YouTube just quietly blocked Adblock Plus — the internet hasn't noticed yet, but I've found a workaround
YouTube just quietly blocked Adblock Plus — the internet hasn't noticed yet, but I've found a workaround
Stop using Adblock Plus and start using Firefox with uBlock Origin.
If you’re on iOS, swallow your pride and install Brave and just turn off the crypto features. You’ll thank me later.
Fyi uBlock Origin Lite was recently released on iOS
Many iOS workarounds. I’m using Vinegar extension and also the newly released uBlock Origin for iOS. Chefs kiss
Where do you get ublock for ios? Its not mentioned on github or on the site
So my parents use chrome even though I constantly install Firefox and hide chrome. Problem there is they end up with Edge so I stopped doing that. (Didn't windows get in trouble for this kind of market control in the 90's?)
So I had Ublock origin on chrome for them but it's "not supported" anymore and my usual method of ignoring what it says and turning it back on are now failing.
Any help?
You can disable Edge if you don't want people launching it... "accidentally." There are a myriad of ways. Most recently I've used Edge Blocker, which does what it says on the label. Note that this will cause the opening of any file types associated with Edge by default to silently fail if you don't reassign them to some other program.
The install Firefox and uBlock origin. Unless your parents deliberately go out of their way to download and install Chrome (and depending how heavy-handed you want to get you could even prevent this by busting them down to a limited user account) they won't have any choice but to use the correct browser installed on their system. That is to say, the only one.
If they are technologically inept, reduce their accounts to limited, lock down the admin account. That will prevent them from uninstalling FF/installing Chrome, and if the admin account sets a shortcut on their desktop(s), they won't be able to remove it. Disable Edge (there are multiple ways to do so), install the necessary extensions on FF, then change FF's desktop icon and text to "Chrome".
Problem solved.
Beside a big whack behind the head, Ublock Origin Lite is supported on chrome. You lose some features, and it is slower to update, but should still mostly work. Unfortunately, the youtube/ublock fight move quite fast, so results won't be as good on that front.
Change default browser to Firefox
Change file type associations
Setup a firewall and black access to websites where they're able to download other browsers. Then change the icon for Firefox to Chrome's icon. For bonus points, you can probably find a firefox theme to make it look more like chrome.
AdGuard and SponsorBlock work fine on Safari on iOS.
Imagine using Adblock/Adblock plus in 2025.
People still use Ad Block Plus? Didn't it start allowing sponsored ads like 10 or 15 years ago?
Hence the part "nobody noticed" in the headline
I got a question in my head just now.
DNS sinkhole doesnt help with youtube ads but UBO does. DNS doesn't help with twitch ads and neither UBO does. Why is that youtube doesn't do the same what twitch does?
On a side note, my ads on twitch are basically "ad is in progress" screen and not an actual ad. And lately YT has couple of seconds with no video in the beginning as if it loads (1Gbit connection) but eventually loads up and plays with no interruptions after.
I don't work on uBlock or even webdev but it doesn't take much of a stretch to think YouTube's servers will refuse to immediately transmit a video stream after the webpage is requested; probably waiting for a typical user to skip 2 30-sec ads.
Article wasted my time. I want it back moe90.
Just stick with Firefox and uBlock Origin.
dont give them solutions, they want to be angry
Especially since Adblock Plus take payment to whitelist adverts.
Or even better, Librewolf.
Honest question, but what makes librewolf BETTER? In firefox you can easily toggle off the studies telemetry bullshit in the settings. Librewolf is just firefox with those things ripped out right?
Sadly i have to stop using it. Librewolf has start getting some graphic bug, i also can't upload pictures to some website (it show just lines). Now i'm trying Floorp.
As much as I like Librewolf as concept and ideology, I can't keep thinking that if there's a Firefox 0day, Firefox gets patched first, Librewolf later, and I'm potentially exposed for longer. That's why I prefer to stick with upstream.
Have you noticed uBlock Origin being a bit hit and miss on YouTube lately? I’ve had it happen a few times lately where the video won’t play, or an ad comes up but doesn’t play. I’ve had to keep refreshing until it gets to normal where it just plays the damn video.
No. It works across all my systems. I never see ads on YT. However...
Videos not loading or playing delayed: That's a YT feature which they implemented for Firefox users, to annoy them. And to promote Chrome as "the fastest" webbrowser.
I also have dns issues at home... I should fix them already. Sometimes, a page doesn't load on the first try.
I think youtube might have implemented something that prevents the server from delivering the video files until the expected duration of the ad has passed. This idea is completely unfounded, but this is what it feels like to me.
I sometimes get a popup warning from YouTube that my account will be blocked from viewing videos if I keep running an ad blocker. But the warning goes away after a while and YouTube still works. I don't see ads except on mobile.
Oddly, they also keep begging me to "return" to YouTube Premium, though I have never paid for YouTube Premium.
If on mobile, try setting it to desktop mode. Also, getting the chameleon extension and pretending you are using chrome can also help.
I haven't had any issues like that, it's been working fine for me
I use different shared PCs at work and this happens every time on the Windows 11 machines. Some ad plays before the video, but disappears when I refresh the page. This doesn't happen on the Win 10 machines we still have left. In forced to use Chrome there but everything has UBlock Lite enabled.
Yes
lol chrome
Tom’s Hardware, Ad Block Plus, paying for YouTube Premium as a “work around”?
Guys this content was by boomers for boomers
Indeed. Tom’s Hardware for me has for long been one of the most useless tech news sites, mostly just dumb clickbaity ad articles in disguise.
If they would know anything about anything or done some actual research they would point to Firefox with a few relevant extensions that keep YouTube’s fuckery in check. Or the alternative mobile apps. Or stuff like Invidious. But guess they are too mainstream and thus afraid to upset Google in any way.
Guys this content was by boomers for boomers
Tom's Hardware sold out looong ago, sold in 2007 to some faceless consortium. The original "Tom", Thomas Pabst, who is GenX and not a boomer btw, has had nothing to do with the site since.
The editor of this article looks to be a millennial btw.
boomer is a state of mind
Is this a sponsored article? Bc buying yt premium doesn't seem like a workaround to me.
This may not get well recieved but yt premium is worth the money imho, but again I dont wanna pay those evil corpos.
I think it's decent value but I'm already running extensions or mods to skip the in-video ads, so I may as well just block ads for free too.
If YouTube Premium ever got an official sponsorblock, it'd become a good deal.
No, author of this article, paying for premium is not a workaround.
more like walking in
It has some real "Ukraine should just stop fighting a losing war" vibes. I wonder how much Alphabet paid them for that article. Probably not much.
Oh thank god: its only on Chrome
Bah, This is just an add for a YouTube premium subscription
Damn sure was clickbaity. No ads? Buy YT Premium they say.
Whoopee. Saved you a click.
I stopped using ABP years ago and switched to uBlock Origin. That and some *Monkey scripts.
The internet hasn't noticed yet
Says article on the internet shared with others on the internet and linked to from many internet places.
Article titles are fucking garbage. At least it didn't pul the "Here's why" bullshit.
Based on the other comments, the article itself is as garbage as the title.
That said though, there is one ad blocker that still works. Two words: uBlock Origin. Yes, I know that Google has blocked it from its Chrome Extension store, but there is still a way to get uBlock Origin on Chrome that our how-to extraordinaire Kaycee has detailed.
Or..... You could just ditch Chrome altogether!
I don't know why people are so fixated on using Chrome. It's a crippled browser made by an evil company that is actively looking to screw the user at every turn.
I switched to Firefox when Google essentially killed uBlock Origin on their browser. At first I ran into some problems with some sites not rendering correctly. But it seems like that's become much less of an issue with later updates. And the best thing is that there are some phenomenal extensions for blocking ads - like a fully-fledged uBlock Origin to name just one. I don't even see sponsor promotions in YT videos now.
And if you don't want to deal with Mozilla directly you can use Waterfox instead.
All this dancing around and jumping through hoops to get uBlock Origin working on Chrome is kind of absurd. Just ditch Chrome (and all Blink-based browsers) altogether where you can (I get that corporate environments are often off the table for this).
Collectively we should be sending a message to Google whenever we can that we are done with their browser bullshit.
(I get that corporate environments are often off the table for this).
FYI in case anyone needs to hear this, but Firefox can be installed as a user in windows if you just decline the admin prompt when installing.
People keep forgetting that Google is quite literally the largest ad company in the world. That’s the vast majority of their revenue.
They’re never going to do something that fucks with ad income.
except adding AI stuff everywhere and actually starting to see ad revenue drop?
Additionally, I'm not paying that evil company a dime. All the people I follow on YT get way more money from me on Patreon.
Or at least use a Chrome fork, if you must use it for compatibility or something.
TBH I think it's just an accessibility issue. It's easier to install an extension than find another browser and swtich to it for most people. Hence Internet Explorer lasted as long as it did.
FreeTube with an ipv6 rotator and Invidious will make sure you never have to deal with this.
Please elaborate...
FreeTube is a FOSS youtube frontend.
FreeTube occasionally has issues on videos with preroll ads where the video fails to play because the ad won't be fetched. This can sometimes be mitigated by running an ipv6 rotator script and blocking freetubes access to ipv4. The one I run reassigns my ipv6 address once every 5 seconds to a new randomly generated valid address.
Sometimes even this doesn't block the ads (again causing the video to fail to play) in which case selecting the share icon from the freetube interface and clicking "open invidious link" will open a web browser pointed to whichever invidious instance is set to your default.
The freetube folks are working on implementing DASH, which should eliminate the need for these workarounds once successful.
You can also use Freetube with tor/socks5 proxy, and every time you open Freetube, you automatically get a new IP.
This is true, but I try not to put such a heavy load on the TOR network personally. Its always good to have folks using it for clearweb stuff like this though, keeps the network legitimate.
"If your adblock doesn't work, a workaround is to pay for YouTube Premium"
AW NO I HADN'T FUCKING THOUGHT OF THAT
Honestly, I just did that. YouTube has costs, storing and sharing all that data at high resolution and speed, so expecting that service for absolutely nothing is a little weird. We can find reasons that they’re bad, that’s fine, but good or bad they do have to pay for things.
I also pay for the Patreon of one of my favourite mandolin players because I want him to keep making content and I wanted access to backing tracks and the Discord server. He can’t do it at that level for free, and that’s ok.
I don't care what YouTube's costs are, I don't want to pay. I'll leave that to people like you.
Sure, if paying them ment that they also didn't data mine the shit out of you and sold it to 3rd parties...but no they insist on double-dipping so they can get fucked.
We already pay with all of the personal data they steal from us (adblocks or no), and all the lifetimes wasted watching ads for those who don't or can't block them (and the ad revenue paid to them by corps who buy those ads) so no, Google doesn't deserve our money for Premium.
Same thing as when cable TV was new, they said paying for it was to require fewer ads... how long did that last?
For my wife and I, whose main background noise/entertainment is Let's Play style videos on YouTube (Markiplier, Jacksepticeye, RTGame and such), paying for premium just makes sense. Like you said, we can and should criticize them for how they handle things, but everyone making a fuss about premium existing just makes no sense.
I don't watch enough YouTube to make premium worth it. If they had a lower tier with a cap on ad-free watch time, I probably would pay.
The workaround is using uBO
And Firefox.
Ublock Origin and NextDNS FTW.
DNS does nothing for youtube.
Never claimed it did. I have YouTube ReVanced on mobile, and SmartTubeNext for the TV.
(But TBF, Ublock Origin does in fact block YT ads on the desktop.)
Who uses Adblock Plus? Isn't uBlock Origin (Lite) the shit to go to?
Yes, and it has been for many many years. In 2011 Adblock Plus deemed some ads acceptable, no longer blocking them categorically. Following that controversity, uBlock Origin became the popular standard.
Honestly, given that Adblock Plus has always had an "acceptable ads" system - I guess they simply decided now YouTube ads are acceptable. Not really surprising then.
I'm using Adblock Plus, because of their Acceptable Ads system. Imo it's far more ethical to regulate ads than to ban them entirely. Websites have to make money to sustain themselves, and ads are the least intrusive way this can be done besides donations (and let's be honest, most websites can't support themselves on donations alone). I'd rather have an ad or two at the end of an article than a paywall.
I would love to switch to a different adblocker, ABP has quite enshittified over the years imo. But it would have to be one with Acceptable Ads support.
"Adblock Plus" Me: WHAT YEAR IS THIS?
The workaround is pay for YouTube premium.
Edit: the above is is what the article says. Not my opinion. YT can get bent. Firefox + uBlock has been my "workaround" for years.
Don't shoot the messenger, they're just citing the "workaround" from the article. The article also mentions using uBlock but only after writing two paragraphs convincing you that Premium is totally the solution to go with.
are you paraphrasing what the article said or saying it yourself?
I was just citing the article's stated workaround since that's what everyone will want to know.
I'm saying it yourself to them for us
ABP hasn't been relevant for years, because they started on "acceptable ads" back in 2011.
Anyone with sense has long since moved on.
But a Chromium fork called Chromite still uses it
Acceptable Ads is the very reason I'm still using Adblock Plus. What's the problem with it? It's an optional feature, just turn it off and you don't have to deal with it at all.
Why pick shit out of your cereal, when you can just get the other brand that doesn't have shit in it?
If someone is fixated on using chrome, so far there is still a workaround:
https://www.neowin.net/guides/you-can-still-enable-ublock-origin-in-chrome-here-is-how/
Other than that, just switch to Firefox.
someone fixated on using chrome
should quit using the Internet at all
Is the fact it's impossible for me to play any thing in (PipePipe|Outertune) these past few days connected to this ?
What if people just learned to use Firefox or NewPipe?
I use FreeTube on my laptop. It can lose functionality at times (due to shenanigans on the part of yt), but they're pretty good about releasing updates that make it work again.
The time to learn would still save time wasted from watching ads.
there is one ad blocker that still works. Two words: uBlock Origin.
Vivaldi without any plugins also works. No ads. And I’m sure there are many more possible configurations. This article reads like the author thinks there’s only two browsers and two ad blockers.
Not sure about vivaldi but brave actually pulls its filters from ublock origin
YouTube just quietly blocked Adblock Plus
They've been A/B testing anti-adblock attempts for months or even years now, idk exactly with my sense of time. Sometimes adblocker A doesn't work, sometimes adblocker B doesn't work. Sometimes switching browser makes the same adblocker work, sometimes clearing cookies helps, sometimes its dependent on your account. Different users at the same time report different experiences with different adblockers. Sometimes watching a single non-blocked ad restores adblocker functionality magically for a few days.
What I'm trying to say is, this didn't "just" happen, and it's specifically the author's current experience. I myself use Adblock Plus on Edge and Youtube works perfectly fine currently. This has been happening for a long time, and I'm sure there's uBlock Origin users currently who have the same experience while Adblock Plus works for them. Since that's how it's been the last times I've seen people talk about this, everyone talking about different experiences.
The YouTube app on my old tablet has been breaking on ads recently. First it stopped playing and then it wouldn't even resume. Their own app. On playing ads. No ad blockers. Fuck you I'm not paying premium.
iOS and Mac users have Vinegar, if you want to spend like $2 and support an indie developer.
When I had an iPhone, Vinegar was the best few quid I ever spent. Between that and the adblocker I used, I got ad free YouTube with the default iOS video player. Glorious.
Mac users can also use freetube
There's a name I haven't heard in years 😂
@moe90@feddit.nl I've found a better workaround, which is to tell YouTube to go pound sand. I definitely don't miss YouTube since I stopped accessing it more than a year ago (actually, I don't even remember when I stopped, it's really been a long while). Okay, maybe I miss one or other content (Technology Connections, Electroboom and Numberphille to mention a few I used to watch), but this didn't stop me from stopping using YouTube altogether. Sad thing Alec, Mehdi as well as the people behind Numberphille either don't know or aren't willing to use alternatives (e.g. PeerTube) to share their knowledge with the Internet.
There's a Portuguese maxim "Falem bem ou falem mal, mas falem de mim" (roughly translatable to "Talk goodly or badly, but talk about me") and this is perfectly fit for YouTube vs Premium vs AdBlockers: people (both content creators and their consumers) are understandably enraged with YouTube and its enshitification, yet they continue to access it instead of boycotting it to, hopefully, reduce the power and monopoly that Google have with YouTube.
I am willing to completely ditch YouTube and not access it, but there are a couple of channels that just aren't anywhere else that I do enjoy watching.
Currently, I use RSS feeds in order to stay up to date with their videos, and I use new pipe to actually watch the videos, but still, it's annoying. I would like to stop using them and cannot. I feel as though I'm being held hostage.
I have this running on a local server: https://github.com/alexta69/metube
It’s a frontend for yt-dlp and whenever I want to watch something I just download it and have a copy saved locally. It makes it harder to binge youtube feeds that the algorithm tries to shove down my throat, and that’s a good thing.
I've noticed quite a few people who used to do YouTube videos have moved to podcasts because of YT's fuckery.
Oh yeah, well ublock blocks the blocking of their blocks!
It’s strange that they go to this much effort to ban ad blockers. What’s the percentage of their user base watching on devices with ad blockers? I bet it’s low — especially when including smart tv viewers in those numbers.
Ublock was leading to errors when a YouTube link was clicked for me, but refreshing the page just loaded the video. It seems that doesn't happen anymore today. Am I the only one?
AdNauseum still works; so do many others.
I'm gonna get a load of grief for this but Brave works fine...
Same for Firefox.
Brave is not a privacy company. They are affiliated.
But I don't think switching to Firefox is good enough, since Mozilla is adding bloats to it. Use forks.
Everyone breaking the website so they can watch gigabytes of content without ads or subscription: You're not allowed to break things just because you disagree with the other party! You should find an amicable alternative!
If a website wants to run ads that's fine, I'll just remove them. If they want to gate their content behind a paywall that's fine, I'll just make a determination about whether or not what they offer is worth it.
Removing ads is not "breaking a website" if anything it's the exact opposite--restoring a cleaner layout, faster loading, less privacy invasion, and a reduced chance of malware.
Just use LibRedirect extension to redirect to an invidious instance. Take the URL of the video you want to watch and download the video using yt-dlp. Watch it on your desktop using mpv.
On Android, use Newpipe or Tubular Fork of Newpipe to download video. Better yet, use Seal with Sponsorblock flags to download and watch without sponsor mentions. Watch using mpv.
On iOS, use Brave browser...
Brave browser is a affiliated shit. Should rather use Orion Browser with uBO. But since Tim Apple recently gave the rapist a chunk of gold, the best option is switch to Android phone with a custom ROM
Adguard still works too
"I've found a workaround"
Workaround (according to article): "First of all, YouTube Premium"
The actual workaround (according to article): "Two words: uBlock Origin. Yes, I know that Google has blocked it from its Chrome Extension store, but there is still a way to get uBlock Origin on Chrome"
Seems like they are being paid by Google. Actual workaround should be to drop Chrome.