How to use adblock on YouTube [Chrome]
YouTube ads have become more common. Many years ago, few videos had ads but now you can see an ad at the start and at the end of a video. Sometimes, if a video is ten minutes long, you will see an ad in the middle of the video or you’ll see two at the start. What’s worse is that they can’t all be skipped. YouTube has also started adding ads to videos even if the original uploader hasn’t monetized them. It goes without saying that users look for ways to block these ads.
Adblock on YouTube [Chrome]
You can block ads on YouTube, even if you use Google’s own browser: Chrome. The trick is an extension. There are lots of adblocker extensions, some work and some don’t.
Adblock for Youtube
Adblock for Youtube is one of the most popular extensions for blocking ads on YouTube. It has over 10,000,000 users which is great endorsement.
- Install Adblock for Youtube from the Chrome Web Store.
- The extension will ask for quite a few different permissions.
- Play a video and it won’t show any ads.
Problems with YouTube adblockers
YouTube adblockers work well for the most part. YouTube doesn’t actively try to block them and Google doesn’t boot these types of extensions from the Chrome web store either. You can count on one or more, or several types of these extensions to always be available in the Chrome Web store.
That said, sometimes streaming is interrupted because of these extensions. If you suddenly find that YouTube videos won’t play after installing an adblocker try the following.
- Uninstall other adblockers that you have installed in Chrome. It’s best to only use one.
- Check if your antivirus might be blocking the extension and in doing so, it may be blocking YouTube as well. If you suspect Windows Defender is to blame, you can exclude the extension folder from being scanned. The extension folder is in the Chrome folder in the AppData folder. Use the extension’s ID to identify its folder. The ID can be copied from the the Chrome extensions page.
- If the extension stops working at random, you should disable and re-enable it.
- If the extension still doesn’t work, uninstall and reinstall it.
Conclusion
YouTube ads have gotten out of control. The website needs to make money and given how much video content is uploaded to the site everyday, it goes without saying that cost of the website must be astronomical. YouTube’s subscription service hasn’t quite taken off and it hasn’t been able to beat Twitch. Ads are, so far, the only way to go. That said, if you watch a particular content creator’s videos often, disable adblock for their videos to support them.
