How to Block Websites on a Mac

Todd R. Brain September 21, 2023

If you are a Mac person and need to dam positive websites, then there are approaches to head about it. In this Buzzle article, we show you a few easy approaches to restricting access to websites on a Macintosh PC.
TAGGED UNDER: Blocking Websites

Users /nm./: collective term for people who use computers. Users are divided into 3 sorts: newbie, intermediate, and expert.
Novice Users: those who are afraid that without a doubt urgent a key would possibly spoil their computer.
Intermediate Users: folks who don’t know how to repair their laptop after they’ve just pressed a key that broke it.
Expert Users: folks who smash other human beings’ computers.

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―The Jargon File

If we go searching us today, we’ll see more people belonging to the third category than alternative two. Add the Internet to the phenomenon of PC operation know-how, and you have a force that could take you locations. There are facets to each coin, and the Internet is no exception. As a lot of moderation is the important thing to happiness and success in the actual international, it’s miles similarly true inside the virtual international as nicely. Nowadays, it is not an uncommon sight to locate youngsters sticking their noses into the computer display screen, attacking the keyboard with all their juvenile fury, spending more time on the Internet than with their mother and father or siblings. This, coupled with a developing trend of Internet dependency in adults and teens, leads to plenty of people inquiring about approaches to dam numerous websites on extraordinary internet browsers that pose distractions in the normal path of personal, professional, and social existence.

How to Block a Website on a Mac System

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There are approaches wherein you can block get right of entry to websites on a Mac. You can both work out the Parental Controls option that comes inbuilt with Mac systems, or you could use the HOSTS file to dam websites.

Blocking Through Parental Controls Option

Here’s how you could block distracting and damaging websites in a Mac from the OS itself. This alternative has a limited scope as you may simplest region very particular regulations as furnished below the Safari browser.
Click on, and open System Preferences.
There, you may locate the Parental Controls choice.
If there is multiple person money owed for your machine, you may specify which consumer account you desire to enable the restrirestrictionalso can create a password blanketed block.
Once you’ve carried out the above-mentioned movements, click on Enable Parental Controls.
A menu will open for you to ask you to set the control parameters for the net browser and other relevant programs you use on your Mac.

Next, click on the Content tab, and pick the limit options provided for the Safari browser.
You can both pick out which kinds of websites to the dam from the alternatives provided by using Safari, or you could create a list of websites to which you need to get the right of entry. For the latter, you need to pick out the Allow Access To Only These Websites alternative and create a list of the websites you need to enter.
In this example, you will no longer be capable of getting Safari to open any internet site aside from those mainly included using you inside the above-stated list. Once you are performed, you may exit Parental Controls and subsequently System Preferences. The restrictions will be stored routinely by the OS.

Blocking Through the HOSTS File
If you want to block access to all browsers, then that is the manner to go.
You will need to have Mac OS X to do this.
Launch the Terminal utility. Open the Utility folder inside the Applications folder. There you’ll find the Terminal software. Just double-click on its icon to run it.
Make a backup of the HOSTS file and type do/bin/cp/and so on/hosts/and so forth/hosts-unique within the Terminal pane.

Hit ENTER while you’ve done so.
You may be requested for the machine password that you have to give.
Once this has been executed, kind sudo/Applications/TextEdit.App/Contents/MacOS/TextEdit/and so on/hosts in the Terminal.
This will reason the HOSTS file to open in TextEdit.
Once all the automated localhost strains have seemed, kind in 127.0.0.1 abc.Com and 127.0.0.1 www.Abc.Com, ABC being the name of the website that you need to block.
You can block more than one website this way by adding the names/ URLs of the precise websites inside the fashion cited above.

Exit TextEdit and keep the HOSTS report when the system prompts you to accomplish that.
Run the ads cache util -flash cache command within the Terminal to spark off the new HOSTS file and flush the DNS.
This method may be reversed by using the identical steps referred to above to get the right of entry to the HOSTS document and delete the lines containing the blocked URLs.

There is every other to dam websites on a Mac―download and deploy the SelfControl application. This application is well-matched with OS X 10.5 and above and efficaciously blocks any internet site or mail server (each incoming and outgoing) for a specific period of time. This procedure can’t be undone by means of any motion, no longer even by using restarting your PC. The simplest way to regain get right of entry to the blocked websites is to attend out the timer. In a way, this technique is better than the OS level blocks, and the password included blocks, as whilst you yourself have the important thing to unlock, it hardly makes the experience to position up barricades.