Host txt files

Instead of deleting a line, just add a hash symbol to the beginning. This way you can easily reactivate old entries if you accidentally disable something you needed. Click the File menu and select Save. This saves your changes to the hosts file. Include your email address to get a message when this question is answered. By using this service, some information may be shared with YouTube. You need administrator rights to do this. Helpful 1 Not Helpful 0. Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0.

Be careful deleting the old Hosts File! You may end up accidentally deleting your new one and losing your edits! Make sure to scan your computer and remove the bad program either before or after doing this.

How to. About This Article. Written by:. Nicole Levine, MFA. Co-authors: 5. Updated: June 3, Categories: Windows. Article Summary X 1. Thanks to all authors for creating a page that has been read 27, times. Is this article up to date? Cookies make wikiHow better. By continuing to use our site, you agree to our cookie policy. Select the Hosts file, and rename it "Hosts. Need more help? Expand your skills. Get new features first. Was this information helpful?

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After that, you should be able to visit localhost in your browser and see whatever you're hacking on. If you're still having issues, try closing your browser completely, then open a new browser window and try again. Even though hosts files have fallen out of favor with newer systems like DNS, they still work for legacy reasons.

And hackers have definitely taken advantage of this in the past. What they would do is point a common website like google. This IP address could serve a site that looks just like Google's, but is actually trying to steal your sensitive information. While this was a problem in the past, most security software like the Windows Security Suite can recognize and fix problems with the hosts file automatically.

That said, if you open up your hosts file and see a lot of strange entries, then you may want to revert to the default Windows hosts file. Just copy and paste the default hosts file from earlier in the article into your hosts file and save. Note that some third-party security software uses the hosts file to block dangerous websites. If that's the case, no worries — your security software should add all those entries back to your hosts file.

We'll go over how this works in the next section. Don't want friends or family to visit certain websites on your computer? Or are you like me and get distracted by all the cat photos on the internet? Also, close the browser windows that are open and reopen them. The one downside is that this only works on one device — you could just reach for your phone and browse Reddit on that instead.

Still, it's a neat way to create some friction on your work computer. This leads nicely into the last trick, which is to use the hosts file to make your life a little bit easier.

If you spend a lot of time adjusting your router's settings, or you have a cool project running on a Raspberry Pi , you'll know that typing in a long IP address is a drag. Instead, you can use the hosts file to make connecting to other devices on your local network much faster. For example, if your router is at Otherwise your browser might not recognize.

Fortunately there are a whole lot of valid TLDs nowadays. Again, the one downside to this method is that it only works on once device. You'd have to update the hosts files on your other devices to enable the same shortcuts. And that should be just about everything you need to know about the hosts file on Windows And a lot of this knowledge should carry over to Linux and macOS. Did you find this helpful?

Are there any other hosts file tricks you know? Let me know over on Twitter.