6/25/13

How to block websites on Android


By on Tuesday, June 25, 2013

Do you find yourself often to lend your smartphone to friends, brothers, cousins, etc. and you'd like to be able to block certain websites on your phone, in order to limit Web browsing and you don't know how to do it?  If your smartphone is equipped with the Android operating system, you can do it.

If you want to know in detail how, take five minutes of free time and read the directions that I am going to give you. We will see quickly how to block websites on Android using two separate applications, one for unlocked phones (that was done the root) and a somewhat more limited but also works on locked phones. Let's start now!


If you want to know how to block websites on Android and you have an unlocked phone, I suggest you install Hosts Editor. This is a free application, as suggested by the name, it lets you modify the hosts file on your smartphone. If you don't know what I'm talking about, the hosts file is a file on your computer that lets you force the redirection of Internet sites to IP addresses. Taking advantage of its features, you can then make sure that the phone redirects the sites you want to block an IP address different from the real one (in this case, localhost, or the same device) making it unavailable.

To block a site with Hosts Editor, what you have to do is launch the app, press the Menu button on your phone and select New entry from the menu that appears at the bottom. In the screen that opens, type 127.0.0.1 in the field IP address, the address of the site you want to block in the Host entries (e.g. facebook.com) and presses the Save new host that is located in the upper left corner to save your changes. For the changes to take effect, the phone will restart automatically.

MUST CHECK: How to Retrieve Lost Android Mobile easily

After restarting your Android device, try visiting the site you've stuck with the Host Editor and this should be unreachable by any browser. To unblock the sites previously obscured in the application, put the check mark next to their name, press the Menu key and tap Delete this entry first in the menu at the bottom of the screen, and then click Yes. Even in this case, to save the changes, your phone will restart automatically.



If you do not wish to run as root on your smartphone, you block websites on Android using Safe Browser. It is a browser, to use in place of the default, allowing you to create a blacklist of  Web addresses to be blocked. Unfortunately it does not obscure the sites also in other browsers installed on your phone, but without root it is difficult to get more.

To block a site with Safe Browser, you must first create an administrative password for the application. Press the Menu button of your smartphone, select voice Admin from the menu that appears and set your password in the screen that opens. If the first time you launch the app,it asks you to enter a user name and password combination, ignore the request by pressing the Back button on your phone.

MUST CHECK: How to Block Ads on Android Apps

Once you set the admin password, you can block any site you want to,by  simply  visiting it and pressing the Menu key on your smartphone. Next, select Other from the menu that appears at the bottom and tap on  Add blacklist button to complete the operation.

When you change your mind, you can unblock sites blocked out in Safe Browser by pressing the Menu button on your phone and going in the Settings menu of your application. In the screen that opens, you should then press on the item Blacklist and select the address to be viewable again. That's it!


DOWNLOAD | Hosts Editor

DOWNLOAD | Safe Browser

Man behind this Blog

Abinav is the founder of TechStorms. He is a Blogger and writes articles on Blogging, SEO, latest tech news, Gadgets .You can Contact him here.

Follow him @ Google+ | Facebook | Twitter.

3 comments:

  1. Worked for me, thanks!

    ReplyDelete
  2. I found your blog when I was looking for a different sort of information but I was very happy and glad to read through your blog. The information available here is great. . !! recording app

    ReplyDelete
  3. But in order to make host editor to work need t o dl superuser that compatible to ur phone. So basically u don't know what ur talking about

    ReplyDelete