How to Use YouTube Parental Controls with Restricted Mode

May 3, 2017 - 5 Comments

YouTube

YouTube has countless hours of entertainment, videos, and TV shows to keep you and your kids entertained, but there is some content on YouTube you might not want your kids or even yourself to see. YouTube offers what is basically a parental control feature called Restricted Mode, which effectively avoids most inappropriate and offensive video content on the YouTube service by filtering it out.

We’ll show you how to easily enable Restricted Mode on YouTube, this will filter out most of what parents and many adults don’t want to be seen and greatly help to avoid inappropriate videos on the service.

While the filtering feature is the same, enabling Restricted Mode is different on many devices, including the YouTube app on iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, Android, and the YouTube website on various web browser and Chrome for Mac and Windows. Not to worry, we’ll cover each method separately.

How to Enable Restricted Mode Parental Controls on YouTube App for iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch

If you want to enable the parental controls feature on YouTube app for iOS, do the following:

  1. Open YouTube app in iOS and tap on your account icon in the upper corner
  2. Tap on “Settings” in the account menu options
  3. Tap on “Restricted Mode Filtering”
  4. How to enable Restricted Mode filtering on YouTube for iPhone and iPad

  5. Choose “Strict” in the Restricted Mode Filtering options
  6. Strict filtering for YouTube on iPhone and iPad

  7. Exit out of YouTube settings and use YouTube as usual, the filtering will now be applied to all searches and videos on the service

Enable Restricted Mode Filtering on YouTube in iOS Safari for iPad, iPhone

If you use YouTube website on iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch instead, you will do the following to enable the same content filtering:

  1. At the YouTube.com website, tap on the three dots in the corner of the screen
  2. Choose “Settings”
  3. Tap on “Restricted Mode” to turn the feature ON
  4. Use YouTube as normal

By the way, another trick that is helpful for many parents is to loop a YouTube video if they only want a particular video to be seen and not wander off into other video material on the service.

How to Enable Restricted Mode on YouTube.com in Safari on Desktop

If you use YouTube on the desktop with Safari on a Mac or Edge on Windows, here is how you enable the restricted filtering:

  1. Go to YouTube.com while logged into a google account
  2. Click on your profile picture in the upper corner of the screen
  3. Choose “Settings”
  4. Set the “Restricted Mode” setting to “Strict”
  5. Set YouTube parental controls with restricted mode filtering

How to Enable Restricted Mode on YouTube for Chrome

If you use YouTube.com on the desktop with Chrome browser for Mac, Windows, Linux, or on Chrome for iOS and Android, here is how you enable Restricted Mode:

  1. Go to YouTube.com while logged into a google account
  2. Scroll to the very bottom of the webpage and click on the “Restricted Mode” button
  3. Toggle Restricted Mode to “ON” then choose “Save”

How to enable Restricted Mode filtering on YouTube

Another somewhat related helpful tip is to turn off YouTube autoplay videos which can sometimes lead down to unwanted video viewing as well.

Know of another parental controls method to restrict certain videos on YouTube? Have any other great YouTube tricks? Let us know in the comments!

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Posted by: Paul Horowitz in Tips & Tricks

5 Comments

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  1. SSims88 says:

    Do better YouTube! Give parents options to filter out gore and violence! My kid just wants to watch DanTDM Minecraft videos, but is exposed to stuff like Happy Wheels with blades slicing bodies in half, slicing off heads with blood spurting out. Not ok for an 8 year old kid! Restricted Mode is barely any help at all.

    • Paul says:

      I set up parental control app on my kid’s device. It helps much better. I found out that today’s kids are smart enough to change settings at YouTube :)

  2. M says:

    Channel qu**r for kids isn’t filtered. The Young Turks aren’t filtered (lots of ‘bad’ language). Most of videos with almost naked girls/boys aren’t filtered.

    What is filtered? Well, political channels with opinions that aren’t those of google.

    So keep that in mind when using restricted mode.

  3. Bobby says:

    Just make sure you understand that “Restricted Mode” has nothing to do with violence, etc. It mostly filters out certain political opinions, so that Google can gain a monopoly on that too.

    It’s really quite diabolical.

  4. David says:

    So any instructions for Apple TV 3, 4?

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