ytbychannel

Watch one YouTube channel, not all of YouTube

Paste a YouTube link. You get it back at a URL with the channel in it — so a filter like Pluckeye can allow the one channel you meant to watch and keep the rest of YouTube blocked.

youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQytbychannel.com/RickAstleyYT/dQw4w9WgXcQ

One allow rule on the bold part covers every video that channel will ever post.

How it works

Filters match URLs. YouTube’s URLs do not have the channel in them, so a filter cannot tell one channel’s videos from another’s. This site gives every video a second address that does.

Block every YouTube video
Two rules: one for YouTube itself, one for this site. Nothing plays anywhere yet.
Paste the link you want
ytbychannel works out whose channel it is and sends you to a URL with the channel in it.
Allow that one channel
One allow rule for the channel’s path. Every video from that channel plays; nothing else does.
Set a delay
From now on, every new channel you allow takes four hours to take effect. Blocking stays instant.

What is Pluckeye?

Pluckeye (the program itself is called Plucky) is an internet filter for people who want to limit their own internet access. It runs on Windows, macOS, Linux and Android, and it filters at the network level, so it applies to every browser and most other programs on the machine.

The unusual part is that there is no password. You are the administrator. You can change any rule at any time — which sounds like it defeats the point, until you meet the second half of the idea.

The delay is the whole trick

You set a delay in advance: four hours, a day, a week. After that, any change that gives you more access waits out the delay before it takes effect. Any change that gives you less — blocking something, tightening a rule — happens immediately.

Lowering the delay is itself an increase in access, so it has to survive the delay too. Set four hours and you cannot get back to zero in less than four hours. That is what separates a decision you made on purpose from one you made at eleven at night.

Getting it installed

It is a normal installer on every platform, and you do not need an account to get going. The manual has a page for each one:

After it is installed you drive it from a console with the pluck command, or from the button it adds to your browser. If “open a console” is not a familiar phrase, the manual walks through it per platform, and the first-steps page has a five-minute demo that is worth doing before you configure anything real.

First time? Pick a base configuration

On first run Pluckeye asks which starter pack you want. Both are just a foundation you add your own rules to, and the choice is not permanent.

Wimpy

Blocks only the obviously bad stuff and leaves the rest of the web alone. Start here if YouTube is the problem you actually have — you will be adding the YouTube rules yourself anyway, and everything else keeps working.

Classic

Blocks all images and videos on all websites by default, and you allow back what you need. Stricter, and the better choice if you want to cut down on more than YouTube. Whitelisting a channel here also brings its thumbnails back.

Worth reading next: how rules are written, the command list, and the delay in full. Or read our plain-English guide to Pluckeye first.

Whitelist one YouTube channel, block all the others

This is the recipe the site exists for. Four commands, typed into a console. If you have never opened one, start here.

1. Block all video playback

The first rule stops video on YouTube. The second stops it here too — otherwise this site would just be an unfiltered way back in.

# no video from YouTube, on any of its subdomains
pluck + block youtube.com video/
 
# and none from here either, until a channel is allowed
pluck + block ytbychannel.com video/

2. Paste the link and see whose channel it is

Copy the URL of a video you want to watch, paste it into the box at the top of this page, and you land on ytbychannel.com/RickAstleyYT/dQw4w9WgXcQ. The title and the channel name are there; the player is not, because you just blocked it. That is the expected result, not a bug.

3. Allow that one channel

Take the channel segment out of the address bar and allow it. Pluckeye URL rules cover every URL underneath them, so this one rule covers every video that channel has ever posted and every video it posts from now on.

pluck + allow https://ytbychannel.com/RickAstleyYT

Refresh the page and the video plays. Repeat for each channel you decide is worth keeping. Changed your mind? pluck - allow … removes it, and removals are instant.

4. Add the delay

Do this last, once the channels you already trust are in. From here on, every new channel you allow takes four hours to arrive.

pluck delay 4h
 
# pluck delay      prints the current one
# pluck verdicts   shows what was just blocked, and why

Four hours is a reasonable starting point: long enough that a craving has passed by the time the rule lands, short enough that you will still bother. It is not punishment — blocking something new stays instant, always.

Read the full guide, including audio-only, scheduled access and what to do when a video still will not play →

Questions

Why not just allow youtube.com/@thechannel in my filter?

Because that is not where the video lives. A channel page sits at youtube.com/@thechannel, but its videos are served from youtube.com/watch?v=…, which is not underneath the channel path. A filter that matches on URL prefixes therefore cannot tell one channel’s videos from another’s. Pluckeye’s own manual works around this with the miniplayer, which plays the video but will not let you make it bigger. ytbychannel puts the channel in the path instead, so the video URL is genuinely underneath the channel and one allow rule covers it at full size.

Does this work with filters other than Pluckeye?

It was built for Pluckeye, but nothing about it is Pluckeye-specific. Any filter, proxy or router that can allow a URL prefix — rather than only a whole domain — can allow ytbychannel.com/YourChannel and leave the rest of the site blocked.

Do you keep a record of what I watch?

No. There are no accounts, no cookies of ours and no database. To turn a link into a channel the server asks YouTube’s public oEmbed endpoint who owns the video, caches the answer for a day, and forgets the request. The player itself is loaded from youtube-nocookie.com.

What if a channel I allowed posts something I would rather not see?

Allow individual videos instead of the whole channel. The video URL is one segment deeper, so a rule like allow https://ytbychannel.com/RickAstleyYT/dQw4w9WgXcQ permits exactly that one video and nothing else from the channel.

Does the video still come from YouTube?

Yes. ytbychannel does not host, download or re-upload anything. It works out which channel a video belongs to, then embeds YouTube’s own player at a URL that has the channel in it. Views still count for the creator.

What happens if I paste a link for a channel I have not allowed?

The page loads and tells you whose channel it is — that part is only text, so your filter leaves it alone. The player is blocked. That is the useful moment: you now know exactly which one rule to add, and your delay decides whether you actually want it in four hours’ time.

Which links does it understand?

Ordinary watch links, youtu.be share links, Shorts, live URLs, embeds, m. and music. subdomains, and a bare 11-character video id. Timestamps carry through. Playlists, clips and channel pages are rejected, because none of them name a single video.

Is ytbychannel free?

Yes, and there is nothing to sign up for. Paste a link and it works.