Filter - How do I manage access to YouTube?

YouTube can be a major distraction to students, but also has a wealth of educational content. With Securly Filter, you can easily manage access to YouTube content, even if you don't use Google Admin - and with more flexibility.

YouTube's Restricted Mode is a great way to limit students' access to inappropriate content on YouTube. Restricted Mode removes comments on all videos and also prevents access to age-restricted videos and videos that haven't been reviewed by YouTube's system. You can manage this setting for specific policies to suit their educational requirements.

You can check if you currently have YouTube Restricted Mode enabled by clicking here before proceeding with the setup.

1. Log in to Securly Filter and navigate to the policy you want to edit YouTube settings for.
2. Click on the YouTube tab.
3. To set the restriction level for that policy select the option from the 'Available restriction modes' field dropdown.
4. You can toggle the on/off switch for each of the fields to determine other restrictions for that policy.
5. You can also allow or block specific websites, channels, and categories.

Allowing specific YouTube videos and channels

To allow specific YouTube videos or channels for students, add the URLs to the policy's YouTube settings in Securly Filter:

• Allow a specific video: Navigate to the policy's YouTube tab, then go to YouTube > Videos and add the video URL to the allow list.
• Allow a full channel: Navigate to the policy's YouTube tab, then go to YouTube > Channels and add the channel URL to the allow list.
• Allow a specific web page: Use the format abc.com/xyz when adding a specific page URL to the allow list.

Chromebook note: On Chromebooks, allow rules for videos and channels apply only when the student is not logged into YouTube. When a student is logged in, Google Workspace settings take precedence and will override any URLs added to Securly's allow lists.

Using Securly Classroom? If you use Classroom alongside Filter, you can enable automatic URL unblocking by going to Classroom > Settings > System and turning on Automatically unblock URLs in Filter. This allows Classroom to automatically permit URLs that teachers share with students.

NOTE: Securly YouTube settings will override the Google Workspace YouTube settings only if users are NOT logged into YouTube. When users are logged in, your Google Workspace settings override the Securly Filter's YouTube settings. This means that Google Workspace settings would also override videos added to any Allow lists.

Note that the Allow/ Block list settings for Channels and Videos are currently unavailable for DNS & SmartPAC users. They will be provided in upcoming releases.

Guest Network Policy users

1. Log in to Securly Filter.
2. Navigate to the Guest Network Policy.
3. Toggle the switch to 'Lock YouTube restricted mode' for network enforcement of YouTube Restricted mode.

Note that these settings are superseded by the YouTube app or user settings for the user when the user is logged into a school account.

By default, Google authentication does not affect YouTube authentication. This means that just because you are logged into Google does not necessarily mean you're logged into YouTube. If you would like to tie authentication for Google and YouTube together, please consider enabling that setting in Google Workspace.

For more about setting up YouTube restricted mode in YouTube and Google Workspace, check out our technical paper here.