ChannelSieve

Block unwanted channels, videos and comments on YouTube — before they ever render.

ChannelSieve filters YouTube's data as it arrives, so blocked content simply isn't there: not in your feed, search results, sidebar, comments or autoplay. Block by channel ID, channel name, video title, video ID or comment text, using plain keywords or regular expressions. Blocking a channel takes one click from the three-dot menu on any video.

A maintenance fork of BlockTube, updated to work on current Firefox and Chrome. See CHANGES-FORK.md for what changed and why.

Install

Firefox — download the signed .xpi from the Releases page and open it in Firefox. It is signed by Mozilla, so it installs normally with no changes to your browser settings.

Chrome — not published to the Web Store because Google makes it a pain. Build it and load it unpacked:

.\tools\build.ps1 -Browser chrome     # Windows
./tools/build.sh chrome               # Linux / macOS

Then load dist/chrome/ via Load unpacked at chrome://extensions.

First run on Firefox

Two one-time steps, both normal for Manifest V3 extensions:

• Allow it on YouTube. Open the ChannelSieve popup and click Grant access to YouTube, or use about:addons → ChannelSieve → Permissions. Firefox does not always grant site access at install, and without it the extension cannot see YouTube at all.
• Pin the icon. Firefox puts new extension buttons inside the puzzle-piece menu rather than the toolbar. Right-click ChannelSieve there → Pin to Toolbar. Settings are also always available at about:addons → ChannelSieve → Preferences.

Reload any open YouTube tab afterwards.

Blocking channels

Click the three dots on any video → Block Channel.

To add many at once, open Options → Channel ID and paste one per line. A channel's ID is the UC… string in its URL: youtube.com/channel/UCxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx. IDs never change, unlike channel names, so they are the reliable way to block a specific channel.

Options → Export saves your filters to a file; Import restores them.

Building

Plain JavaScript with no toolchain to install — the build copies the sources, substitutes the version and zips the result.

git clone https://github.com/825i/channelsieve
cd channelsieve

.\tools\build.ps1 -Browser firefox    # Windows
./tools/build.sh firefox              # Linux / macOS

Output lands in dist/. Icons are generated by tools/make-icons.ps1.

Thanks

To amitbl, who wrote BlockTube and maintained it for almost 8 years. The filtering engine is their work; this fork only fixes how it loads on Firefox and Chrome.

License

GPLv3 — see LICENSE.