On PC and Android: Firefox with the following add-ons, ublock and SponsorBlock
On Android TV: SmartTube
Best option for me until now.
this post was submitted on 12 Jul 2025
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Get an adblocker. It is cheaper, and still less ads.
Most people watch Youtube through their tv's app. You'd need an 300 dollar Nvidia Shield.
Or an old laptop.
Even then it's still android store apps, and incredibly hard to side load.
Oh, and if you didn't know, the shield now displays ads all over the place, even the app selection screen. Yes, the $300 piece of hardware throws ads in your face and there is no way to control the behavior.
You can install a different launcher. I use Projectivy
Buy an ad-subsidized machine, be forced to watch ads, unfortunately.
The $300 NVidia Shield also throws ads in your face, and you can't turn them off.
It's lose/lose.
an old used dell optiplex is typically cheaper and not ad subsidized.
What about pi hole?
Pi-hole does not block YT ads. They state that clearly on their site. It kicks ass though and I’m happy running it for 5+ years. Highly recommend.
I haven't been on YouTube's actual website in over a year and I use alt APIs like Invidious and Tubular to watch but I still pay for YT Premium lol
As awful as it is, YouTube's disdain for its viewers isn't really the big dealbreaker for me. It's their disdain for their content creators. If creators were treated like first-class citizens as much as ad sellers and copyright holders holders are, I'd absolutely subscribe to Premium. Creators get three strikes, but copyright trolls can submit as many bogus claims as they want. Ad companies get to dictate what videos their ads can and can't appear on, but creators have to put up with whatever ads YouTube decides should run on their videos. All this despite creators being far more critical to YouTube's success than ads.
Firefox + uBlock Origin = no youtube ads
Add SponsorBlock and Enhancer for Youtube and you will have (some) peace. There are also addons that remove suggestions, but you can do that with UBO anyway
DeArrow, from the SponsorBlock creator, fixes thumbnails and titles of videos too.
No longer working for me. Only way it now works if I'm not logged in to YT.
Don't log in to youtube
not everyone hates yt reccommended algorithms
I log in because it keeps a history of previously watched videos as well as playlists. It's a useful feature to give up for many folks.
"doctor, it hurts when I do this"
"then don't do that"
I've never had any youtube subscription.
Why would I pay for that garbage?
Glad you got away from it.
I definitely don't want to watch ads but would still like to support the creators I enjoy. And apparently views from Premium users pay quite well compared to ad plays.
Then join their patrion or whatever service most youtubers have, and you kbow the money goes directly to the creator
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I uninstalled the app and just watch videos on the Firefox mobile browser now. Not only does uBlock Origin block all the ads, but the interface is less buggy, and it can play audio through the lock-screen (a basic feature that Google inexplicably locks behind a paywall). There are a few drawbacks, like playlists not auto-playing, but generally it's a much better experience than the official app or chrome.
like playlists not auto-playing
It's probably a setting on your end. It does do that on my end with the same combo.
It might just be when the playlist is collapsed or the lock-screen is on. I did just test it with the tab open and the playlist expanded and it seemed to work fine. Either way, I rarely use playlists, so it doesn't come up much.
NewPipe on Android works pretty well most of the time.
My preferred method is a python script that takes a YouTube video in my clipboard and uses yt-dlp to download it to a folder that my Plex server watches.
There are easier ways to achive this, but I like the manual approach. It means I don't vegetate on the sofa, scrolling through everything. Also, it means my hard drive doesn't fill up with videos I'll never get around to watching.
I use a similar approach but i subscribe to channels with pinchflat and it downloads them to a folder for jellyfin. I like that i only get my channels and cant keep "exploring".
(Re)vanced ftw!
I've pretty much exclusively use Revanced (and the original Vanced before that) to watch YouTube over the last 10ish years. 0 ads, sponsor block, remove UI elements I'll never use like the upload button, force a preferred video resolution instead of 'auto' never working (seprate ones for wifi/data).
Vanced never once failed on me; Revanced has failed to play videos twice in 5 years, right after YouTube updates, but reinstalling the latest version immediately fixed that both times.
This sounds like a problem I'm too PipePiped to understand.
I don't know why anyone would willingly pay a penny to a power hungry corporation like Google.
Thank you! I can't get ReVanced to work on my phone and this is a good alternative
You're welcome!
I also tried Revanced and I just didn't feel like bothering with the hassle. It's probably more seamless though.
Revanced v19.something stopped working a while ago but I was just using newpipe. Just patched 20.13.41 and its working great.
Firefox mobile + origin also works on android
If youtube premium added a feature that filters out AI created slop, it may be worth paying for. I don't know what happened but the amount of it on youtube now is unbelievable.
If YT had a simple ad-free tier that was £10 a month for a family, I would gladly pay for it. But as it stands, they want £20+ just so my wife and I can watch videos on Apple TV without having to tolerate a ridiculous amount of adverts.
So fuck 'em. She watches on her PC with a bunch of adblockers, and I download what I want to watch into my Plex folder. And they get sweet fuck all out of me instead.
I pay but it's mostly for music streaming, we use the heck out of that, and streaming is a choose your poison thing. Google Play Music was the best streaming app ever built, YouTube music not as good but still ahead of Spotify for what we listen to. The ad free YouTube is a side effect.
I pay for it but don't use on anything but the TV...
Higher bit rate is worth the money
But god dam. I hate paying Google for it
Look into Playlet if you have a Roku. I think YouTube is constantly fighting against this one, so I’ll often run into errors when trying to select videos from directly in the app, but it seems to work great for me casting videos from my phone to the TV app. No YouTube ads, and it also includes SponsorBlock to skip sponsor spots in the videos.
I pay for a YT subscription, but I use ReVanced on top of that. I can't stand the ad's on top of sponsored segments on top of the shitty, non-customizable, UI.
...my wife has a youtube subscription while i don't; the contrast between our experiences is profound...
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