How to block adult content on X (Twitter).

Written October 2026. X changes its menus often.

X allows adult content. The rule it keeps is that posters should mark it, and a lot of what pulls a man is never marked: swimsuit photos, lingerie ads, a stranger’s reply under a post he opened for something else. Of every service on these pages, X is the one where the platform’s own filter does the least.

This page does two things. First, what Bramble does about it. Then everything X gives an adult: what each setting changes, and what it does not.

What Bramble does about X

Bramble is a free adult content blocker for iPhone, and it works on the phone you are holding. Its protections run across every app, not only the browser.

• Pictures that would pull you are softened before they reach you. That matters most where you did not go looking: a message from a stranger, a feed you opened for something else.
• Adult sites do not load. Not in Safari, and not in any other app on the phone, so a link someone sends you that leads to one stops at the door.
• Apps you name stay shut. Name X in the app shield, and the shield holds it.
• Someone else can hold the key. With Keyholder mode, a person you trust keeps your Screen Time passcode, so a limit you set at noon cannot be undone at one in the morning.

It is free, forever, and no one gets a list of what you looked at — not your witnesses, not your Keyholder, not us. The blocking page has the full account.

Get Bramble free on the App Store

The rest of this page is X’s own settings. They work without Bramble, and they are worth doing. Bramble works on the pictures. The settings work on who and what reaches you, and that is the part no filter can do, because to X a swimsuit photo is not sensitive.

If you are setting this up for a child rather than for yourself, this page is not the right place to start. It is written for an adult doing it for himself.

Where to start. Open X, tap your profile picture, then Settings and privacy. X has moved some of these screens in the iPhone app, and its help pages do not always show the iPhone path. If a row is missing, try the same path on x.com in a browser.

Keep the sensitive media warning on

1. Go to Privacy and safety, then Your X Activity, then Content you see.
2. Make sure Display media that may contain sensitive content is off. X says its default is to show the warning.
3. Under Search settings, turn on Hide sensitive content and Remove blocked and muted accounts.

This covers media that the poster, or X, has marked sensitive. It does not cover anything unmarked, and X does not say whether it reaches ads or recommended posts.

Mute the words

1. Tap the Notifications tab, then the gear, then Muted, then Muted words, then Add.
2. Add the words one at a time, for example onlyfans, fansly, nsfw and 18+.
3. Choose Home timeline and Notifications, From anyone, and Forever.

A muted word is case-insensitive, and it also mutes its hashtag. It removes posts from your Home timeline, from replies and from notifications. It does not apply to search, and it cannot read an image, so there is no word list that catches a photo.

Mute and block accounts

1. Tap the three dots on a post or profile and choose Mute to stop seeing an account, or Block to stop it reaching you.

A muted account can still send you a message. A blocked one cannot reply, follow, message or tag you, though it can still see your public posts. Both work one account at a time, and a new account is a new start.

Use Following, not For you

Following shows posts only from accounts you follow. For you adds posts X recommends from outside your network. The app reopens on whichever you used last, and we found no switch that turns recommendations off.

So this is a habit, not a setting. Stay on Following, and tap the three dots on anything recommended and choose Show less often. X says that is only a signal it may use.

Close the door on messages

1. Go to Privacy and safety, then Direct Messages. Turn off message requests from everyone. X’s own pages word this more than one way, so look for the switch that mentions message requests.
2. Leave the quality filter on. It is on by default.
3. On the Notifications tab, open the gear and use Advanced filters to silence accounts that are new, that you do not follow, or that have no confirmed email or phone.

Media in a message request stays hidden until you tap View media. Turning requests off does not stop anyone you have already messaged.

Stop videos playing on their own

Go to Settings and privacy, Accessibility, display, and languages, Data usage, then Video autoplay, and choose Never. This stops motion. It does not hide anything.

Do not join Communities

Posts from a Community you join appear in your Home timeline. If you are in some, open the Community and choose Leave.

The one that holds

X has no setting that is hard for you to remove, and nothing that supervises an adult account. So the lock has to live outside X. A limit set in your iPhone’s own Screen Time belongs to the phone, and it can be put behind a passcode you do not know.

1. Open the iPhone’s Settings, then Screen Time. If it is off, turn it on.
2. Tap App Limits, then Add Limit.
3. Find X in the list and tick it. The list has a search box at the top. Then, at the bottom of the list under Websites, tap Add Website and add x.com and twitter.com. Without that, a limit on the app does not cover it in Safari.
4. Tap Next, set the time, and turn on Block at End of Limit.
5. Back on the Screen Time page, tap Lock Screen Time Settings and set a passcode that someone you trust chooses and keeps. Without it, you can extend your own limit with one tap.

That last step is what Bramble’s Keyholder mode is for. The keyholder walk-through takes the person you ask through setting it on your phone, one screen at a time.

If it is still there afterward

Settings change what the screen offers. They do not change what you are reaching for. When a man has cleaned up his settings and still goes looking, it is usually because something else is being eased, and porn is only the fastest thing he found for it. That is not a verdict on you.

The ten questions are one honest place to look at it. Why can’t I stop watching porn is the longer version.