Family Site Guard

Block sites such as YouTube, or allow only the sites you choose. Embedded videos keep working on the sites that you approve.

Family Site Guard blocks the sites on your block list, and it keeps their embedded content alive on the sites that you approve. Example: block YouTube, and the YouTube videos inside your school site continue to play. The child can watch the lesson, but can not open youtube.com itself. Most blockers stop at the first half. The second half — embeds that continue to work on the sites that you choose — is the reason this extension exists. For young children there is a stricter mode: allow only the sites that you name, and block everything else. A page on an allowed site works completely, with all its players and widgets, so you do not need to list every video host and sign-in service that a school site uses. How it works - Direct navigation to a blocked site stops. Chrome shows its standard message: this page was blocked by an extension. - The blocked sites do not load inside other sites either: no players, no media, no scripts, no data. - A link inside a permitted player that opens the blocked site in the tab or in a new tab stays blocked. - The toolbar icon shows the lists, so everybody can see which sites stay available. - The extension does not read your browsing history, and it does not read the pages that you open. It gives Chrome a fixed set of rules, and Chrome applies them. It can remove the offline copies that sites keep in the browser, so that the block works; it touches nothing else, and nobody is signed out. For families - Two simple lists: blocked sites, and allowed sites where the blocked sites may appear inside the page, for example a video player inside a school page. - A block entry is a domain (youtube.com) or a keyword (youtube). A keyword blocks every site whose address contains it: youtube.com, m.youtube.com, youtubekids.com, and proxy addresses that keep the name. - The allowed-sites mode: a second allowed list, for sites that open without the blocked sites inside them, and one switch. Every site that is not on one of the two allowed lists is blocked. - An administrator policy can hold the settings. Then a child can not change them, can not remove the extension, and can not escape it with a new Chrome profile. - The extension makes the policy file for you, for macOS and for Windows. You choose the sites. All lists are empty at the start, and the extension blocks nothing until you fill them. A site on the list with embedding can show every type of frame from a blocked site, so put only sites that you trust on it. Get started 1. Install the extension. 2. Right-click the toolbar icon and select "Options", or open chrome://extensions and click "Details" then "Extension options". 3. Write the lists, one entry on each line, and click Save. A block entry is a domain such as youtube.com, or a keyword such as youtube that blocks every site whose address contains it. The rules apply immediately. This simple setup is good for your own computer. Each user of the profile can open the same page and change the settings. For absolute control on a family computer 1. Open the options page and fill the settings. 2. In the "Export a policy file" section, check the extension ID, choose which escape routes to close (Incognito, guest windows, new profiles, DevTools, javascript: addresses, other extensions), and download the file for macOS or Windows. 3. Install that file on the family computer with an administrator account. The file carries an ExtensionInstallForcelist policy, so Chrome installs the extension on every profile of that computer, with the settings locked. Nobody can change them or remove the extension. With all six switches on, nobody can escape it with a new profile, a guest window, or an Incognito window either. The extension collects no data and sends no data. All rules operate in your browser. The extension needs Chrome 145 or later. What's new in 0.1.4 - The two allowed lists have clear names: "Allowed sites, with embedding" and "Allowed sites, without embedding". A policy file from 0.1.3 keeps working. - In the allowed-sites mode, a page that is not a web site, for example a local file, can load nothing from the web any more. - The export section has a switch for each escape route that the policy file closes, so you can leave DevTools or Incognito windows available on a computer. The page remembers your choices. What's new in 0.1.3 - The allowed-sites mode: allow only the sites that you name, and block every other site. A page on an allowed site works completely, with its players and widgets from any site. - Long keyword lists work now. Chrome gives each rule a small memory budget, and a list of about ten keywords could stop all blocking without a message. The extension now splits the list into small groups, checks each group with Chrome, and names a keyword that Chrome refuses. A keyword has 3 to 40 characters. - The blocked sites are now blocked completely inside other sites: also their scripts, images, and data requests, not only their players. On the approved sites, everything from them still works. - The settings page reports the true result of a save. It asks the extension, and it no longer guesses. - The extension needs Chrome 145 or later. - The removal of the stored copies now covers every blocked site. Before, a keyword entry removed nothing, and a domain entry missed addresses such as music.youtube.com. Only the offline copies go away: nobody is signed out of anything. - The settings page says clearly when a removal did not work. - The policy files also stop the installation of other extensions, which could otherwise fetch a blocked site. What's new in 0.1.1 - A block entry can now be a keyword. The keyword youtube blocks youtube.com, m.youtube.com, and youtubekids.com together. - A blocked site could still open if the browser kept a copy of it from an earlier visit. The extension now removes those copies, so the block works everywhere. The settings page has a button that removes them at any time. Only the offline copies go away: nobody is signed out of anything. - Videos on an approved site now play in more places, for example inside the widgets of a learning platform. - Sound and video elements are blocked like frames. - The settings page says clearly when the browser does not accept the lists. - The policy files also stop web addresses that start with javascript:, and bookmarklets.