How to Block Internet Access for Applications on Windows 10

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A laptop with a blue screenThere are several third-party applications you can use to block the internet on your computer with different constraints. Most of these applications are paid ones. Fortunately, Windows inherently supports blocking the internet through the application of firewall rules. Of course, a general user is not aware of it. We're going to learn how we can block internet access for specific applications through a custom firewall rule. It's simple and is a one-time process. In the future, if you want to revert to the original state, just delete that custom firewall rule. Remember, we're going to learn to block complete internet access for specific applications. In other words, after applying a custom firewall rule, the application in question will not be able to access the internet at all. This methodology works fine both on Windows 10 and 11. In fact, you can try it on older versions too, but you would find the interface a little bit different. If you're using a shared computer, make sure you update others about the blocking rules.

A laptop with a blue screen Choose an application carefully before blocking the internet for it. If your daily workflow includes that application, inadvertently blocking the internet for it would affect your productivity by many folds.

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Although the same can be done through a 3rd-party firewall application, the native one provides you with enough power and flexibility to easily create such custom internet blocking rules.

We'll start by opening the Windows firewall application. To do so, use the Windows + S key combination and type Windows Defender Firewall in the search box.

Windows defender firewall option to ope its settings Click the option shown above to open the advanced settings of the firewall application.

Now, web browsers are one of the most common applications accessing the internet. And, we generally use them daily. There's no point blocking their internet access.

So, for demo purposes, let's pick another application and completely block its internet access. I've picked FileZilla FTP application. Let's create a custom rule to block internet access for this application.

First of all, select the Outbound Rules option as shown in the image below. Selecting this option ensures the rule created by us is applied to all the outbound connection requests made by an application.

Outbound rule option in Windows Defender Firewall Thereafter, click the New Rule... option to open the custom firewall rule creation wizard.

Option to open new firewall rule creation wizard This is a multi-step process and is quite easy to configure once you're familiar with all of the available options. The first option is the Rule Type you want to configure.

Rule type selection for the Windows Defender firewall The default option is Program which is exactly what we need. Here program means an application on which you want the custom rule to be applied. So keep this option selected as it is.

Program path for the application for firewall custom rule Click the Next button to select the programs you want the rule to be applied to. You can either select all programs or a specific one. Here's I've selected the FileZilla app for demo purposes.

Action to take for a custom firewall rule Click the Next button. Now you have to define the action to be performed on each connection request. The default selection is to block such requests. Leave that selection as it is as shown in the image above.

Network profile selection for the firewall rule Next is the profile selection. Once again, by default, all the options are selected. Keep all these three options selected as it is. Essentially, we're blocking all types of internet connections in this step.

Name for the custom firewall rule The last option enables you to provide a custom name and description for the firewall rule. Provide a meaningful name so that you can identify it easily from a list of such rules.

To complete the process, click the Finish button.

Custom firewall rule in the list of outbound rules Now you can see your custom rule in the list of all the custom firewall rules created earlier.

FileZilla application blocked through custom firewall rule And, now I've tried to connect to a remote address through the FileZilla FTP application. You can see in the image above that all the connection requests are denied.

Remember, some of the Windows applications cannot be blocked by the firewall rules. Even if you create such a rule, internet access to these applications will work without any issues.