How to block gaming videos on YouTube
Block gaming videos on YouTube by game title, common gaming terms, or channel name without blocking the whole site on your child's computer.
What gaming content includes on YouTube
Gaming on YouTube spans edited play sessions, live streams, update news, speedruns, lore videos and clips from games such as Minecraft, Fortnite and Roblox. A single game can fill the feed through official trailers, creator uploads, fan edits and stream highlights.
Parents may notice that a child watches the game for far longer than they play it. Long streams run for hours, while Shorts turn one match into dozens of clips. Blocking the word gaming alone misses videos named only after a game, so game titles and channel names make better first rules.
Title and channel rules to use
These are plain text block rules that work with Vidward’s current rule engine. They do not use regular expressions. Add only the values that fit what your child watches. A channel rule hides every upload from that channel, not only videos about this topic. Use one only when you want the whole channel hidden.
Words in the title
minecraftfortniterobloxgaminggameplay
Channels to block
DanTDMPrestonPlayzAli-ATypical Gamer
Add the games your child watches first. Gaming and gameplay are both much wider and will catch reviews, lessons, and anything about a gaming chair or laptop, so use them only if the game names leave too much behind.
Add the rules in Vidward
- 1Create your free Vidward account. The trial runs for 7 days with no credit card.
- 2Add your child in the dashboard and note the activation code it shows. The code is reusable and stays valid until you regenerate it.
- 3On your child's computer, install the Vidward extension from the Chrome Web Store, open its welcome page, and enter that activation code to link the computer to your child's profile.
- 4If the child uses Block specific content, open the Channels tab and add one rule at a time.
- 5For a title word, reopen the form, choose Block, select "Words in the title", then paste the value and save.
- 6For a channel, reopen the form, choose Block, and select "Channel" rather than "Channel name". "Channel" gives you a search box: type the name, then pick the channel from the results. That stores the channel's own ID, so the rule cannot match a different channel that happens to share the display name.
- 7A browser that is already running can take up to five minutes to fetch dashboard changes. Restart the browser to fetch them sooner.
Using Approved channels only?
That strategy blocks videos from channels you have not approved, but Shorts can still slip past it. Do not paste these channel names into the Approve form because that would let the channel through. Leave them off the approved list instead. Turn on Block Shorts in Filters if you want those clips hidden too. Title word rules are not available in this mode.
What YouTube gives you built in
Can YouTube block all gaming videos?
YouTube can block specific channels for a supervised child account. YouTube Kids can also limit a child to content a parent approves. Regular YouTube has no parent setting that blocks gaming as a topic or matches a list of game titles. The Not interested and Don't recommend channel actions tune suggestions, but they do not create a rule for search results or links.
Read our guide to YouTube’s parent settings if you want to compare those choices before adding rules.