There are a few different ways you could configure Plucky to allow you to watch YouTube videos under certain conditions.

Decluttering the visual noise with Plucky

Removing the comments and algorithm generated content goes a surprisingly long way.

To do it like in the pictures shown below, use the rules here.

A screenshot of a YouTube video page without Plucky filters applied.  ⇒  A screenshot of a YouTube video page with Plucky filters applied.

Using an extension together with Plucky

A popular extension people use for handling sites like YouTube is SocialFocus.

Configure it to your liking, and when you feel you’ve managed YouTube under SocialFocus’ control, you can do the following steps to protect the setup.

  1. Set a password to lock SocialFocus settings (store it in a lockbox).
  2. Create a require rule with Plucky so that SocialFocus can’t be removed or disabled.

Allowing audio but not video from YouTube.

This rule disables the container for the visual content, but doesn’t disable the audio stream, resulting in audio-only YouTube:

pluck + block youtube.com selector:.html5-video-container

Avoiding clickbait and distractions

Some prefer YouTube without any images. This removes images of video previews, even on allowed pages, but some prefer this anyway.

pluck + block i.ytimg.com

Allowing individual videos

One option is allow only specific videos. This has the downside of copy-pasting urls, but the upside of not getting distracted by videos that you haven’t decided in advance to allow.

Allowing many videos at once from a channel

It is possible to add many videos from a specific YouTube channel using Link Grabber, which can help you copy all the urls that are linked from the current webpage. You’d probably want to:

  1. Visit a channel such as https://www.youtube.com/ChessNetworkTV/videos.
  2. Page down at least 10 times to load many videos from the channel.
  3. Click the button in Link Grabber.
  4. Type “watch” in the filter.
  5. Click “Copy” to copy the urls.
  6. Paste the urls into one of your dynamically imported url-allowing configurations.
  7. Wait for your delay.

Allowing all videos from a single channel (miniplayer only)

It’s possible to allow a single channel (or as many as you like) so that all currrent and future videos available on that channel are whitelisted without further configuration. The catch is you can only use YouTube’s miniplayer module to watch the videos. You can’t expand the videos–it will simply redirect to the watch page which isn’t whitelisted and the video won’t play.

  1. Whitelist a channel (e.g., pluck + allow https://www.youtube.com/@pluckeye386)
  2. Navigate to the videos tab and choose a video to play
  3. Hover over the video thumbnail until you see two buttons appear
  4. Click the bottom one which when hovered over says Add to queue

If the video is the kind which you can listen to while doing something else in another tab, you’re done.

If it’s a video which requires actually watching it, you can use the zoom controls in your browser to magnify and focus on the video a bit better.

If the channel has many videos and you need to search for the video, use the channel’s own search tool (magnifying glass icon) instead of the general search bar. For example: https://www.youtube.com/@pluckeye386/search?query=showcase

Here is a video demonstration of this method. Please note that in the video it’s mentioned this method works on playlist pages as well, but the way to add to queue is slightly different; you must click on the three-dots button to the right of the list item instead of hovering over the video.

Blocking YouTube except for embedded videos

Some prefer to block the main YouTube site while still being able to watch embedded YouTube videos on other sites (typically by allowing each site that has the videos). This can be accomplished with the following commands.

pluck + block https://www.youtube.com text/html
pluck + unblock https://www.youtube.com/embed text/html

If using the classic blocking method (no images or videos by default) you will also need to whitelist the site hosting the embedded content. E.g.,

pluck + allow khanacademy.org

Enforce moderate or restricted mode

Another option is to use a Chromium-based browser (not Firefox) and enforce “moderate mode” (the safe feature):

pluck + safe

or “restricted mode” (the safer feature):

pluck + safer

Possibly with the nofirefox feature:

pluck + nofirefox

Allowing YouTube at certain times

Another option is to schedule access to YouTube using a when rule. E.g., to only allow media from YouTube on Mondays 10am - 12pm:

pluck + when M10-12 allow youtube.com

YouTube Kids

Another option is to allow YouTube Kids, which only gives access to videos considered appropriate for kids:

pluck + allow youtubekids.com

Purging your YouTube history to avoid problematic suggestions

As explained on https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/6342839 , you can remove content from your YouTube search and viewing history (aka clear your history), and items can be removed from your google activity by using https://myactivity.google.com/ . This can be helpful if you keep getting recommendations for videos you would really rather not see.

Here are a few screenshots of the process, starting from the “3 dots” on https://www.youtube.com/ .

Other approaches

Last updated: 2026-08-06