In many cases it is quite useful block websites on android, ideal for when we lend our phone to the little ones in the house. In these cases, we generally do not set up a child mode because it is our device, although we can prevent them from entering certain websites to protect them. Regardless of the reason, we can block entire websites on our Android devices with or without a dedicated app and we are going to see how to do it in this article.
Block websites on Android with a third-party app
The easiest way to block websites on Android is by using a free application that allows us to do this. The app we are talking about is BlockSite and it works extremely well; It is free, although it displays a bit of advertising in return. It gives us the opportunity to restrict access to specific websites at certain times.
After blocking websites from the Android phone in question, we will not be able to access any of the ones we blocked from any web browser. Later, we can unlock it if we want.
For this we will have to download and install the application from the Play Store following this link. Once we have it installed we will have to start the application, we will go through some welcome screens and we will provide all the permissions that the app needs to work.
Once we get to the main screen of the application, we will have to select “Block list” and the “+” (plus) button.
Now, on the “Add sites/applications” screen at the top, we will click on the text field and we will write the URL of the website that we want to block. For example, we can write “Wikipedia.org” if we want to block the social network. We can add all the sites we want.
Once we specify the website that we want to block, we will have to click on Done in the upper right corner of the screen. A pop-up notice will appear and we will press Done again.
Now we have managed to configure the sites that we are going to block. However, they are still not blocked. The reason? We’ll need to set up a schedule for when we want the lock to start working. To do this we will have to go to the main screen and click on “Schedule”.
We will select the days and hours in which we want these sites to be blocked. In case we want them to be permanently blocked or until we unlock them, we can choose “Full week” and “All day”. Then, we choose Select all and we will activate the option.
And this would be all, now these specified websites will be totally inaccessible in the web browsers of our device. Every time we try to enter one, we’ll see a message from BlockSite instead of the content.
How to block websites on Android without third-party apps
In case we do not want to use third-party applications, we have the possibility to restrict access to a website from the Mozilla Firefox browser or block adult sites that use custom DNS servers.
Using a plugin in Mozilla Firefox
We are going to give the example with Firefox, the reason is that other Android browsers do not offer the possibility of adding plugins or extensions. In case we do not want to use Firefox, we recommend trying the method that we will find below.
In this case we are going to start by starting Firefox on our device. Next, we are going to press on the three points that are in the upper right corner and we will choose “Add-ons”.
In the Add-ons section, next to LeechBlock NG, we are going to have to click on the “+” (plus) sign.
Now, in the lower right corner of the message that we can see, we are going to click on “Add”.
Once the plugin is installed, we will have to click on “Okay, Got It”.
From the Firefox Add-ons page, we will click on the three dots in the upper right corner of the browser and choose Add-ons. Then we will click on LeechBlock NG.
We will choose Settings.
We will press the large text field and we will have to enter the URL addresses that we want to block. It will take one per line, we must also specify the hours in which these sites will have to be blocked. When we finish, we scroll down and click on “Save options and close”.
Use custom DNS servers to block adult websites
In case we need to block adult websites, pirated media and malware on Android, we can use the DNS servers FamilyShield Free OpenDNS. These are servers that make sure that these kinds of websites are not loaded on our local network.
Something that we must clarify is that this works only when we are using a Wi-Fi connection. The reason is simple, Android does not allow us to specify custom DNS servers when we use mobile data.
We start by opening the Settings app on our mobile phone. After this we go to Connections> Wi-Fi.
We are going to have to press the gear-shaped icon that is to the right of the Wi-Fi connection to which we are currently connected. It is important to clarify that we must specify these DNS servers for each of the Wi-Fi connections that we use. It is not automatically applied for all wireless connections.
In this new screen, we are going to have to press See more. Then we go to the IP Configuration option and we will choose Static.
- In the first DNS field we will put this address: 208.67.222.123
- In the second DNS field we are going to put: 208.67.220.123
At the bottom we will click on Save to apply the changes. In this way we will have personalized DNS servers applied to this Wi-Fi connection that will block access to adult websites and other insecure content from our Android device.
What do we recommend? We recommend using these personalized DNS to avoid accessing unsafe websites and having the BlockSite application configured to prevent access to a specific website, especially if you lend your phone to the smallest members of the household. We recommend both options, since DNS customization works only over Wi-Fi.
