How to watch YouTube without ads

There is no doubt in saying that Youtube is the biggest video streaming platform in the planet. Even though its extremely free, it comes with its own set of structures and business model. One of them is the ad revenue model. There’s a slight chance you don’t know how it works but in case if you don’t, basically youtube is free for everyone but they make money by putting ads in videos and paying the creator a small cut for his part.

Placing the ads is creators choice as long as the video is certain minutes long. So, if the creator is doing well, that means a lot of eyeballs are on their videos. More eyeballs, more ads, more money. You get the gist now. But we can all agree that Youtube ads are annoying.

So, even though its free, sitting through advertisements can be really annoying. So, what can we do to watch Youtube videos without advertisements? Well, there are a couple of things you could do. Let’s start from legitimate solutions and work our way down from there.

Get Youtube Premium

Youtube Premium is no trick. It’s the subscription service for a monthly cost that Youtube offers with a list of features that are not available free of cost for everyone one. If you are using iOS device, this is the best solution I could offer until Apple loses the battle regarding sideloading apps.

These are the features that Youtube Premium offers to its subscribers.

• Watch ad-free videos : Obviously, this is the mainfeature that lets you watch millions of videos without ads at the beginning or during the video which includes video overlay ads. Also, any sort of third-party banner and search ads are also hidden from you.
• Download videos to watch offline : This is a feature that lets you download videos and even playlists which you can play later when you are not connected to the interent. The Download content feature works for both YouTube and YouTube Music app. 
• Background Play : This is probably the feature that I personally enjoy while using Youtube Premium. You could play music or podcasts and you can could lock the screen and it still continues to play in the background and could save some battery. That’s not the case if you are using free version. You are expected to keep the screen active and not allowed to use other apps when that happens.
• Youtube Music Premium : This is a separate feature that is bundled alongside the Youtube Premium package. Its Youtube’s version of Spotify. You will have access to millions of songs and videos in the Youtube Music without any ads. As I said earlier, you could also download songs and videos for offline listening which is not available in the free verison at all. You could also turn on the audio-only mode to listen to music without download the video for streaming.

• Youtube Originals : These are original content produced by Youtube which I’m not a big fan of, to be honest. I love Retro Tech by MKBHD, but other than that its pretty normal content.

Get Vanced Pro / Pure Tuber

PureTuber (formerly known as Vanced Pro) is another great solution free of cost to watch Youtube videos without any advertisements. Also, Pure Tuber gives all the Youtube Premium features free of charge. I would say its a great solution. Pure Tuber is a sideloading solution available for Android. If you are not aware, Sideloading is a way to install an app other than from Play Store.

1. To install it, go to YouTube Vanced.
2. Click Download. You will get an installer file with an apk extension.
3. Send it to your Android phone and install it.

The PureTuber app looks something like in the screenshot below.

As you can see it has good similarities to the original Youtube app. You could login, maintain all your channel subscriptions, use background play, add and read video comments, downloads to watch later, use personal library and many more. Its a whole package deal like the official Youtube Premium.

From the times I have personally used it, as a software developer, I was able to see that its well developed to give a similar experience to the original Youtube app.

Period(.) trick to avoid watching Youtube ads

This is super simple and please mind that this works only on the browser. You might have to try something else if you are looking for the mobile platform. I’d recommend Pure Tuber for that.

1. Open Youtube in your preferred browser. It works the same in all the browsers.
2. Click on any video that you want to watch.
3. All you have to do is add a (.) period to the video url next to Youtube.com. So, a video url normally would look something like this. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VzYjZnOkLCY)
4. So, after adding a period (.), it would become this (https://www.youtube.com./watch?v=VzYjZnOkLCY)

So, you might be wondering as to how this work. Its a little technical but if you are interested, its something to learn. So, what happens is, normally your link is broken into pieces and the host name (youtube.com) becomes different when you add a period to it. So, when youtube tries to get the advertisement, the hostnames won’t match and it would skip the advertisement part and shows the video directly.

You can apply this trick in your mobile as well if you open youtube in Chrome mobile or safari or any browser for that matter. Obviously, that takes away the smooth experience that the Youtube app provides but that’s the cost you have to pay for the no ads experience.

Also, the problem is that, you need to manually put in the period (.) in every video you open which, if you ask me, isn’t very practical at all.

Adding Add blockers

Ad Blockers are chrome extensions that skips the advertisements whenever you open a youtube video. They are available for free and the one I use is Adblock for Youtube™. It has more than 9 millions users and the reviews are almost always positive.

Install the Chrome extension and then make sure its enabled. That’s about it. After than whenever you open any video, even if you don’t have Youtube premium, the advertisements are skipped automatically.