How to block a YouTube channel on your TV

Hide a channel from your recommendations

YouTube’s help page describes this for smart TVs, streaming devices and consoles:

1. Highlight a video from the channel

   On Home or in the suggestions after a video.

2. Press and hold the select button

   The center button on your remote. A menu opens.

3. Choose Not interested, then Tell us why

   You’ll see three reasons.

4. Choose Don’t recommend channel

   YouTube stops suggesting that channel to your account.

Three things to know before relying on it. Search still shows the channel. There’s no list of the channels you’ve hidden. And you can’t undo it from the TV: clearing this feedback is done from a computer or phone, in My Activity, and it clears all of it at once.

Block a channel for your child

If your child has a supervised Google account, you can block channels for them, and the block goes wherever they’re signed in. YouTube says supervised accounts work on “most eligible smart TVs, Microsoft Xbox, Nintendo Switch, and Sony PlayStation,” though not on older Android TV devices.

1. On your phone or computer, open the channel on YouTube

   Signed in with the parent account linked to your child.

2. Choose Block channel for kids

   In the app it’s under More on the channel page. On a computer it’s under About, then Report user.

3. Press Block next to your child

   Then Done. On the TV, your child picks their own profile, and the channel isn’t there.

The same works for YouTube Kids: picking a kid’s profile on the TV opens YouTube Kids, with that child’s blocks and settings. The full steps are on the YouTube Kids page.

Turn on the parent code

A block on your child’s profile means little if they can switch to yours. The TV app has a 4-digit parent code for that. Open the YouTube app on the TV, select Settings on the left, open the Parent code tab and follow the prompts. According to YouTube’s TV help page, the code is then needed to:

• watch YouTube signed out;
• open the accounts of household members over 13;
• remove accounts from the TV.

It only affects that TV, and it isn’t your Google password, so pick something your kids haven’t seen you type.

Restricted Mode on the TV

The TV app has Restricted Mode in the same Settings menu. It filters videos that YouTube’s systems flag as potentially mature, and it works per device, so turning it on for the TV doesn’t change the tablet. It won’t remove a particular channel that isn’t mature, which is usually the complaint. More on what it catches in our Restricted Mode guide.

Can you turn off Shorts on a TV?

Not with a switch that YouTube documents. Its Shorts feed limit lives in the phone app, under You, Settings, Time management. For a supervised child, a parent can set a daily Shorts feed limit in Family Center, and once it’s reached the child can’t scroll the Shorts feed for the rest of the day. YouTube’s help doesn’t say whether the TV app enforces either limit, so check on your own TV after setting one.

In the phone app you can also tap More above a grid of Shorts on Home and choose Show fewer Shorts. That’s feedback for your account’s recommendations, not an off switch.

On a computer, a real block is possible

The TV is the hardest place to filter YouTube. A computer is the easiest. With FeedCut in the browser, a blocked channel is gone from Home, search, Up next and the comments, Shorts can be hidden completely, and a PIN keeps the settings yours. If the TV is where the trouble happens, the realistic options are the ones above, or locking the YouTube app altogether.

Questions

Updated November 5, 2026