You will agree that when you open YouTube and want to watch some video, a lot of ads are distracting and annoying to watch in the middle of the video. Now I'll show you a few ways to get rid of YouTube ads on any device, from PC to your Smart TV. We'll take Google Chrome as an example, but in general these methods work on most browsers and operating systems.

Watch the video version or skip to read the textual guide. Let's go!

How To Block YouTube Ads? All methods, Step-by-Step.

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YouTube Premium

The easiest and most effective way to get rid of ads on YouTube is to sign up for the paid "YouTube Premium" version. By paying for the platform every month, you are guaranteed to get rid of ads. The subscription can be for personal use for three and a half dollars, or a family account for five dollars a month, in the second case, the account can be used by five people.

The paid version of YouTube Premium not only blocks ads, but also has a number of additional features and benefits. Such as:

  1. No ads. Absolutely all ads will be blocked, even popup banners and ads.
  2. Ability to save videos. If you liked the video or want to watch it offline, you can just download it.
  3. Ability to listen to music on YouTube Music. Paid account gives you the opportunity to listen to a very large list of music, about 50 thousand songs. Which you can also download and listen offline, transfer to any device compatible with Google Play Music.
  4. Ability to save videos and music. If you really liked a video or song you can download and watch, listen, in the case of music, offline.
  5. Background mode. When the user wants to lock the screen, music or video will not stop playing.
  6. YouTube Originals. These can be series or movies that are created specifically for YouTube.

So YouTube Premium has quite a few advantages, in addition to getting rid of annoying ads, you also have access to a large selection of music on YouTube Music, which can be a good alternative to Spotify.

Adblock Plus extension

Let's see how to block ads on YouTube using the Adblock Plus extension. And so, start our browser Google Chrome, open the menu, go to "More tools", click "Extensions". After that, click on "Main menu" and open the Chrome Web Store.

In the search box enter "Adblock Plus", choose it, click "Add to Chrome", and click "Add extension", our extension is installed. If you go to the Adblock Plus manufacturer's website, we can see which browsers this extension can be installed on.

Now let's check how our new YouTube extension works. First, we need to disable the extension, under "Extensions" and enable it. Then go back to YouTube, reload the page, run some video and we see no ads. The extension also blocks ads in a separate YouTube app on your PC and laptop.

There are quite a few similar extensions to block ads on YouTube such as: AdBlock, uBlock Origin, Ghostery, AdGuard, AdBlocker Ultimate, whose reviews you can read and see comparative tests on our website "thinkmobiles.com", and choose for yourself the best one.

YouTube ad blocking on iOS devices

On a computer, it's easy to disable ads. You need to install a special browser extension and you will be protected from ads and pop-ups. As for iOS devices, it's a bit more complicated.

For iOS users, there is a separate pop-up blocker function that you can select in the built-in Safari browser. Unfortunately, only the ability to load malicious ad scripts when browsing the web page is blocked. It can't affect the YouTube app in any way. But there is a way that will solve the issue of how to block YouTube ads on your phone - third-party blocker apps.

There are several different ad-blocking apps in the App Store. They are all similar to each other, but their effectiveness is different. Let's install AdGuard. Once the blocker is installed on iOS, you need to activate it in the settings. To do this, you need to:

  1. Open the settings and select the "Safari" line
  2. Turn on the "Extensions" function
  3. Turn on all our new settings that we just installed
  4. Restart the device and start Safari again

Next, in the Safari search engine enter "YouTube" and go to the site itself. As you can see there are no more ads. But in order to use the browser version of YouTube conveniently, you need to create a shortcut on the desktop. To do this, click share "Add to Home Screen" and give it any name you want. In this way we have YouTube ad-free on our iOS device. But it's worth noting that the YouTube app itself does not block ads.

Blocking ads on Android

For Android users, we will look at several ways to block ads on YouTube:

  1. Adblock Browser

On Android, there is an option to install ad-free browsers. Google Play provides a wide range of such browsers, but we'll focus on Adblock Browser. All you need to do is download this app to your android and watch any YouTube videos.

To make it easier to use, we can add a shortcut to the home screen, just like with the iOS version. Go to our Adblock Browser, press "Settings" and select "Add to Home screen", give us a name and press "Add". Now we can conveniently use YouTube and watch our favorite videos without ads. And just like on iOS, the YouTube app doesn't block ads.

With this browser you can block up to 99% of ads appearing in different types of banners and formats. You have the ability to control where ads should appear and where they should not appear, anytime you want with the ad switcher.

  1. Skip Ads app

The next option to block ads on YouTube on your Android device is the Skip ads application. This app is for users who frequently use the YouTube video hosting service. Here you can quickly and without complicated manipulations skip ads, going straight to the viewing of the desired video.

This application is a faithful assistant that is always at your fingertips. Interacting with it will be as easy and simple as possible. The interface is designed to be extremely easy to understand. You can download it from Google Play.

  1. AdGuard for Android

Another good way to remove YouTube ads on Android is to install the AdGuard app. To start with, the full-featured AdGuard blocker for Android is not available on Google Play. The app is only available as a separate installer on the developer's website.

You have to pay about 70 cents per month to get AdGuard to block ads on YouTube, but there is a 14 day trial. The great thing about the AdGuard app is that it blocks ads not only on YouTube, but on your entire device, browsers, games, apps.

  1. Block YouTube ads on Smart TV

If we talk about Smart TV, there are a few options available here: installing the Smart YouTube TV application, and the most common, using the AdGuard service.

The only thing is that it's not embedded in the application, like browser extensions, but works through the network settings, with its help we'll block ads in YouTube through the DNS server. And that's a good thing, because it allows you to block ads not just for individual applications, but for their entire complex.

Changing the network settings can scare a lot of people, especially those who have already had a negative experience with similar experiments. In fact, there is nothing to be afraid of - the changes you make can be rolled back at any time. But let's move on to specifics.

We only need to enter a single line in the settings of our Smart TV. To block ads, we need to change the network settings of the IP address DNS server. We will use the DNS server from the AdGuard service. Then go to your Smart TV network settings and in the manual settings we will enter the AdGuard DNS blocker instead of our default one. It is better to keep the old address, just in case.

Write the new value in the DNS-server settings: 176.103.130.135. Well, if you need to block adult content, then write the following: 176.103.130.132. As a result of the changes made, ads on YouTube and in the browser are blocked. You can also change the DNS-server settings in your router, and then ads will be blocked on all devices in your home network.

Conclusion

All of the above ways to remove ads only work with third-party apps, so you can only watch the native YouTube app without ads on a paid account. This is because to remove ads, the blocker needs to launch a MITM attack, which replaces secure connections, such as HTTPS, with the app's certificates. Whereas YouTube does not trust third-party certificates. Therefore, the video will not play. The choice is left to the user, watch videos from third-party apps or subscribe to YouTube Premium.