BlockTube

YouTube is probably the most popular video sharing website out there and, as you probably have noticed, it provides suggestions and channel recommendations based either on your watching history if you are logged in, or on popular video choices on the site. However, it might just be the case that you were interested in a certain subject temporarily and now don't need for YouTube to constantly offer you so-called related videos you would never click on. If that is the case, then BlockTube might be exactly what you are looking for.

BlockTube is a simple addon for the Mozilla Firefox browser that can help you filter the videos you see on YouTube and completely block the content you don't want to see. The addon does not require a browser restart and, moments after installing it, you should be able to see its icon in the browser's toolbar.

There are various filters you can apply when configuring BlockTube and, since regex matching is also supported, you might want to take a look at the wiki first to see how rules are set in place. In short, each new line is a rule, and comments, which are marked by two consecutive slash symbols, can be added to the rules to explain them. Rules are case insensitive so you don't need to worry about the caps lock being on or off.

BlockTube can filter videos based on keywords or regex matches in their title, but there are also options to block certain channels (based on their ID and their name), or comments. The addon's configuration can be assigned a password, for security purposes.

To test that the extension works, you can look for a certain keyword on YouTube, then add that particular keyword in the list of filters and perform the search again. You should notice that the blocked content, be it search results, channels, or comments, are not visible on YouTube anymore, as if they don't exist. On the other hand, the content in your own playlists is not blocked.

BlockTube can hide videos that don't match your custom length criteria and deactivate the "Trending" page.

Despite being just a simple addon, BlockTube might make you think about parental control more than anything else. It can be used to block content that might be considered inappropriate for a certain age, or set playtime limits for children accessing YouTube via Firefox.