How I block all online ads
66 comments
·December 7, 2025kylecazar
kace91
I’m the opposite. I’ve almost entirely given up on YouTube because I know that, even if I pay, I’m subjected to the consequences of ads.
Content creators have paid sections in the video itself, the format optimises grabbing your attention, some legitimate-presenting channels are just real state for product placement...
You can’t win in that platform.
jbaber
A recent feature for paid subscribers is the ability to skip frequently skipped sections which de facto skips in-video ads.
codybontecou
I see the button to skip, but is there a way to automatically skip these sections?
ericzawo
If you have a VPN, pretend you're in Moldova to enjoy ad-free, free YouTube.
stephen_cagle
Wait a minute, why is mine $13.99 a month?
But agree, totally worth it if you at all value your time.
ternus
If you don't care about music or background play, and all you want is to eliminate ads, YouTube Premium Lite is $8/month.
BLKNSLVR
I still can't believe that they paywalled the ability for the video to keep playing when the screen is turned off.
Probably a business decision that's made them a lot of money, well done.
Thank goodness for ReVanced.
baby_souffle
> Wait a minute, why is mine $13.99 a month?
Only the earliest google music people are still grandfathered in at the insanely low rate. The rest of us have been "upgraded" to at least $14/mo.
stephen_cagle
Damn, I just looked up how long I have been paying using https://payments.google.com/ . Looks like I've been paying for youtube music since October 2014. These grandfathered people must be really really early. :]
mr_windfrog
I'm using Firefox + uBlock Origin, and this combo blocks ads perfectly for me. Anyone else using the same setup?
sxde
Yes, with Sponsorblock to skip in-video ads.
Andaith
+ ghostery + pihole.
I like his suggestion of VPN via cloud. I might set up something with wireguard or tailscale for that.
I don't really use youtube, but my family does, so If anyone knows a way to get a better ui experience as a google tv app I'd be keen to hear it?
BLKNSLVR
The article links to iSponsorBlockTV: https://github.com/dmunozv04/iSponsorBlockTV
This doesn't change the UI as such, but it auto-mutes ads, and auto-skips once the skip option is available. It's a bit of a funny thing to setup, but it works great once setup.
strangelove026
what does ghostery do for you on top of ublock origin?
kgwxd
Perfect combo, where it can be used.
inesranzo
Anyone have a method for blocking ads in RSS?
I regularly read https://daringfireball.com and sick of their ads showing up in my RSS feed.
It is bad enough and distracting that ads show up on the site (thankfully Firefox and ublock origin does the job already) but on RSS blocking ads is impossible.
browningstreet
I use Inoreader and filter out the ads via keywords. Works for repetitive content too…
Larrikin
I prefer poisoning my ad profile instead of passively blocking with Ad Nauseum https://adnauseam.io/ . It uses Ublock origin under the hood. I've got my click rate set to high but not 100%.
silisili
Brave + NextDNS/ControlD is what I've found the be the ultimate ad blocking combo for the entire household(TVs, phones, computers), when balancing cost/effort.
PiHole is popular but IMO not worth the effort when the above are so cheap. There are free ad blocking DNS servers, but they aren't customizable.
mlrtime
How do you handle the constant complaints about clicking on a email link or some other tracking link and it not working?
Or do you not import any lists into nexdns?
silisili
Good question, I forgot this happens time to time. I set DNS at the router instead of devices, so just tell them to turn off wifi on their phones when that happens. It's actually slightly more complicated because of parental controls(if you care)... essentially the router gives out its own IP for DNS via DHCP, and the router itself is configured to use controlD.
On my personal computer, I don't remember ever running into this, but if I did I'd just override resolv.conf temporarily.
tartoran
Firefox + uBlock origin and i'm blessed with peaceful browsing experience.
jenadine
To block adds in android apps, there is DNS66 available on f-droid. https://f-droid.org/packages/org.jak_linux.dns66/
thunderbong
Thanks. From that page -
> NOTE: Dvelopment has stopped. The newer dev.clombardo.dnsnet continues development.
DNSNet
donkey_brains
This seems like a lot of work. I just point my router at AdGuard DNS and that takes care of all ads on every device on my network. No filter lists, nothing to host, completely free.
Only caveat is it doesn’t block ads served by the content provider itself e.g. some streaming services, but from what I hear those are difficult to block with any approach.
keithnz
as per the response to my comment, try SponsorBlock
twodave
I actually wonder if the whole anti-ad movement is moving in the wrong direction. And I’m right there with the author running a pi-hole, but I wonder if it would be better to have an extension that will click all of the ads in a way that is invisible to the user. Make all those companies burn thru their budgets for no gain.
odie5533
Big players like YouTube can create detection for that behavior. So it would only harm small sites that are trying to run ads to get by.
notpushkin
I don’t think it harms the publishers. If the ad network (well, Google) does detect it, I think they just won’t pay for the “fraudulent”¹ clicks? (And in best case scenario, you’re actually helping small sites!)
Advertisers on the other hand will pay for nothing, yes. Some of them are small businesses. I wonder if there’s a way to click on big corp ads only...
Edit: ¹ – added scare quotes, see https://github.com/dhowe/AdNauseam/wiki/FAQ#how-does-adnause...
twodave
That assumes two things: 1. That such a tool couldn’t be limited to the big players (it could) and 2. That “small sites trying to run ads to get by,” aren’t part of the problem. I can understand why someone would believe this, but I believe the web would be a better place without them. These sites are all pretty much designed (poorly) around their ads, which limits their usefulness. Have you tried looking up recipes online? A bread recipe with 5 ingredients is 30 pages long!!!
array_key_first
You'd have to, like, spawn a background browser or profile or something to capture the click to prevent tracking or even zero-click exploits.
twodave
For sure, it would be technically challenging. Especially if the click requires use of a secure cookie. But it doesn’t have to be perfect to be effective, either, at least at first.
coffeecoders
I have an Apple TV and I’ve been running iSponsorBlockTV [1] on my Synology box for a while. It auto-skips the sponsored segments and with Youtube premium, it gives me a clean, ad-free setup.
I can’t stand those in-video intros or sponsored promos, where I’m suddenly pitched a random VPN or productivity app.
beloch
There's nothing too unexpected in this post. Firefox + uBlock is pretty much standard now. It's been impossible to recommend Chrome ever since Google moved to manifest v3, which can only be described as deliberate anti-privacy enshittification. The recaptcha solver is starting to become niche, since cloudflare has really taken over (for better or worse).
I would add one more useful tool though: A user-agent switcher[1]. There are still some websites that insist you must use Chrome (or sometimes Edge). They will block you if you try to use them with Firefox, even though they work perfectly well and sometimes even better on Firefox than they do on Chrome. A user-agent switcher gives you the option to simply uninstall Chrome for good.
e.g. My ISP provides a website for streaming live TV (e.g. sports) that claims to be incompatible with Firefox, but actually runs better (i.e. fewer glitches) on it than it does on Chrome. However, it refuses to load on Firefox unless you use a user-agent switcher.
Why do people write websites that refuse to run based on user-agent checks? By all means, warn users that you couldn't be arsed to test things on more than one browser, but why go that extra mile to brick your site when other browsers probably support it quite well?
[1]https://addons.mozilla.org/en-CA/firefox/addon/user-agent-st...
mikestew
HN title optimizer has once again stripped the “How” from the beginning of the title.
efilife
what's the point of this?
JadeNB
"I block all online ads" is a less useful title than "How I block all online ads", and pointing out when the title mangler has made the title worse serves as a request to moderators to fix it if they agree. Which they did here, I believe for a net win.
efilife
I meant what's the point of truncating the title like this
I am so reliant on YouTube Premium that I forget people even see ads on there. I watch an awful lot of long form interviews, lectures, podcasts -- most downloaded for offline. It's the easiest $8/month of all my subscriptions.