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How to Block YouTube Shorts

Thu, 22 Oct 2026 16:20:00 +0530

One of the channels you subscribe to posted a YouTube short of cute dog wrestling with his Octopus toy. You open the short, you love it but an hour later you realise you did not wanted to spend this much time on YouTube. One of the ways to avoid this trap is to restrict YouTube to specific hours, Croton can help you with that. But let’s say you don’t want to block entire YouTube, you just want to block shorts, you can do just that with what I’m suggesting in this blog. You don’t need any app or service.

YouTube home (left) and Shorts (right)

This how my YouTube looks like. No recommendations, no shorts. I can still browse content from my subscriptions. In case you need to look up a tutorial for something you can still use the search. I have been using YouTube like this for over a year now and it’s been a huge time saver.

Blocking YouTube Shorts#

Follow these steps to disable YouTube shorts and recommendations:

Go to You -> History -> Click top right 3 dots menu
Clear all watch history
Pause your watch history

That’s it. You have blocked time wasting shorts, recommendations. You can still browse good parts of YouTube. Have fun!

Block Ads on Android TV

Fri, 10 Jul 2026 22:55:36 +0530

YouTube ads cannot be blocked using DNS blocking because YouTube ads and videos are served from same domain. Blocking ads would also block video playback on YouTube. For most streaming services other than YouTube this is not the case and hence following method can be used for them.

Ads are universally annoying and no one likes them. They use to be a non issue on old TVs as we could just switch channels during AD break. But sadly that is not the case with smart TVs. The ads are no longer skippable. Their durations are increasing. To make matters worse they even keep track of what we are watching on TV. Android TVs are particularly bad with ads so I’m sharing a method that can reduce the ads on Android TV to certain extent.

Create a new TV profile on Croton. This keeps your TV settings separate from your other device profiles. Configure the profile to block ads along with any other requirements you have. Note the DoT endpoint for this profile. Now on your TV find out IP address. It’s usually shown in the network setting under the connected WiFi or ethernet interface.

For next step, you will need a laptop with Android Debug Bridge(ADB) installed. Open your terminal and run below command.

code

$ adb connect <ip address>:5555

You will see a prompt on your TV asking if you trust the device trying to connect. Press Yes. Your laptop terminal should print connected to <ip address>:5555. Now run below two commands

code

adb shell settings put global private_dns_mode hostname
adb shell settings put global private_dns_specifier <your Croton DoT endpoint>

That’s it. Croton will start blocking ads on most streaming services. If you ever want to turn off blocking, you can use below command

code

adb shell settings put global private_dns_mode off

If you are facing any issues, feel free to drop me a mail at email below.

Why You Should Enable Encrypted DNS

Wed, 08 Jul 2026 08:47:59 +0530

If you are unfamiliar with DNS, it’s recommended that you read my previous post What is DNS? and then read this one

Before we discuss encrypted DNS, there are few things that you should know about

Man in The Middle#

The man in the middle is a third party that inserts itself between two parties trying to communicate over the Internet. Consider you are sitting in Cafe connected to it’s WiFi and are trying to access Google. In this case, you and Google are two parties trying to communicate over the Internet. Anyone who tries to intercept traffic between you and Google is the man in the middle. This man could be the Cafe owner, someone at your Internet Service Provider (ISP) or even a state actor.

Secure HTTP (HTTPS)#

You must have come across the bank advisory to always use HTTPS. The reason behind it is simple: HTTPS encrypts all the traffic between you and the bank. So if someone tries to intercept your traffic all they would see is gibberish. That’s why they ask you to share your password on HTTPS connection only. Everything you browse on HTTPS is always secure and HTTPS is used everywhere today. With HTTPS, the only people who know about your online activity are you and owners of the website you are accessing.

A Misconception#

There’s a common misconception that using HTTPS is enough to maintain your privacy and security over the Internet. HTTPS secures only the traffic between your browser and the server you are trying to access. But as discussed in What is DNS? post, DNS queries happen even before connecting to website server. The traffic between you and the DNS server is plain text. Any man in the middle can view your DNS traffic and thus determine what websites you are visiting. Granted they won’t see your activity on the website but leaking DNS data is still a nightmare privacy scenario.

DNS requests happen before HTTPS connection

Encrypted DNS#

Above situation can be mitigated using protocols like DNS over HTTPS (DoH) or DNS over TLS(DoT). Today most operating systems support one or both the protocols. Once enabled these protocol secure your DNS traffic. Used along with HTTPS, your privacy and security is improved significantly.

Croton supports both these protocols and provides additional functionality like blocking categories, scheduling on top of encrypted connection. Croton provides this service for small premium but there are free DoH/DoT providers too. Of course with the free ones, you miss the blocking and scheduling part but it’s still better than plain DNS. Here is Google’s free DoH endpoint:

https://dns.google/dns-query

If you have reached this far, there’s no reason to still use plain DNS. Enable encrypted DNS on your and your families devices now! If you need help configuring DoH/DoT, reach out to me or drop me a mail at email below.

What is DNS?

Sat, 04 Jul 2026 16:47:20 +0530

DNS or Domain name system is one of the core technologies of Internet. It’s as old as Internet itself. Almost every Internet user uses it on daily basis without knowing about it. Knowing a little bit more about it can help improve your privacy, security and overall Internet experience. Before we talk about DNS, let’s first understand IP addresses and how they relate to DNS.

IP Addresses#

IP Addresses are numeric addresses assigned to identify every device on the Internet. It’s using these IP addresses that two devices can talk to each other on the Internet. When you are trying to access a particular website you can access it by specifying IP address of the remote server in your browser. For example, 142.250.72.14 is IP address of Google. Try accessing it using that IP! Every website server will have unique IP on the Internet. Remembering a IP is tedious and remembering 1000s of them is impossible so this is where DNS comes in picture.

DNS#

DNS allows us to access web resource without remembering its IP. There are DNS servers spread all over the world which maintain domain to IP mapping for every website. Your ISP has its own DNS servers. When you are requesting google.com your browser first connects to DNS server, gets it’s IP address and then connects to Google server and loads the website.

You might be wondering how does your browser know about IP address of DNS server? This information is shared by your router or network provider when your device connects to the network. Most of the times the DNS servers are set to the ones provided by ISP. Other well know DNS servers are 8.8.8.8 & 8.8.4.4 owned by Google.

Rough sequence diagram of how website is looked up using DNS

sequenceDiagram
    autonumber
    Client ->> Router: What is DNS server?
    Router ->> Client: DNS server is 8.8.8.8
    Client ->> 8.8.8.8: What is IP of google.com?
    8.8.8.8 ->> Client: google.com is 142.250.72.14
    Client ->> 142.250.72.14: website request
    142.250.72.14 ->> Client: HTML webpage

In future post, we will talk about how you can improve your privacy on the Internet using DNS. Until then subscribe to RSS feed to stay updated.

Distractions

Mon, 18 Aug 2025 21:37:05 +0530

It would not be too wrong to call this an age of distractions. Instant messages, notifications, breaking news, endless stories, cute pet videos, random comments on social media are all distractions of one form or other. These distractions are dividing our attention which is already in short supply. Due to this, anything real like relationships, our own problems and issues, our thoughts and ideas forever remain on back burner. We don’t have time to sit with our own thoughts and ideas. How can we be healthy if we remain disconnected from ourselves?

We distract ourselves with shorts, reels or some random series on a streaming platform. We desperately want connection with real people but settle for fictional characters. Binge watching helps subsume the pain of truth. Truth that we should be working on our own problems, developing new skills, building strong relationships with real people. Somewhere in the back of our minds we all are well aware of this. We know all these distractions are sucking happiness out of our lives. But instant gratification wins over real hard work. “What are you talking about, Rohan? I can easily stave off distractions”. Maybe you can but I have found it incredibly hard thing to do. Maybe that’s just me but something tells me I’m not alone.

Large corporations have poured billions to ensure as many eyeballs as possible remain active on their platforms. Why is notification on every social media plotform, red? Because we humans associate red with danger, something that needs our attention. That is why traffic light for stop is red. These large corporations have discovered numerous such hacks and they employ it without any regard for users well being. For them our attention is worth billions. The real question is how much our own attention is worth to us? What would we achieve if we could direct all our energy into our own well being?

So how do we focus on ourselves? Well the first thing is to identify these distractions. It may be the most crucial step. Once we identify distractions it becomes easier to block them. The blocking process can involve using browser extensions or apps that block access to certain websites with fixed time slots. No solution is fool proof. You will go back and forth between blocking and unblocking. What is important is you enable blocking every time you unblock. Think of it like this: blocking distractions is like building a muscle in your brain. The more you practice the stronger it becomes. Doom scrolling is what they gave us and took control of our time. Blocking is our way of fighting back and taking back that control.