Requirements: OS X 10.10+ , 25.32MB size
Version 3.29.2.400 (25 Apr, 2024) Release notes
Category: Utilities
YouTube is an extremely popular video streaming site, however, it’s not always easily accessible. For some users, certain content or even the entire YouTube website may be off limits. This could be due to different reasons. For example, the video’s owner may have chosen to make their video visible only to certain countries, usually as a result of licensing restrictions. Or, it may simply be a matter of school/college or workplace network restrictions. In other cases, there may be local laws causing YouTube to block specific content or even pressure from local governments to impose censorship.
Either way, this leaves users wanting to unblock the YouTube site. Fortunately, there are various ways to go around the restrictions and unblock YouTube, such as using a VPN, a proxy, or others. Alternatively, you can rely on a good converter app such as Airy to download your desired videos. It’s simple and easy, and you can enjoy them offline any time you wish. And for those who can't download YouTube video via an app, there are various tricks that resolve the issues. Take a look below to learn how to unblock YouTube videos and see what works best for you.
If you do manage to find a good website, though, you can perform a Google search to locate the video. In the search results, you’ll see the URL under the video’s title. Copy it and paste it into the YouTube download site.
Of course, you need to know exactly which video you’d like to save prior to downloading. It’s a slow process but if you’re not eager to use a YouTube unblock trick, then it’s worth a try. Another option is using an efficient converter app like Airy. Its clean interface allows you to download videos off YouTube, while giving you many different format and quality options to choose from. You can easily grab entire playlists and channels, which saves a lot of time. Plus, it can download multiple files simultaneously. Again, all you need to do is paste the respective YouTube URL into Airy.
Download and install the Airy app. Open it.
Copy the link to a YouTube video you’d like to watch. You can either copy it from the YouTube site or from Google search results.
Switch over to Airy and paste the link there. If you want to select a quality option, use the drop-down menu.
Using a VPN (meaning a Virtual Private Network) is the most straightforward and secure way to unblock YouTube. VPNs are a useful method to go around firewalls, censorship, or geoblocking technology. They provide online privacy and help unblock content. VPNs do this by tunneling your connection through their own encrypted servers, giving your computer a virtual IP address. This hides your original IP, as if you were accessing the web from an entirely different location. The data that’s sent back and forth is encrypted, therefore, no network administrators and ISP are able to access it.
If there’s a firewall on your network, modifying a website’s URL can be an easy way to outwit it. Here’s how to unblock YouTube videos using this technique. Most network administrators add website URLs to a blacklist manually, in order to block them. Therefore, if the blacklist only contains YouTube’s main URL, http://www.youtube.com, then changing it to https://www.youtube.com as you type would help bypass the restriction. Please, note that this hack only works on local network firewalls. If the content has been censored or geoblocked in your area, modifying the YouTube URL won’t do the trick.
A proxy is similar to a VPN in that it transfers your data through its server, in order to mask your location. However, proxies are not as secure as VPNs due to the lack of data encryption. Unencrypted data can be accessed by network administrators, ISPs, and censoring authorities, revealing what sites you’ve visited. Furthermore, proxies do not protect your personal data from malicious attacks.
If you’re looking at how to unblock YouTube video using a proxy, there are three ways to do so.
You can use a proxy website, set up your browser proxy manually, or pick a browser add-on. With proxy websites, there are many options available online. They’re easy to use, but you’re going to need to refresh the proxy whenever you visit a new page, which can become quite irritating. Alternatively, you can set up your own proxy manually. It’s not the simplest of tasks as it requires some technical skills. However, once the proxy is configured, you won’t need to refresh it at every page load. If setting up a proxy is not your thing, you can resort to using a browser add-on such as Ultrasurf or ProxTube. You can use such services to toggle between direct connection and several proxies using a toolbar icon. The available choices will vary depending on your device and browser of choice.
Tor is a free open-source browser, intended to provide users with more personal privacy. It’s free to download and you can install it as long as you have administrative privileges on the device that you’ll be installing it on.
So, how do you unblock YouTube by using Tor? Essentially, with Tor, your traffic is relayed and encrypted three times as it passes over the Tor network of servers. This process stops network administrators, hackers, and ISPs from tracking your internet activity.
Do keep in mind, though, that Tor wasn’t created for streaming, so as a result of its relatively slow speed and low bandwidth, your videos may be slow to load. Also, note that Tor does not encrypt your data as it leaves at the exit node. Still, combining Tor with a compatible VPN can work wonders in terms of security. With a VPN, your data will be encrypted even after it leaves the network, providing an additional level of protection.
To unblock YouTube on Chrome, you can use a Chrome extension called Unblocker for YouTube (provided by Wachee). It allows you to unblock YouTube videos and watch them anonymously, if the site’s been blocked by your ISP or network administrator.
The extension is enabled with a single click. It will not affect any websites apart from YouTube. There is a free version, as well as a paid version which comes with a few additional features.
Yes. If you use a VPN, it should be completely safe to unblock YouTube. VPNs will actually encrypt your data as well, so they will provide you with anonymity, protect you from hackers, and evade any government surveillance.
Note that the outcome of using a VPN differs from when you change your YouTube region. The latter may tailor your YouTube experience and change the videos you see in the Trending section, for example, but it won’t necessarily unblock YouTube videos that are unavailable in your region. On the other hand, the former can help against geo blocking and restricted content.