YouTube is running an experiment asking some users to disable their ad blockers or pay for a premium subscription, or they will not be allowed to watch videos.
I took the L and started paying for YT Premium since you can’t really get rid of ads on LG TV otherwise
Did it with a bit of malicious compliance and opted for Family plan using argentinian VPN, totaling at less than $3 a month (and constantly dropping) for 5 people.
For the cost of 3 months of YouTube Premium, you can buy a Onn 4k box that runs near stock Google TV and then have a much better experience with SmartTube Next.
There’s this tool for webos. https://github.com/webosbrew/dev-manager-desktop
fairly easy to setup and it includes a patched youtube on their default apps. No root or scary stuff required for simple apps like these. I’ve used it and YouTube works pretty much like you expect it to.
True. In my case I was luckily able to root it and install YouTube Adfree from homebrew channel but apparently LG has patched most of the exploits in newest firmwares.
PiHole, Adguard Home and the like can’t block ads on smart TVs? Or is it something like the TV refusing to start if it contacts the ad server and doesn’t get a response?
AFAIK due to how YouTube apps on Smart TVs work if you try blocking the ads it’ll stop loading the videos altogether.
Similarly how on phones people are using modified apps like Vanced instead of adblocking ad servers
PiHole blocks by preventing certain domains from loading (the ones you specify on your blocklist). It’s not examining any content. It simply sees a request for say examplespamdomain.com and blocks it when something on your network requests it. Youtube serves ads and videos from the same domain, so this approach doesn’t work.
Same here, been using YT Premium via Argentina for 2 years or so by now. It’s nice, cause the few bucks you pay for that are fine, considering you get all videos ad-free and even YT music which isn’t great but a nice bonus!
just a shame you by now need a Mastercard for it cause Visas have to be from Argentina, as I’ve heard.
Wouldn’t a pi-hole work? Run your DNS for your TV through the pi-hole and you’ll lost most of the ads.
I just set this up yesterday on an Apple TV where I do the majority of my YouTube consumption. Just spun up a pi-hole docker container and updated the Apple TV dns entry to point towards the container. I can try to remember to update this later after I have more experience in how effective it is.
Edit: Apparently YouTube serves ads from their own domain which largely negates a pihole, I’ll likely use it anyway since the pihole is showing blocked requests and more privacy is better
Yeah your edit is correct, it doesn’t do much for YouTube. But I do still use the pihole for this very reason: lots of things make network requests that aren’t just your browser. If you use windows, you’ll be disgusted by how many microsoft-owned domains are hit repeatedly throughout the day by the OS. Or phone apps with embedded tracking libraries.
I also find DNS blackhole-ing to be very useful for blocking Twitter, Facebook, etc on my entire network without having to worry about individual devices.
I took the L and started paying for YT Premium since you can’t really get rid of ads on LG TV otherwise
Did it with a bit of malicious compliance and opted for Family plan using argentinian VPN, totaling at less than $3 a month (and constantly dropping) for 5 people.
If you can sideload Android apps SmartTubeNext is a great option https://github.com/yuliskov/SmartTubeNext
LG TVs are neither Android TV nor Google TV OS, so it’s a no-go here
For the cost of 3 months of YouTube Premium, you can buy a Onn 4k box that runs near stock Google TV and then have a much better experience with SmartTube Next.
There’s this tool for webos. https://github.com/webosbrew/dev-manager-desktop fairly easy to setup and it includes a patched youtube on their default apps. No root or scary stuff required for simple apps like these. I’ve used it and YouTube works pretty much like you expect it to.
True. In my case I was luckily able to root it and install YouTube Adfree from homebrew channel but apparently LG has patched most of the exploits in newest firmwares.
Probably not ideal, but what about screen mirroring from your phone using a browser with adblock enabled?
PiHole, Adguard Home and the like can’t block ads on smart TVs? Or is it something like the TV refusing to start if it contacts the ad server and doesn’t get a response?
They can block other ads, but they can’t block YouTube ads since YouTube ads come from the same domains as the videos.
YouTube fixed that ages ago. Ads and videos are from the same endpoints now. So as far as pihole is concerned it’s all videos
AFAIK due to how YouTube apps on Smart TVs work if you try blocking the ads it’ll stop loading the videos altogether. Similarly how on phones people are using modified apps like Vanced instead of adblocking ad servers
Can you install apps? SmartTubeNext?
PiHole blocks by preventing certain domains from loading (the ones you specify on your blocklist). It’s not examining any content. It simply sees a request for say examplespamdomain.com and blocks it when something on your network requests it. Youtube serves ads and videos from the same domain, so this approach doesn’t work.
Same here, been using YT Premium via Argentina for 2 years or so by now. It’s nice, cause the few bucks you pay for that are fine, considering you get all videos ad-free and even YT music which isn’t great but a nice bonus! just a shame you by now need a Mastercard for it cause Visas have to be from Argentina, as I’ve heard.
Wouldn’t a pi-hole work? Run your DNS for your TV through the pi-hole and you’ll lost most of the ads.
I just set this up yesterday on an Apple TV where I do the majority of my YouTube consumption. Just spun up a pi-hole docker container and updated the Apple TV dns entry to point towards the container. I can try to remember to update this later after I have more experience in how effective it is.
Edit: Apparently YouTube serves ads from their own domain which largely negates a pihole, I’ll likely use it anyway since the pihole is showing blocked requests and more privacy is better
Yeah your edit is correct, it doesn’t do much for YouTube. But I do still use the pihole for this very reason: lots of things make network requests that aren’t just your browser. If you use windows, you’ll be disgusted by how many microsoft-owned domains are hit repeatedly throughout the day by the OS. Or phone apps with embedded tracking libraries.
I also find DNS blackhole-ing to be very useful for blocking Twitter, Facebook, etc on my entire network without having to worry about individual devices.