YouTube is the most popular video broadcasting site and second largest search engine in the world, which is being managed by the web giant, Google. Different people use YouTube for different reasons. For example, marketing companies use YouTube to promote their products. Many internet marketers use YouTube to promote a new product. Students use this video broadcasting site to learn something new. But, sometime, some office, college or school block YouTube so that people can concentrate on their work instead of wasting time on YouTube. If you are in a similar position and want to open YouTube when blocked in office, school or college, here are some solutions.
Alike Facebook, YouTube is also banned in some countries. If you belong to a country where YouTube is banned but you want to watch YouTube videos by bypassing the restriction, do check out these solutions. Here are some interesting workarounds to access YouTube when it is blocked / banned in office, college or school.
Open YouTube when Blocked in Office
Methods are very simple and not much time consuming. But the problem is we cannot show you the exact method. Obviously, these following methods are complete itself. But, you will have to try one after one if something is not working for you. But, this is sure that you will be able to watch YouTube video even if it is blocked.
Check if YouTube is up or not
This is the very first thing you should do to ensure whether YouTube is up or not. Sometime, some website may go down unexpectedly. At such moments, you cannot access that particular website. Although, there is a very less chance for YouTube to go offline for a long time, but still you should be confirmed. Otherwise, you will waste your time. To check if any website is up or not, just ping that site from your command prompt. To do so, open command prompt – press Win + R, type cmd and hit enter. Therefore, type
ping www.youtube.com –t
If you get ping result, then it is confirmed that YouTube is working fine. But, sometime, if the network administrators use some tools to block certain websites, then the ping will show “Request Timed Out”. If you are getting such results, just head over to isup.me website, enter youtube.com in the empty box and hit enter. If YouTube is up, you will get that text as result. Otherwise, it will show you down.
Now, as you are confirmed that YouTube is online and working fine from other areas, you can use these subsequent methods to bypass the restriction and open blocked YouTube from office or anywhere.
Check host file
Some network admins often use Host file to block particular websites. If your network admin has done so, you can easily lift that barrier by monitoring your host file. Every system has a host file and you can check that using these steps.
Windows: Generally, you can open Host file using Notepad without having any administrator privilege. But, if you need to edit the Host file, you should have admin permission. Therefore, open Notepad with administrator privilege and navigate through the following path,
C:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\
Here, you can find a file called Host. Just open it and check if there is anything written for YouTube.com or not. If anything is written, just erase that and save the Host file.
Mac: If you are using Mac and want to open Host file to check, enter this following command in terminal,
$ sudo nano /etc/hosts
If you are using Linux, the aforementioned command will do the job for you.
Open YouTube using IP
This is the most common solution out there to access YouTube even when it is blocked. Generally, network admins block the youtube.com and forget to block the IP address of that website. Although, sometime this becomes inaccessible but rest of the time, you can certainly open YouTube using the IP address. On the other hand, this is very easy to get the IP address of any website. You can utilize command prompt to get the IP address. To do so, open Command Prompt and enter this,
ping youtube.com –t
Here you will get an IP address. Just enter that in your browser and hit enter. YouTube will be opened on your screen. This is as simple as that.
Use proxy
This is another common workaround to bypass any type of restriction. You can use other country’s proxy to open YouTube when it is banned in your country. Many people from different countries are using this simple solution to get things done. There are many trustworthy proxy sites. You can check out these following sites as well,
You can also sign in to your Google account after opening YouTube. As they are using SSL, all your data will be encrypted. Nothing to worry at all.
Utilize Google Public DNS or Open DNS
There are many ISPs, who often block certain websites to limit users’ usage. Therefore, if you think your ISP is blocking YouTube to open from your computer, you can use Google Public DNS or Open DNS to access YouTube from your office or college. To change the DNS in Windows, you will have to follow this guide.
In command prompt, type ncpa.cpl and hit enter. Here, you will get either Local Area Network (in Windows 7) or Ethernet (in Windows 8+). Right click on that and go to Properties. Here, you can find Internet Protocol Version 4. Double click on this to change the IP. Now, replace your own IP with the following,
Google DNS:
Preferred DNS Server: 8.8.8.8Alternate DNS Server: 8.8.4.4
Open DNS:
Preferred DNS Server: 208.67.222.222Alternate DNS Server: 208.67.220.220
Now, check if you can open YouTube or not.
Use mobile version of YouTube
Although, this is rare solution but many people have got help from this trick. Alike Facebook, you can open the mobile version of YouTube form the desktop. But, YouTube has no such URL like m.youtube.com. Actually, they have but not for PC users. But, you can open this URL: http://www.youtube.com/?app=mobile
It will help you to open mobile version of YouTube.
Use proxy extension to unblock YouTube in office
Although, this is also a part of the aforementioned trick, but it is quite different. Instead of using third party proxy ‘website’, you can use third party proxy ‘extension’. They are more reliable and faster. There are many third party proxy extensions like Hola, Zenmate etc. You can install them in any standard web browser like Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox etc.
Use TOR browser
TOR is one of the most useful web browsers for them, who do not want to be tracked and use any third party proxy site/extension. TOR itself use a proxy to let users provide the best encryption. Therefore, if other tricks are not working for you, you can simply download TOR and access YouTube right away. TOR is similar to Firefox and you will not get any problem like lagging while using TOR.
Use Short-Link
Sometime, short link method works great. You can try this trick before anything as most of the people have marked it as working. But, do you what is short-link? There are many shortlink generators, which make the long URL shortened. You can make shortlink of any URL. Here are some popular shortlink generators those can be used at this situation.
Remove HT Employee Monitor hotkey
There are many network admins, who use HT Employee Monitor to block websites and restrict different things. You cannot find it in Task Manager or anywhere in the PC even if it is installed. This is completely invisible. But, you can press the following hotkey to open the HT Employee Monitor’s control panel,
Ctrl + Shift + Alt + Z
This is a common mistake made by network admins. They often forget to change the default hotkey.
So, these are the most working methods available to open YouTube when blocked in office or banned in any country. Hope they will help you.
Did you know that you can open Facebook when blocked in office, school or workplace?
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