How to block adult content on YouTube.

Written October 2026 from YouTube’s own help pages. Menus change often.

YouTube does not allow explicit porn. What it allows, and shows to any signed-in adult, is the step before it: sexually suggestive videos, such as lingerie and provocative dancing, that it age-restricts instead of removing. Add Shorts, a feed with no bottom, and a recommendation system that learns what holds your attention, and for a lot of men YouTube is where it starts.

This page does two things. First, what Bramble does about it. Then every control YouTube gives an adult: what each one changes, what it does not, and the thing YouTube cannot do, which is lock any of it against you.

What Bramble does about YouTube

Bramble is a free adult content blocker for iPhone. It works on the phone you are holding, which is where YouTube is easiest to open at one in the morning.

• Apps you name stay shut. Name YouTube 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.
• Adult sites do not load. Not in Safari, and not in any other app on the phone, so a link in a video’s description that leads to one stops at the door.

What Bramble cannot do is reach your TV. It is an iPhone app, and a TV is another screen. For the TV, the settings below are what you have, and the last section is how to make them hold.

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 YouTube’s own settings. They work without Bramble, and they are worth doing. Where one can be undone from the same screen it was set on, the page says so.

If you are setting this up for a child rather than for yourself, YouTube Kids and supervised accounts through Google Family Link are built for that. This page is written for an adult doing it for himself.

Where to start. Open the YouTube app. Your profile photo is at the top right of Home; in some versions it is the You tab at the bottom right. Most paths below begin there.

Turn on Restricted Mode

1. On iPhone, tap your profile photo, then Settings, then General.
2. Turn on Restricted Mode.
3. On a computer, click your profile photo, choose Restricted Mode, then Activate Restricted Mode.
4. On a TV, open Settings in the left-hand menu and look for Restricted Mode, which some TVs call Safety Mode.

YouTube says it screens out potentially mature content using a video’s title, description and other signals, along with age restrictions. It is set on each browser and device, so do it on every one you use.

Cut back Shorts

1. In the YouTube app, tap the You tab, then Settings, then Time management.
2. Tap Shorts feed limit and choose an amount of time. The list includes zero.
3. To see fewer of them in your Home feed, tap More on the Shorts shelf and choose Show fewer Shorts.

Be clear about the limit. When you reach it, YouTube shows a message with an option to dismiss it, so it is a reminder, not a lock. It is in the app only, not on the website, and YouTube has been rolling it out gradually, so you may not see it yet.

Stop it being recommended

1. Tap the three dots beside a video and choose Not interested. If YouTube asks why, tell it.
2. For a channel you do not want back, choose Don’t recommend channel.
3. To pause what YouTube learns from, tap your profile photo, then Settings, then Manage all history. On the Controls tab, untick Include the YouTube videos you watch.

That last one is the strongest. YouTube says that with no watch history to go on, the recommendations on your Home page are removed. The cost is real: no personalised Home, and no time-watched figures while history is paused. Deleting history also deletes search history for that period. You can turn it back on in a minute, which is the point of the next sections.

What signing out does

YouTube says age-restricted videos cannot be watched by anyone under eighteen or anyone signed out. A signed-in adult sees them. So signing out of your Google account in the app hides that layer.

It is not a lock, because you can sign back in, and it is not everything, because suggestive videos that are not age-restricted stay. It also costs you your subscriptions and history while you are out. But it puts a step in front of the habit, and a step is something.

Put a limit on the scroll

The pull is not only the content. Autoplay starts the next video before you have decided.

1. Autoplay. On iPhone, tap your profile photo, then Settings, then Autoplay. On a TV it is in Settings. It is set on each device.
2. Remind me to take a break. In your profile photo menu, Settings, then General. It is off by default for adults, works on phones only, and resets if you close the app, sign out or pause for more than thirty minutes.
3. Remind me when it’s bedtime. It sits in the same place.

These are reminders. Each one can be dismissed.

The one that holds

YouTube has no setting that is hard for you to remove, so the lock has to live outside it.

On your phone. 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 YouTube 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 youtube.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.

On your TV. YouTube lets whoever runs a network set Restricted Mode for everyone on it, and its help page describes a DNS setting for this. If someone else runs your home router, that is a lock they hold, on that network only. The router steps depend on the router, so they are not written here.

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.