Don’t want a particular website to be accessible on the Edge browser. You can block it. Follow these steps to block websites on the Edge browser.
From time to time, you will see a website you want to block. Maybe the website is spammy or is just a lot of distraction, like Facebook or Twitter. This is especially true when children who spend a lot of time on those websites are involved.
If you regularly use the Edge browser, you might have seen that there are no apparent options to block websites on the Edge browser.
However, you can use the hosts file or an extension to block a website on the Edge browser. It is pretty easy to do. Let me show you how to do it.
Table of contents:
- How to block
- Use an extension to block a website in Edge
- Use the hosts file to block a website in Edge
How to Block Website on Edge
To block a website on the Edge browser, you can use an extension or make changes to the hosts file.
In case you don’t know, the hosts file is used to map IP addresses to human-readable website addresses. So, we will map the website we want to block to a local IP address called localhost. i.e., 127.0.0.1.
Once you map a website address to localhost, you cannot access that website. This is because whenever you enter the URL in the browser’s address bar, it tries to access the localhost. Since localhost is just your computer, the website does not load. For more information on the hosts file, visit this page.
The good thing is that the hosts file method blocks the website in all places. i.e., on other browsers too.
Use an extension to block websites on the Edge browser
Edge browser is based on Chrome. That means you can use Chrome extensions in the Edge browser. As most of you know, there are a lot of extensions that do a lot of things. This includes blocking websites. So, let me show you how to use an extension to block websites on the Edge browser.
First, open the Edge browser and go to the BlockSite extension page — https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/blocksite-block-websites/eiimnmioipafcokbfikbljfdeojpcgbh?hl=en
Click the “Add to chrome > Add Extension” button to install the application. If this is your first time, you might have to click the “Allow extensions for other stores” button at the top.
After installing, click on the “Extensions overflow” icon and click on the “BlockSite” menu icon. From there, choose the “Extension Options” option.
Type the website address in the Block Site field and click the “Add Item” button.
The website is added to the block list as soon as you do that.
From now on, the website is blocked in the Edge browser.
The extension has a lot of options and features to play with. I recommend you play with the options and see what works for you. For example, you can block websites on schedule, redirect websites, etc.
Use hosts files to block websites on the Edge Browser
- Launch the Start menu.
- Search for “Notepad.”
- Right-click on the Notepad result.
- Choose the “Run as administrator” option.
- Click “File > Open” in the Notepad.
- Go to the “C:\Windows\System32\drivers\” folder.
- Choose “All files” from the dropdown menu.
- Select the “hosts” file.
- Click the “Open” button.
- Type the below command at the bottom of the file. Replace “example.com” with the website address of your choice.
# block website
127.0.0.1 example.com - Click the “File > Save” option.
- Close the Notepad application.
- To block another website, replicate the above command.
- With that, you blocked the website.
Steps with more details:
First, open the start menu and search for Notepad. Now, choose the Run as Administrator option in the right panel. You can also right-click Notepad and select the “Run as Administrator” option.
In the Notepad, we need to open the hosts file. To do that, go to the File menu and select Open.
The above action will open the file selector window. Go to C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc folder. Once you are here, select All Files from the bottom right drop-down menu.
Now, select the hosts file and click on the Open button. This action opens the hosts file inside the Notepad application.
In the hosts file, use the below format to block websites on the Edge browser. Don’t forget to replace example.com with the website address of your choice. The line starting with # is a comment line where you can write why you are blocking the website. This makes it easy to remember the reason the next time you open the hosts file. This is not a requirement. So, if you want to, you can delete the comment line.
Note: make sure there is at least one space between the localhost IP address and the actual website address.
# Comment line to write why you blocked the site (useful but not required)
127.0.0.1 example.com
You can follow the same procedure to add as many websites as possible. For instance, I’ve blocked Facebook and Twitter on Edge with a custom comment.
We need to save the changes after adding websites to block on Edge. To do that, click on the File menu and select Save. You can also press the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + S.
After saving the file, close the Notepad application.
That is it. From now on, the Edge browser blocks the website.
Remember that once you block a website using the hosts file method, it is blocked system-wide, including on all other browsers.
I hope this simple Windows how-to guide helped you.
If you like this article, check out how to disable autoplay videos on Edge and how to change saved passwords on Edge.
