Browsers
How to Block the Extensions Store on a Web Browser
Blocking the Extensions store is a great way to prevent unwanted extensions from being installed.
If you want to prevent yourself from installing browser extensions or plugins at all, you might have considered whether it’s possible to disable or block the Chrome web store page on your web browser. Blocking the browser extension store is a relatively easy way to prevent new browser extensions that could conflict with content filtering from being installed.
How exactly you should block the browser extension store depends on whether you'd prefer to block all but a limited number of extensions (what we call the default-deny approach) or you only want to block specific extensions or plugins.
We generally recommend the default deny approach since it's much easier to keep track of a small list of allowed browser extensions than it is to maintain a long, quickly out-of-date list of extensions that need to be blocked.
Blocking the Browser Extension Store with DNS
Each of the most popular web browsers (Chrome, Edge, and Firefox) all have online web stores that can be blocked with DNS.
Before you block the browser extension store, go ahead and install the extensions you want to keep installed. The idea is that you'll be preventing any new extensions from being downloaded or installed.
You'll want to block these domains:
chromewebstore.google.com
microsoftedge.microsoft.com
addons.mozilla.org
If you're using a DNS Content Policy to manage and filter content on your devices, these domains should be added to a block rule. If you also use a SafeSearch rule, we recommend ensuring that the block rule has a higher priority than the SafeSearch rule since there is a chance of a rule conflict.
If you'd like to add an extra layer of filtering or just prefer to block these domains yourself, we have a guide dedicated to using the Hosts file to block websites that can be used on these domains as well.
Note that if you choose to block the extensions store this way, you'll have some limitations:
- New browser extensions can't be installed unless your block is removed
- Current browser extensions may not keep up-to-date
Blocking the Browser Extension Store with URL Filtering
Alternatively, you could block the URL associated with the Browser Extension store to keep current extensions updated.
Depending on which browser you use, there are different URLs you should add to your block.
For Google Chrome's webstore, add this URL to a blocklist:
https://chromewebstore.google.com/*
For the Microsoft Edge Add-ons store, add this URL:
https://microsoftedge.microsoft.com/*
For Mozilla browsers, add this link to a blocklist to hide the add-ons store:
about:addons
To learn more about how to block specific URLs like the ones above, check out our dedicated guide for blocking website keywords .