Yeah I’m a pretty big fan of ‘streamlined stuff that just works as intended’. That’s why I own Apple products to begin with and I basically apply that ethos to everything else in life. So I pay for YouTube , get a better experience and I don’t have to mess with anything.
I use the Safari extension Vinegar, which is paid but universal from macOS to iOS. It replaces the YouTube player by the default HTML5 one, preventing Google from getting events that trigger ads.
I do but honestly 18€/month (family plan, we’re 2) is a bit pricey considering that I mostly use YouTube Music, I use YouTube mainly to listen to some content before to sleep and won’t want loud ads at 3AM lol
I’d rather pay for Apple One and get music, storage, TV and some games for the same price
I’ve paid for YouTube for years and the price has definitely gotten out of hand, I used a VPN to sign up for it in Turkey a few months ago and it’s like 10% of what I was previously paying, only a couple dollars a month.
I'm using uYouPlus via sidestore/wireguard configuration. It was a bit painful to setup and I still need to spend 5sec per week to 'Refresh" it but I think it's definitely worth it in order to have an exact clone of Youtube without ads + background play :) that's at least for me as I don't want to settle for any alternatives
I have to second vinegar. It’s absolutely perfect in all my Apple devices. It works by switching the YouTube player to a much faster HTML5 video player. So it’s much faster, you get iOS’s built scrubbing, PiP, and ad-blocking.
There’s a learning curve but it’s hard to beat AltStore with https://qnblackcat.github.io/AltStore/ apps. Same experience as the official apps, but with ads removed. It also should defeat all tbt Adblock detection YouTube is trialing now.
It's beyond worth it to just pay them the money. I kind of hate that they won, but this way I never see an ad no matter where I watch, and the creators I enjoy still get money out of my views. I would pay for more services if they had a No Ads option. (I might have gotten convinced to get Twitter Blue if it had 0 ads instead of just halving them...)
I used Video Lite for like a year before I sideloaded uYou+. Video lite is your best choice without sideloading. No video ads and they play in the background without premium, though you get in-app ads past the free trial
I just tried it and it looks actually like a really good solution. But it’s just using the YouTube website with probably an ad blocker as well so I’m not sure if that’s gonna survive if Google decides to do something about it.
It’s also a bit sad to have the app’s ads instead, but still. I think it looks promising so far.
I use video lite and it’s awesome. $1.50 every 3 months gets you no ads too. I’m sure YT will kill these off at some point but it’s a great solution for now.