So I’ve been using youtube ad blockers since pretty much when ad blocker extensions were first available. Lately though I’ve been getting hit more and more with these messages that YT was sending out every 5 or so videos telling me that adblockers aren’t allowed. No problem, just gotta wait 5 seconds to x it out and then close my video. The straw that broke the camel’s back though was when instead of a close-able pop-up, they just posted it in front of a video and wouldn’t let me watch anything until I disabled my adblocker.
So I disabled it and… wow. It’s just so, so, trash. 2 ads before a video plus midrolls and every video ever. I tried listening to a playlist of songs and was getting a midroll ad every single time. Imagine trying to just listen to music for 3 minutes and getting interrupted by a commercial for a chevy silverado! Half the ads were for youtube premium and they specifically mentioned that it would get rid of all the ads. It just felt so damn predatory. I couldn’t enjoy anything that wasn’t already demonetized.
And you know I’m fine with ads I guess. I could live with an ad before every video, but the fact that I was getting upwards of 5 ads in a 10 minute video was just plain absurd. I also hate that youtube got rid of the yellow markers to show you when an ad was coming up, so now it’s just out of nowhere and always interrupts a key part of the video.
E: I’ve been on Firefox for over a year.
I think ublock origin bypasses youtubes ad detection
Just tried. It does not.
EDIT: Needed to update my browser.
What browser? It works for Firefox on my PC and mobile.
Google has slowly been really pushing their way or no-way. They announced that 3 strike policy against your account for ad-blocking, from my understanding it had only rolled out to chrome but someone within the last couple months posted an image of Firefox showing them the adblock message.
Ublock Origin does still work for some, but I believe it’s per account. Honestly, the moment I heard about the policy I immediately switched to Piped. I don’t really care about the YouTube algorithm, I hardly use the site outside of information searching (guides mostly) and so the homepage always being YT front page doesn’t bother me. I can create an account with piped and have subscriptions, can make playlists and on the LibreTube app I can download videos. That’s all I need. Unfortunately there is some downtime sometime but you can host your own instance of it really gets to you - I’m nearly at that point myself just for the peace of mind.
So, fuck YouTube and Google tracking, fuck their forced ad policy, use a wrapper like Piped/Invidious and be done with them.
I might need to update my firefox. Think thats the issue.
Works on my machine
Firefox + uBlock Origin served me about 4 hours of video last night without an ad in sight.
Also NoScript!
I think ublock is working on a fix
It’s a cat and mouse game, except the mouse has effectively infinite lives.
except the mouse has effectively infinite lives.
Thats basically how rodent ecology works, already, isn’t it? Being an r strategy reproducer is pretty much just speccing into unlimited respawns.
That could feed a lot of cats
I think it’s dependent on whether the ads are served server-side or client-side. Server side ad insertion isn’t something that uBO can protect against. Twitch is a good example of this.
This was annoying when it happened. Fortunately there are adblockers specifically for Twitch that work fine.
I have never gotten a twitch ad in my life
I believe you but Twitch does use SSAI in some geographic areas and uBO is unable to block SSAI based ads
Any youtube specific extensions? Or maybe you could check out the enabled rules.
I used to pay for premium just because it was the simplest way to watch ad free on my phone (IOS so Vanced was not an option), and being able to download videos to watch later on a flight was nice.
But then they wouldn’t let you do Picture in Picture from the app, which, like, fine. Annoying but I’ll just play it in the background and just listen to the audio.
But then they started forcing the tiktok clone onto the home page and subscriptions page. I really do not like the dopamine disinformation vortex. So I deleted the app and just started watching them through the website, which actually enabled Picture in Picture and let me hide the shorts shelf (for 30 days before I have to click the X again.)
Now I’ve just stopped paying for it and just watch YouTube in the Firefox Focus IOS browser which completely blocks YouTube ads in my experience. It won’t let me do Picture in Picture or play audio in the background on their website, but I’ve noticed embedded YouTube videos on other websites will.
So now I’m looking in to using other front ends so I can have complete normal functionality without having to watch adds or pay them money and have their stupid tik tok clone shoved down my throat.
Good job Google, you managed to completely alienate someone who was paying you cash. Now I’m the definition of a free rider on your service.
ReVanced can patch your YouTube client (even without root) and add (your choice of) features, for example adblocking, picture in picture, playing in background as well ad quality of life improvents like hiding the “block” of news videos, remove reels or certain buttons
They said they’re on IOS.
Hmm. I’ve always had premium so never looked into ReVanced. I knew it existed, but didn’t realise it might be useful for more than just bypassing ads.
Most of these should be regular settings. I want several of them. My biggest bugbear is shorts. But I also want to be rid of those little popup things and the overlay cards at the end of a video.
The reviews on the play store make this sound like a pretty trash app. Maybe I’m looking at the wrong one…
Revanced isn’t in an app store (at least not a legit version), you have to build it yourself. Otherwise it would probably end like Vanced. Take care of scam websites, this is the real one: https://revanced.app/
Or check this guide: https://www.reddit.com/r/revancedapp/comments/xlcny9/revanced_manager_guide_for_dummies/ (yes, it’s Reddit, but the guide was really useful to me 🤷♂️)
Thanks, that’s much different! lol This looks pretty involved. Does it need to be updated all the time as Youtube updates, similar to NewPipe? Because NewPipe is a pain to keep updated but it also a lot less work. lol
ReVanced doesn’t really require frequent updates. After modifying the YouTube app, I disable auto updates and keep using it until something doesn’t work properly (usually ads reappear)- Happens maybe every 4-5 months for me.
For example, the YouTube version I’m using right now is 18.23.35 from June 10th, while the newest version that can be patched with ReVanced is 18.35.44. But since I haven’t seen any issues, I didn’t even bother to check for updates. Only your comment made me check and realize that I can update it.
What I usually do is tell the Play Store to not update it. Also, I don’t think it’s that involved. Take this with a grain of salt because I’m pretty experienced with phone modification, but I think it’s just downloading the file, opening it, selecting YouTube, choosing what modifications you want, and installing it.
I don’t find it at all annoying to keep NewPipe up to date.
I think you may need to take a look at Obtainium.
Anything revanced on the play store is fake. You cannot get Revanced from the play store. https://revanced.app/
Maybe it’s an iOS thing, but I can definitely do PiP with Premium on the official app on Android.
It may be different now, but when IOS first added PiP is was super inconsistent with the YouTube app, it worked one week, then the app updated and it didn’t work, then the next week it worked if you were logged in, then only with premium, then only if you were not logged in, then it would exit out of it it the first time you opened it but not the second time you opened PiP
It was just… a mess and it almost felt like there was some back and fourth going on between Apple and Google over how it was implemented.
I can do PiP on iOS with my premium subscription.
PiP works on iOS, even without premium (with some restrictions). At least it did very recently, I have premium now though so I can’t verify as of today
I can do PiP on Firefox android by playing the video in fullscreen and returning home. There’s an add on for FF, Video Background Play Fix, that allows me to play in the background as well.
A bit of an aside, but did you use speech to text to post this?
No, I’m just bad at proof reading and a clumsy typer/ not the best with written grammar
That’s cool. Was curious more than anything else.
Impression I got, too.
Check out uYou+ with AltStore. It lets you enable PiP and background play, and I think you can disable shorts and such.
Try Yattee. Piped client for iOS. You do have to do weird setup because the app needs to pretend to not be a Piped client. Otherwise, Piped or Invidious website.
AdGuard for iOS blocks YouTube ads. Adblock Pro has an “open in PiP mode” button that lets you open videos in PiP without YT premium, which is cool.
I don’t use the app
The brave browser allows you to Picture in Picture and blocks ads!
I could live with an ad before every video
I can’t live with that. Often I don’t even know if I actually want to watch the video or not, and if I have to sit through three minutes of ads, only to close the video five seconds after the ad because it’s not what I expected… yuck. Preroll ads are often a deal breaker for me unless it’s content that I’m very familiar with.
Mid-roll ads I’m OK with - by then I’ve already decided the content is worth watching.
I don’t think I’m alone and YouTube seems to be very aware of this issue. They are selective about which videos have a pre-roll ad.
Mid roll ads are fine if the video was made with midrolls in mind that the midrolls actually happened at the times the maker of the video has set them up to happen.
Sure they are selective about which videos have ads, but not when the ads come on.
YouTube, with no adblocker or premium subscription has basically become an interrupting cow, making noise at the most innapropriate time and then you have to wat-MOOOOOOOOOO-ch the ad, then you rewind 10 seconds to get your cont-MOOOOOOOOOO-text back. There needs to be a legal limit to the number of midrolls you can stuff in a short space of time.
I’d rather watch a series of multiple consecutive midroll ads placed at a prespecified time than a random number of ads scattered at completely random intervals, Ruining the flow and mood of the video.
Its frustrating af.
There also needs to be a hard limit to the length of ads. Cannot fucking stand seeing an ad come on and it’s an hour and a half long for some get rich quick scheme
Exactly. With youtube’s shitty tutorial search functions ever since they removed dislikes, i kinda need to see the start of the video to know if its even relevant. But no. Full on 2-3 pre-video ads.
I mean idk I never really bothered with an ad blocker pre 2013 or so, back when you’d get an ad before the vid and the longer ones had mid rolls.
This thread is in c/technology, but I swear these are some of the least tech literate comments I’ve seen. Stop using Chrome, yesterday. Use Firefox, use ublock origin. On Android use Revanced. I never see an ad on my PC or phone using YouTube, including ads in the video by the content creators (sponsorblock is built into Revanced and can by toggled).
I was already on Firefox.
I switched to ublock origin yesterday and it worked for about 2 hours before YT somehow detected it and shut down every video. My fix for that was to disable ublock, refresh, enable ublock, refresh again
Something is wrong, this has not happened to me ever. Is ublock set up to automatically update itself and it’s lists?
You might be in different countries. YouTube has shut down adblockers at different rates depending on where you are.
Use Invidious while it still exists as a project I’m a fan of the yewtu.be instance. Pretty reliable. The Piped project is good as well. Don’t even use the YouTube domain at all, hate giving them analytics and site usage info nevermind ads
there have been many posts about YouTube detecting blockers recently and warning users it’s against the ToS. Not sure if they are widespread or not.
Because people are on Chrome.
Just got the popup on FF with Unlock Origin
Add in sponsors that some ass holes throw 2-3 in a video (FU LTT) and I don’t know how people watch YouTube with ads. It sucks so bad.
I do pay for premium, but use smart tube on my android tv box and it feels so good when it rolls right past them.
sponsorblock is a godsend for that type of stuff
Sponsors are the biggest argument for not getting YouTube Premium, in my opinion.
You spend money on YouTube Premium and still have a bunch of ads, so you need to use sponsorblock, and if you’re using that just use an ad blocker too.
SmartTube is some of the greatest software ever made
At least you can skip LTT ads.Try that with YT ads.
I hate how this trend of “I’ll make my service shit so you’ll pay more for the not as shit version” seems to work out for these companies
“Here is how platforms die: First, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die.”
“I’ll put in enough ads to actually support your usage habits and you can pay if you want to not deal with them”
I’m not specifically talking about ads. Things like stopping your playlist every 15 minutes and telling you that maybe you should pay for YouTube music or “free” software that is practically impossible to use until you pay for a subscription are examples of what I’m talking about
It sucks. What sucks even more for me is that, I understood the fact that a platform like YouTube costs an unimaginable amount. I get that. And I wanted to pay. As a matter of fact, I did pay, happily so, for quite while. For YouTube Prenium Lite. Until a week ago I think, where I got this wonderful email from Google titled: Kindly go fuck yourself… or at least that’s how I read it… telling me that YouTube Prenium Lite was going the way of the Google graveyard. Because of course it did. And now, it was paying for full Prenium or nothing.
So I stopped paying. I’m not paying 13 bucks a month for no ads. Especially if you’re basically strong arming me in doing so, I’ll do without YouTube.
Because hey, I tried YouTube Music. It’s actually quite good in many aspects (horrendously flawed in many others too, of course, but that’s most Music Streaming services) but you know what? I know it’s been years, but I’m still not over Google Play Music and how they killed that off for what was an inferior product back then. Why the fuck would I invest my time and money in a Google product, nowadays? I’m sorry if you reading this were one of these people, but it’s like… to the people who were paying for Stadia and were shocked to learn that the service was shutting down… I’m sorry, but what the fuck is wrong with you? It was bound to happen, from the moment it was announced, the entire internet started joking about the fact that this thing will be dead in two years!
I refuse to pay for a Google product nowadays. It’s like paying for a live service game at release, it’s rolling the dice and betting against the colossal odds that this thing will be dead in two years. So, unless it’s a Pixel, so I can slap something else than stock Android, Google can suck it. They won’t get a cent from me.
It’s not like I paid for Prenium Lite because I loved YouTube. Hell, YouTube stopped being a good product a long time ago, I was paying for the content I was watching. Gotta support creators, you know? And also, because I watched a lot of YouTube on my TV, and you can’t slap Ublock on that. It was a reasonable enough price. But now? Fuck YouTube, I’m done with this. I’ve been hating this platform more and more for a while now, the algorithm is awful, it keeps recommanding me stuff I don’t want (why the hell does YouTube insist and recommanding me far right content, jesus christ, stop!). And even without ads, you still get them because monetization is so damn inconsistent creators can only depend on sponsors, I could go on and on.
So now, it’s NewPipe on mobile, Piped on desktop and I guess I’ll just find something better to watch on TV. I’m paying for Nebula, it’s cheap, doesn’t have even a third of the people who I watched on YouTube, but at least it’s creator centric and it’s got a lot of good, interesting stuff on it. I’ve been watching lots of Twitch lately, and while yes, I agree, fuck Amazon, at least I can just pay for the people who I watch most to get no ads, it’s a reasonable price, support them and Twitch ads are not nerely as horrendous YouTube’s are in terms of frequency. So, yeah. I don’t miss it.
I use FreeTube on desktop and NewPipe on mobile. I’m still searching for a solution to the AppleTV.
Same. Yattee has proven too cumbersome for me to setup. :/
guess I’ll just find something better to watch on TV
smarttube, you can even login
Sadly, I use an Apple TV.
chuck it in the bin and get a 29 bucks android tv device
Consider Piped, Invidious, etc. Yes you can’t log in, but on Piped you can create a Piped account and on mobile use Yattee (iOS) or Libretube (Android). No recommendations on home screen, but subscriptions feed and recommendations per video.
Meh. Revanced still working great for me and I have all my subscriptions, no ads, all the features.
No recommendations sounds better to me to be honest
Ok so I’m not saying the correct solution to this is to just give Google the money they want, but for me YouTube premium is the best value for any streaming service my family subscribes to. (Unless you count the lifetime Plex pass I got on sale years ago, lol)
Things like our smart TV or the kid’s iPad work flawlessly, including convenient downloads for trips. And since I watch a lot on my TV, it’s nice having higher bitrate available.
YouTube music is a nice addon for music in the car, even though it doesn’t make or break the deal.
And as I understand it, creators make significantly more money from premium views than ad-supported views. I like watching all kinds of niche scientific/tech/educational creators so I like to know they’re getting a bit more from me
You know what, I complete agree!! I realised I spend 10x the time on YouTube compared to Netflix.
And then, at least in the U.K., there’s a mobile phone plan that includes a YouTube premium membership, so it works out at 2/5ths the price.
is the best value for any streaming service my family subscribes to.
i mean that bar is pretty low
This is my sentiment too.
Yeah, if not for Ytmusic, I wouldn’t have considered youtube premium. Seperate they don’t make much sense. Together, they add a lot of value. Plus, the bonus of not being bombarbed by multiple ads on each video is good.
This is why I use Smartube on my android TV and revanced/NewPipe on my phone.
The few times I’ve witnessed naked YouTube it’s made be realise that if any of the sources mentioned stop working then I’m simply not going to use YouTube.
Yeah it’s horrible. For it to somehow be worth watching with ads, the ads had to be for a legitimate and relevant product, and the algorithm / video quality had to be much better.
I stayed at a place last year that had a RokuTV, YouTube was practically unusable on it due to the absurd number of ads that would play. Even more infuriating was that they were often the same ad, repeated.
For those with iOS, please watch through Firefox Focus. It blocks YT ads!
Or sideload uYou/uYou+, works really well!
Or use Yattee and Piped (no need jailbreak)
I prefer using yattee, but lately most instances throw an error and has been unusable for me, hopefully it can work more consistently over time
Why are people not using Ublock Origin ?
Two words: Smart TVs
Need a hardware solution (pi hole/router with custom firmware) for that.
Please use Smartnext tube app for android TV.
Unfortunately I have a stupid Samsung TV and the app offering SUCKS (though I am pretty sure it technically runs on Android). There’s also no way to sideload apps afaik.
God! Never buy Samsung products. I learnt my lesson after buying a Samsung phone.
Ah, what was that? I’m currently using one oneui 5. Compared to xioami, the software is more stable and doesn’t have stupid restrictions like not allowing access to running services or frequently killing background apps and services.
It used to drain battery like crazy. Then I bought a pixel with stock android and it was same. After that I installed a custom ROM and this is the result- My overnight idlecdrain is around 1% and if I not use my phone too much, it last 4 days on single charge.
It takes a while for adaptive battery to kick (weeks). Especially, when you newly setup an android device. Same with adaptive brightness. Mine drains fast in active heavy use on 5G with motion smoothness set to high. I also have a dual sim model where one can be pulling the lowest signal strength from tower which can also affect battery drain.
Samsung TV’s run on tizen OS, not android.
Yep. I watch YT primarily on my AppleTV, which is why I’m subbed to YT Premium. Otherwise it’s basically unusable because of the ads. But I fucking hate that I’m being extorted like this
PiHole does not work for YouTube sadly. There’s no current solution for YouTube ads on (non-android) smart TVs.
Does Ublock Origin successfully circumvents the new system that is being tested in select countries?
Yes. You need to not use any other content blocker (including potentially browser tracking protection) and keep uBo up to date. Occasionally it might not be up to date with latest YT changes but that’s pretty rare.
I read that you need to update the filters to make it work however I can’t confirm.
I’m using uBlock, so far it works no problem for me :)
EDIT: Ignore the following, the next day the popup message returned unfortunately
I can confirm, I was getting the popup message yesterday with ublock-origin and was able to fix it by not only updating my filters but also subscribing to all the optional filters. It seems the default lists don’t have a fix yet but one of the optional ones does.
Can you share the optional filters for others? Probably best to create a new post
The lists are fortunately pre-installed with ublock-origin, just need to enable all lists within options: Built-in, Ads, Privacy, Malware, Multipurpose, and Annoyances
EDIT: I spoke too soon, saw another popup today
OP mentioned already using ublock-origin. Youtube still blocked him for good after multiple warnings to disable
I tried to give YouTube ads a chance at one point but they got ridiculous to the point I just can’t.
Here in Australia, there are so many F**king Betting ads on it too.
Just wish they’d ban any form of casino/gambling adverts
The ads are just extremely bad in general. Betting ads for a legitimate casino would already be a huge step up form the shit I get…
