I run a business and I don’t want people going on youtube or Face Book, is there any way I can block these sites for cheap? I have a mac and Safari.

NOTE: New method below.

Do you work in a retail store? I see teenagers on Facebook at the local mall or Best Buy all the time. Hilariously enough the employees at these stores are either annoyed…..or on Facebook themselves!

Onto your question. There is a simple way of blocking websites on a Mac. Simply modify a file called “HOSTS”. This file allows you to add as many websites to it as you want. You can either block the websites outright or have them redirect to whatever site you want. The procedure is ridiculously easy.

Here’s how:

  1. Click on Go at the menu bar.
  2. Go to Utilities and select Terminal in the window that opens. (without quotation marks)
  3. Type in “sudo pico /etc/hosts” (without quotations)
  4. You will be asked for you password. Enter it.
  5. Terminal will open the hosts file. Move the curser down to the end of it and enter in the following (without quotation marks):

“127.0.0.1 http://www.facebook.com”

“127.0.0.1 http://www.youtube.com”

And that’s it! Save the file and exit the terminal. When you’re done fire up Safari and try to go to facebook. You can’t!

EDIT! PLEASE FOLLOW THESE STEPS IF THE ABOVE DO NOT WORK!

Several people have told me in the comments below that the above did not work for them. I tried it on 10.5 myself recently and could not find a way to save the HOSTS file after it have been modified. So here is a workaround.

  1. Disregard the above.
  2. Click on Go at the menu bar.
  3. Go to Utilities and select Terminal in the window that opens.
  4. Type in sudo su. Press Enter.
  5. If at any point you’re prompted for a password please type it in.
  6. Type in “echo “127.0.0.1 www.xxx.com” >> etc/hosts (with quotation marks and substituting xxx with the site you want to block. Press Enter
  7. Type Exit. Press Enter.
  8. Close Terminal, restart your browser and you should be good to go!

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