Do you know how to Block websites in Windows? Blocking a website on Windows is quite simple. For this reason, we tell you today how to do it in five easy steps.
Even better, unlike other methods, in this case, you won’t need to download any external app to make it work. you just need to modify an internal file in Windows 10 or 11 and you can limit access to certain web pages of your choice.
On this occasion, we are going to edit a file that arrives in Windows 10 and 11 under the name of hosts. This document is in the system folders and with a quick edit using Notepad, we can use it to block any web page in Windows.
Some extensions allow you to block unwanted websites. However, the problem with this alternative is that if you have more than one browser, you will need to download and configure said extension in each of them individually. In the way we show you here, it is much more generalized and you only have to configure it once without downloading anything at all.
You won’t be limited by updates. Likewise, the blocking will take effect in Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Firefox and any other browser you have installed on your computer.
How to Block website in Windows 10 and 11?
If you want to learn how to block web pages in Windows, you just need to follow the steps which we will leave later. Don’t worry, we’ll walk you through with screenshots and an explanation so you can find your way through each step of the process.
- The first step in the list will be to press the menu Start of Windows. Here find the app Notepad. You can do this from the search bar or from the list of applications on your computer. Once located, right-click on the application and then on Run as an administrator between the options displayed by the contextual menu. This way, Notepad will be free to run on your system.
- Now that the application is open, click on the option Archive in the upper left corner. From the drop-down menu, select the option Open.
- When the window has already opened, go to the location “(your drive letter):\Windows\System32\drivers\etc“. Once inside, select All Files from the drop-down menu at the bottom right of the window. You will see a series of files, select the one called hosts then press the button Open.
- As you can see in the image, it is a text file with IP addresses. Don’t worry, you don’t have to change anything that’s already there. To block Windows web pages, you just need to add a line of text at the end of the document.
- At the end of the file you need to write 127.0.0.1 + space + address of the website What do you want to block? To add more pages, add a new line, write the same initial IP address, and then the web address.
Everything is ready. Now you just need to save the changes made to the document. To do this, you can click Archive and later in to safeguard. Another way to confirm changes is to press the keys CTRL+G. Once this is done, you can close the file and continue to confirm that everything has been locked correctly.
In case you want to reintegrate the blocked websites, you just need to follow the same procedure to open the text document. However, instead of adding new rows, you just need to delete those of these pages that you want to access again. Once done, save them once more and open them from any browser.
