.
  2. Hover over the video (if you are using the desktop, otherwise select the three vertical dots that appear vertically on the top right side of the video when using the phone app)
  3. Now select the ‘Don’t recommend channel’ option
  4. You can Undo this right away if you made a mistake.
  5. If you don’t select Undo immediately, you will not be able to unblock the channel individually. You will have to unblock all the channels in your blocked list.

How to unblock all channels?

  1. Go to your Google My Activity page
  2. From the top-right menu, click Other Google activity
  3. Underneath you will find YouTube ‘Not interested’ feedback
  4. Click Delete
  5. Click Delete again for confirmation

How to Block a YouTube Channel on Desktop?

Over the years, YouTube has changed the placement of its block option. It makes perfect sense that you are unable to find it since the last time you blocked a channel on YouTube.

If you want to block a YouTube channel, start by opening your preferred browser and then searching for YouTube. Go to the YouTube homepage and find the channel that you wish to block.

You might want to double-check because you wouldn’t want to block the wrong account by accident.

  1. Click the About page on the YouTube channel
  2. Select the flag icon under the channel stats
  3. Click Block user
  4. Click Submit

And that is it. You have successfully blocked a YouTube channel from your desktop.

How to Block a YouTube Channel on Mobile?

YouTube has an official app that you can download both on your iPhone and Android smartphones. The app is relatively similar in use on both platforms. You can block YouTube channels on iOS and Androids smartphones and even tablets using this technique.

  1. Open the official YouTube app
  2. Now go to the Account or Channel you want to block by tapping on the circle profile picture on the videos
  3. Now click on the three vertical dots on the top right corner
  4. Click block user
  5. You will now get a confirmation message. Select Block user.

How to improve your YouTube experience?

You may be tired of seeing videos from a certain account appearing in your video suggesting our YouTube fee. You can block individual videos as well to refine your YouTube experience. You can also pick not interested to indicate to YouTube to stop recommending certain videos. You will less of that channel and genre in your feed following that.

You can also select the ‘don’t recommend the channel’ option which will inform YouTube to omit certain video topics from your feed. This is especially helpful if you wish to not see news regarding a certain issue. Often our feeds can get cluttered with negativity. You can avoid this and make your YouTube experience fun by using these options.

In case of offensive, dangerous or misleading content you can always report a channel or a video. This lets YouTube know that a video is potentially harmful and the matter should be investigated.

YouTube algorithm and recommendations

We recommend focusing more on the channels that you don’t enjoy. This is because the YouTube algorithm curates a feed based on things you enjoy. The more you watch stuff you like, the more YouTube recommendations will reflect that. Sometimes you watch one video from a channel and then your entire feed is filled with videos from that channel.

That may be annoying but you can avoid it by being careful with what you like and clicking on the notification bell only for the channels you are interested in.

YouTube tip for you.

YouTube is tracking your activity and pays close attention to your likes, watch times, and online activity to improve your experience.

How to Unblock Blocked YouTube Channels?

The reason why YouTube asks you to confirm when blocking someone is that you cannot individually unblock any channel or user. You will have to unblock all the blocked channels.

This is annoying and tedious. You have blocked all these channels for a reason and unblocking them would cause issues and severely affect your YouTube experience.

In the event that you do change your mind and wish to unblock a channel, we recommend signing out and using YouTube. The content is only blocked so long as you are logged in. You can also use the YouTube Kids app to view certain content which is blocked on your regular YouTube account.

If these alternatives do not work for you, you will have to tap on unblock videos.

Unblocking users on YouTube

  1. Open the YouTube app
  2. Tap on the red icon with a white triangle in the app drawer
  3. Type the name of the channel or user you wish to unblock in the search bar
  4. Now tap on the three dots in the top right
  5. Select ‘unblock user’
  6. Now the user is unblocked and is able to comment on your posts but their prior comments will remain hidden.

Manny Foster

Manny Foster helps us with writing. He is very skilled at writing about how to YouTube, podcasting, blog set up, blogging in general, SEO, and product reviews. He brings years of expertise to the company and we are glad he is on the team.

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