I’m sure many of you are already aware that YouTube has been rolling out anti-adblock detection for Chrome users for a few weeks now.
Today, as a long time Firefox user with the fantastic uBlock Origin extension installed, I got my first anti-adblock popup on the platform. Note that this may not happen to you personally for a while, but it is inevitably coming for everyone.
Thankfully, the fine folks at uBlock Origin have already advised a simple workaround (on Reddit, yuck!) which I will duplicate in a simplified form below for your convenience. I have tested it on Firefox and it is working fine for me (so far).
PLEASE READ AND FOLLOW ALL OF THE INSTRUCTIONS IN THIS POST.
Update uBO to the latest version (1.52.0+) . <== The extension itself, for technical improvements. You do this in your browser.
Remove your custom config / reset to defaults. <== This means removing your custom filters (or disabling My filters) and disabling ALL additional lists you’ve enabled. It might be quicker to make a backup of your config and restore to defaults instead.
Force an update of your Filter Lists. <== This is within the extension. Lists are what determine what’s blocked or not.
How to update Filter lists: Click 🛡️ uBO’s icon > the ⚙ Dashboard button > the Filter lists pane > the 🕘 Purge all caches button > the 🔃 Update now button.
Disable all other extensions AND your browser’s built-in blockers. <== No need to uninstall, just disable them. They might interfere with our solutions.
Make sure you follow all 4 points above. If you’re seeing the message, it’s likely due to your custom config (either additional lists or separate filters in My filters).
Restarting your browser afterwards may help too.
Once you’ve gotten rid of the issue on default settings, you can slowly start restoring your config (if you really need it). Do it gradually, to easier find out what was causing the issue in the first place. Once you find the culprit, simply skip it in your config.
If you want to use Enhancer for YouTube*, you have to* disable its adblocking*.*
youtube seems to be making changes as fast as the ublock people are so if it doesn’t seem to work you might have to wait for the ublock volunteers to catch up again.
Invidious works for me (https://invidious.io/). It blocks ads by default but I can imagine youtube starting to integrate the ads in the videos like streaming services that you just can’t skip
I think because people may have added additional filters manually that might trigger the ad block detection, but that’s just a guess. The guide was written by the uBlock Origin developers so I assume they have a reason for that step. But you can try without that step, it might well still work, especially in stock configuration.
Thx. Yeah I figured that’s the only reasonable explanation. They probably want easy instructions so it works for every messed up configuration without them getting lot’s of support requests.
But I like being taught what I do and why. Not just: click on this, click on that and it’ll work somehow.
There will have to be a better solution to the cat and mouse game than just ublock filters. YouTube can change the pop-up faster than people can (easily) keep up. I got to watch one video but the next time I wanted to watch something, it didn’t work again.
That’s way too much hassle. I guess, when the anti-adblock kicks in on my devices, I’ll just stop watching YouTube. I have tons of better stuff to do anyway.
I made a user script that will make a button on each video which jump you to piped, that way you can continue to use YT to manage your subscriptions and see your feed, but you never have to watch to video there
They’ll have to find a way to shut down all the piped instances too… its a losing battle for them quite honestly as people will always find ways to pirate their signal as people always have found ways around stuff like this. At the same time they take a very loud, very smart minority of their users and turn them into pure haters, for no real benefit to themselves.
For those using Safari, a simple custom browser stylesheet with a few styles is all you need, and is undetectable, as anti-adblock works with javascript, so no pesky “Why you blocking the ads? Mimimimimi…”
I think this should work with any browser that allows you to apply a custom user stylesheet. This used to be normal in the past, but Chrome took it away, and I don’t know if Firefox still allows it. Copied from a reply I put in another post:
Ok, do this: download this stylesheet: http://damianvila.com/external/fuckyoutube/hider.css
Save it somewhere where you can find it easily.
Open Safari and go to Safari > Settings > Advanced.
In the “Style sheet” dropdown, select “Other” and navigate to the style sheet.
For maximum effect, do this while you have YouTube open… :D
The stylesheet is organized in a way that you can comment/uncomment blocks to customize what you want/don’t want to see on YouTube. Right now it has my preferences, but if you want to keep something, or hide something I had viewable, just comment/uncomment as you wish. The ads part is clearly marked, and the rest is menu things and navigation elements (I don’t need most of those). I also hate Shorts with a passion, so I hide those too. Keep in mind that this can only be used in the desktop version. It doesn’t work for mobile or any of the apps. Sadly, you’ll have to suffer with the shitty ads there. But at least, you can have a decent experience while watching on your Mac. And since it’s a user stylesheet, and has no Javascript whatsoever, YT has no way ob detecting or blocking it, so they can do nothing (other than changing the names of the titles, but that is easily fixed).
Have fun.
P.S: you’ll notice that sometimes, where there should be an ad, you’ll see like a blink in the video. Don’t worry, it’s normal. The video will continue without problems, and you won’t see the ad.
P.S.2: This stylesheet sometimes blocks shitty Google (or other sites) pages (because people are assholes and put things there that shouldn’t be there). If you happen to find yourself in this situation (a page that is suspiciously blank, or don’t allow to scroll, or behaves oddly) you can temporarily change the sylesheet to “None Selected”, and see if the problem is fixed. When you’re finished, remember to switch back to the stylesheet, or you’ll have a shock when you go to YouTube… XDDDDD
They are doing same stuff as the other companies, but are better at PR.
If you use their products you are even more locked down, but for some reason that’s more acceptable than on pc. I think many apple fans are wearing rosy tinted glasses and don’t notice any of that for some reason.
For example there was a big deal recently by Google adding attestation mechanism that likely will be used to prevent ad blockers blocking ads.
Safari already has this implemented.
Apple is a snobby company with terrible overpriced repair. All of their products are heavily locked down wildly expensive milled aluminium.
Sure the new m1 chip is good but the amount of vendor lock in is too much and of course mac OS is a trash bsd distro.
TLDR: overpriced products, trashy company.
Thanks. Their repair pricing is obnoxious, I’ll give you that, but their pricing model really isn’t ridiculous otherwise. For the performance you get it’s great. I’m willing to bet most companies source their alumni from the same place, but my only genuine issue is that MacOS is a great piece of software. I still like Catalina/Mojave myself, but the newer variations are still good. Do you have specific gripes with the OS?
tbh, I’ve only had limited experience with MacOS, and it wasn’t very great (compared to my Linux setup), and afaik this is the general consensus among technically inclined people.
About the pricing model, it’s ridiculous is everyway, not just for repairs. Like, you can get a laptop/PC with almost double the spec compared to what apple has to offer at that price.
All this is said without considering the fact that apple stuff costs almost twice the price in my country (India).
but their pricing model really isn’t ridiculous otherwise.
I mean, $1600 for a phone is ridiculous. I’ve had iPhones for the past 12 years, but it never even crossed my mind to buy the latest model. It’s just speculation at that point.
Not OP, but genuine answer: because I loathe being forced into their way of doing things. Every little thing on the Mac seems engineered with an “our way or the highway” mentality, that leaves no room for other (frequently, better) ways of achieving anything.
Adding to that, window/task management is an absolute nightmare (things that have worked certain ways basically since System 6 on monochrome Mac Classic machines, and haven’t improved), and despite all claims to the contrary, its BSD-based underpinnings are just different enough to Linux’s GNU toolset to make supposed compatibility (or the purported “develop on Mac, deploy on Linux” workflow) a gross misadventure.
I just find the experience frustrating, unpleasant, and always walk away from a Mac feeling irritated.
(For context: > 20 year exclusively Linux user. While it’s definitely not always been a smooth ride, I seldom feel like I’m fighting against the computer to get it to do what I want, which is distinctly not my experience with Apple products)
Also if you want an “our way or the highway” attitude you can buy a PC, install a gnome distro, and not pay like 1000 bucks more for 16G more RAM that you won’t be able to use in another machine because Apple locks everything down for reasons that definitely don’t involve unadulterated greed.
I got my first mac 7 years ago, the 2017 macbook air. I put that lovely machine through its paces, even got it to run Destiny 2 and gta 5 at one point. Until last year I was issued a work laptop and it’s windows. I have a windows desktop at home, but Mac just works with my slightly chaotic flow better.
I think the whole USB-C business is the worst example of an axe to grind with Apple. Who says that standard must be the only one? The EU have forced something that didn’t need to be forced. I’ve got a household full of Apple gadgets and no USB-C, so when we do update something later than iPhone 15 and it has that connector, it will be the only one, and no other charges will work with it expect any adapters I might have from C to A.
I just don’t get it that it was that important.
Apple actively makes device designs more difficult to repair. Everything is either glued or soldered together.
They purposely make it more difficult to get tools and parts. Some tools are proprietary.
Performance per dollar is terrible. The better, slightly more repairable machines cost a ton of money. Spend the same amount of money on a regular PC and you would have a beast of a machine.
Apple sues and/or attacks anyone who tries to help people repair their devices.
They purposely push out OS changes that make older devices less usable.
That’s not even including the treatment of employees or condition of the factories where Apple devices are built. I don’t know as much about that. But I can definitely comment on the above after managing iPads and Macbooks in a corporate environment.
Personally, I don’t like the way Apple does business. Primarily, that you aren’t just buying the product, you’re buying into their ecosystem. Almost everything apple does well only realistically works of you stay confined to their stuff. And you’re fucked if you wanted compatibility with older software. Remember when Apple just decided 32 bit was dead to them?
And while their hardware is pretty good, it costs wayyyyy too much. I just got a new pc with the top end amd cpu and an rtx 4090, and it cost under half what a Mac pro costs. I seriously doubt their ARM desktop chips are really that much better. Maybe if I were to buy a Mac and use it the rest of my life without upgrades, the efficiency of using an ARM cpu would save me the difference on electricity?
I’ve been fine for a while, then as soon as I read this post, I start getting the warning. Time to move to an alternative. Might try and revitalize my old newsboat/yt-dl set up again
PSA: skirting their attempts to block ad blockers if you have a Google account you would rather keep may be unwise.
Google has been known for banning people for stupid crap, and this checks all the boxes.
While they were silent on this topic there was a gentlemen’s agreement that you could block ads. But now that they have voiced their opinion the jig is up.
I’d recommend people to use an alternative account if they are going to block anyway and they want to keep their gmail.
Also please note that just using an incognito window or different container may not cut it. Google is not above using your IP or browser fingerprinting to identify you.
If you have Google on your phone (and you probably do) and both your phone and your PC are connecting from the same IP that already narrows it down for them considerably.
You don’t even have to access youtube on the phone. Google Services Framework reports everything about your phone all the time even if you don’t actually do anything on it to do with Google. Simply having an Android phone at home and connected to the internet at the same time as your PC will identify you.
I’m not saying resistance is futile… but Google is one of the largest privacy predators out there and this thing will get worse before it will get better. Expect some fallout.
I have heard of them banning people from YouTube over this, but I have not heard of them banning them from all of their other Google services. I’m not saying you’re lying here, just saying I personally have not seen any reports on this (but I have seen reports of YouTube-only bans).
I pay for Drive and have a ton of shit on there, and I use gmail as my primary email (not my only email) for a lot of logins and such. My plan is to just stop using YouTube, they better not ban my whole account because I use an ad blocker.
The really frustrating thing for me was I was paying for YouTube Premium until they jacked the price up AGAIN and then I was like nope, I’m out. I can live just fine without YouTube and its horrible ads.
This sucks, I have a LOT of online accounts that use that email as the login email (not federated, just as the login) and it’s going to be a giant PITA to change them all. Thanks, Google.
Just do a bit at a time. I even installed a desktop email manager to help me with it, since it’s easier to switch between the two accounts in a single application versus having the two webpages up.
Also, if you use a password manager you’ll be able to filter your database by email since email address = account login credential in most cases.
Thank you for the tips and suggestions! I have already started the process and thankfully, I do use Bitwarden and it does indeed make filtering the accounts easier.
I’m glad I almost never use federated accounts for logins. I understand the convenience and security of using them, so I’m not against them in concept…but then there’s the putting too many eggs in one basket risk with doing it.
For things like ReVanced, they have been disabling Youtube per account. So what you are saying may have some weight if they feel like that’s the next logical step
While I have seen a few instances like this on Reddit, they were always at least 6 month old posts, and none that’s from the recent ad crisis. So yeah, not much to conclude here imo.
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reVanced and SmartTubeNext are the way. Both are still working flawlessly.
Also Clipious and Invidious
reVanced stopped working for most people a while ago unfortunately
You’re thinking of YouTube Vanced. Revanced works perfectly fine and is constantly updated.
Finally some fucking good news 😤
I switched to FreeTube and it’s pretty good so far. I’m missing a few things and better browser integration but it’s great.
Good thing I use invidious instead of their official front-end
youtube seems to be making changes as fast as the ublock people are so if it doesn’t seem to work you might have to wait for the ublock volunteers to catch up again.
I’d honestly just stop using YouTube rather than deal with all this crap. Fuck Google
Invidious works for me (https://invidious.io/). It blocks ads by default but I can imagine youtube starting to integrate the ads in the videos like streaming services that you just can’t skip
if its not dynamic or follows some pattern, something like sponsorblock would easily skip them
Why remove all the filters and not just update?
I think because people may have added additional filters manually that might trigger the ad block detection, but that’s just a guess. The guide was written by the uBlock Origin developers so I assume they have a reason for that step. But you can try without that step, it might well still work, especially in stock configuration.
Thx. Yeah I figured that’s the only reasonable explanation. They probably want easy instructions so it works for every messed up configuration without them getting lot’s of support requests. But I like being taught what I do and why. Not just: click on this, click on that and it’ll work somehow.
Cope Goolag.
I got a notice that was closable with an upper-left corner ❎️ after which I couldn’t reproduce the pop-up and watched videos unimpeded.
I’ll continue to report developments.
I’ve gotten it once per day now 3 days in a row
The pop ups doesn’t show up if your ublock origin is correctly updated.
Pop-ups will return at some point. In that case you will have to purge and update your filters again. Had to do that a few times in the past days.
There will have to be a better solution to the cat and mouse game than just ublock filters. YouTube can change the pop-up faster than people can (easily) keep up. I got to watch one video but the next time I wanted to watch something, it didn’t work again.
That’s way too much hassle. I guess, when the anti-adblock kicks in on my devices, I’ll just stop watching YouTube. I have tons of better stuff to do anyway.
I’m trying piped and invidious for now, but I like where you’re going with this. It’s a good opportunity to kick my stupid youtube habit.
I made a user script that will make a button on each video which jump you to piped, that way you can continue to use YT to manage your subscriptions and see your feed, but you never have to watch to video there
https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/477267-youtube-add-watch-on-piped-button-to-each-video
google admins arw here reading all this mate. i give that solution 15 months max
They’ll have to find a way to shut down all the piped instances too… its a losing battle for them quite honestly as people will always find ways to pirate their signal as people always have found ways around stuff like this. At the same time they take a very loud, very smart minority of their users and turn them into pure haters, for no real benefit to themselves.
Good there’s a more official way now, I just added the entire part to the custom filter list previously.
Safari with Ghostery, AdGuard, AdBlock, 1Blocker, and Vinegar, and I am doing a-ok.
For those using Safari, a simple custom browser stylesheet with a few styles is all you need, and is undetectable, as anti-adblock works with javascript, so no pesky “Why you blocking the ads? Mimimimimi…”
Go on… As an avid non-apple\mac household I would install safari pretty quickly just to watch ad-less YouTube.
I think this should work with any browser that allows you to apply a custom user stylesheet. This used to be normal in the past, but Chrome took it away, and I don’t know if Firefox still allows it. Copied from a reply I put in another post:
Ok, do this: download this stylesheet: http://damianvila.com/external/fuckyoutube/hider.css Save it somewhere where you can find it easily. Open Safari and go to Safari > Settings > Advanced. In the “Style sheet” dropdown, select “Other” and navigate to the style sheet. For maximum effect, do this while you have YouTube open… :D
The stylesheet is organized in a way that you can comment/uncomment blocks to customize what you want/don’t want to see on YouTube. Right now it has my preferences, but if you want to keep something, or hide something I had viewable, just comment/uncomment as you wish. The ads part is clearly marked, and the rest is menu things and navigation elements (I don’t need most of those). I also hate Shorts with a passion, so I hide those too. Keep in mind that this can only be used in the desktop version. It doesn’t work for mobile or any of the apps. Sadly, you’ll have to suffer with the shitty ads there. But at least, you can have a decent experience while watching on your Mac. And since it’s a user stylesheet, and has no Javascript whatsoever, YT has no way ob detecting or blocking it, so they can do nothing (other than changing the names of the titles, but that is easily fixed).
Have fun.
P.S: you’ll notice that sometimes, where there should be an ad, you’ll see like a blink in the video. Don’t worry, it’s normal. The video will continue without problems, and you won’t see the ad.
P.S.2: This stylesheet sometimes blocks shitty Google (or other sites) pages (because people are assholes and put things there that shouldn’t be there). If you happen to find yourself in this situation (a page that is suspiciously blank, or don’t allow to scroll, or behaves oddly) you can temporarily change the sylesheet to “None Selected”, and see if the problem is fixed. When you’re finished, remember to switch back to the stylesheet, or you’ll have a shock when you go to YouTube… XDDDDD
Genuine question, why be avid anti-apple? I’m a mac fan, but I still use Linux and windows in my daily life. I’be never understood the anti-mac hate
They are doing same stuff as the other companies, but are better at PR.
If you use their products you are even more locked down, but for some reason that’s more acceptable than on pc. I think many apple fans are wearing rosy tinted glasses and don’t notice any of that for some reason.
For example there was a big deal recently by Google adding attestation mechanism that likely will be used to prevent ad blockers blocking ads. Safari already has this implemented.
Apple is a snobby company with terrible overpriced repair. All of their products are heavily locked down wildly expensive milled aluminium.
Sure the new m1 chip is good but the amount of vendor lock in is too much and of course mac OS is a trash bsd distro. TLDR: overpriced products, trashy company.
Thanks. Their repair pricing is obnoxious, I’ll give you that, but their pricing model really isn’t ridiculous otherwise. For the performance you get it’s great. I’m willing to bet most companies source their alumni from the same place, but my only genuine issue is that MacOS is a great piece of software. I still like Catalina/Mojave myself, but the newer variations are still good. Do you have specific gripes with the OS?
tbh, I’ve only had limited experience with MacOS, and it wasn’t very great (compared to my Linux setup), and afaik this is the general consensus among technically inclined people.
About the pricing model, it’s ridiculous is everyway, not just for repairs. Like, you can get a laptop/PC with almost double the spec compared to what apple has to offer at that price.
All this is said without considering the fact that apple stuff costs almost twice the price in my country (India).
I mean, $1600 for a phone is ridiculous. I’ve had iPhones for the past 12 years, but it never even crossed my mind to buy the latest model. It’s just speculation at that point.
Fair enough, the iPhones are ridiculous, but I was mostly thinking of macs, that’s on me
Not OP, but genuine answer: because I loathe being forced into their way of doing things. Every little thing on the Mac seems engineered with an “our way or the highway” mentality, that leaves no room for other (frequently, better) ways of achieving anything.
Adding to that, window/task management is an absolute nightmare (things that have worked certain ways basically since System 6 on monochrome Mac Classic machines, and haven’t improved), and despite all claims to the contrary, its BSD-based underpinnings are just different enough to Linux’s GNU toolset to make supposed compatibility (or the purported “develop on Mac, deploy on Linux” workflow) a gross misadventure.
I just find the experience frustrating, unpleasant, and always walk away from a Mac feeling irritated.
(For context: > 20 year exclusively Linux user. While it’s definitely not always been a smooth ride, I seldom feel like I’m fighting against the computer to get it to do what I want, which is distinctly not my experience with Apple products)
Also if you want an “our way or the highway” attitude you can buy a PC, install a gnome distro, and not pay like 1000 bucks more for 16G more RAM that you won’t be able to use in another machine because Apple locks everything down for reasons that definitely don’t involve unadulterated greed.
Just curious, how many years have you used Macs?
I got my first mac 7 years ago, the 2017 macbook air. I put that lovely machine through its paces, even got it to run Destiny 2 and gta 5 at one point. Until last year I was issued a work laptop and it’s windows. I have a windows desktop at home, but Mac just works with my slightly chaotic flow better.
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I think the whole USB-C business is the worst example of an axe to grind with Apple. Who says that standard must be the only one? The EU have forced something that didn’t need to be forced. I’ve got a household full of Apple gadgets and no USB-C, so when we do update something later than iPhone 15 and it has that connector, it will be the only one, and no other charges will work with it expect any adapters I might have from C to A. I just don’t get it that it was that important.
deleted by creator
Just a quick list.
That’s not even including the treatment of employees or condition of the factories where Apple devices are built. I don’t know as much about that. But I can definitely comment on the above after managing iPads and Macbooks in a corporate environment.
Personally, I don’t like the way Apple does business. Primarily, that you aren’t just buying the product, you’re buying into their ecosystem. Almost everything apple does well only realistically works of you stay confined to their stuff. And you’re fucked if you wanted compatibility with older software. Remember when Apple just decided 32 bit was dead to them?
And while their hardware is pretty good, it costs wayyyyy too much. I just got a new pc with the top end amd cpu and an rtx 4090, and it cost under half what a Mac pro costs. I seriously doubt their ARM desktop chips are really that much better. Maybe if I were to buy a Mac and use it the rest of my life without upgrades, the efficiency of using an ARM cpu would save me the difference on electricity?
I’ve been fine for a while, then as soon as I read this post, I start getting the warning. Time to move to an alternative. Might try and revitalize my old newsboat/yt-dl set up again
PSA: skirting their attempts to block ad blockers if you have a Google account you would rather keep may be unwise.
Google has been known for banning people for stupid crap, and this checks all the boxes.
While they were silent on this topic there was a gentlemen’s agreement that you could block ads. But now that they have voiced their opinion the jig is up.
I’d recommend people to use an alternative account if they are going to block anyway and they want to keep their gmail.
https://takeout.google.com
Download your data while you still can.
If they block my google account, so be it, I’m done with them, they are a horrible company and keep getting worse
Also please note that just using an incognito window or different container may not cut it. Google is not above using your IP or browser fingerprinting to identify you.
If you have Google on your phone (and you probably do) and both your phone and your PC are connecting from the same IP that already narrows it down for them considerably.
You don’t even have to access youtube on the phone. Google Services Framework reports everything about your phone all the time even if you don’t actually do anything on it to do with Google. Simply having an Android phone at home and connected to the internet at the same time as your PC will identify you.
I’m not saying resistance is futile… but Google is one of the largest privacy predators out there and this thing will get worse before it will get better. Expect some fallout.
I have heard of them banning people from YouTube over this, but I have not heard of them banning them from all of their other Google services. I’m not saying you’re lying here, just saying I personally have not seen any reports on this (but I have seen reports of YouTube-only bans).
I pay for Drive and have a ton of shit on there, and I use gmail as my primary email (not my only email) for a lot of logins and such. My plan is to just stop using YouTube, they better not ban my whole account because I use an ad blocker.
The really frustrating thing for me was I was paying for YouTube Premium until they jacked the price up AGAIN and then I was like nope, I’m out. I can live just fine without YouTube and its horrible ads.
Out of fear of losing access to my accounts I’ve been moving them out of Gmail as the central point of control. I suggest other people do this too.
This sucks, I have a LOT of online accounts that use that email as the login email (not federated, just as the login) and it’s going to be a giant PITA to change them all. Thanks, Google.
Just do a bit at a time. I even installed a desktop email manager to help me with it, since it’s easier to switch between the two accounts in a single application versus having the two webpages up.
Also, if you use a password manager you’ll be able to filter your database by email since email address = account login credential in most cases.
Thank you for the tips and suggestions! I have already started the process and thankfully, I do use Bitwarden and it does indeed make filtering the accounts easier.
I’m glad I almost never use federated accounts for logins. I understand the convenience and security of using them, so I’m not against them in concept…but then there’s the putting too many eggs in one basket risk with doing it.
For things like ReVanced, they have been disabling Youtube per account. So what you are saying may have some weight if they feel like that’s the next logical step
They have?
While I have seen a few instances like this on Reddit, they were always at least 6 month old posts, and none that’s from the recent ad crisis. So yeah, not much to conclude here imo.