How to remove YouTube advertising ads on Android 2020

To remove ads on YouTube for Android you have three options. The first and perhaps most “correct” is to subscribe to the YouTube Premium service, which costs about $ 10 a month, depending on the country. The other two free options are to install an ad-blocking utility in the YouTube application, or to replace the latter with an alternative client that does not display YouTube advertising by default.

Before talking about the alternatives to remove ads on YouTube for free, you should know that this platform is maintained thanks to the advertising you see on it, which also allows you to pay all content creators who upload videos. Perhaps it is due to these alternatives and YouTube’s form of financing that Google updated its terms and conditions with the following: «YouTube may cancel your access or your Google account’s access to the Service in part or in full if it reasonably determines that to provide you the Service is no longer commercially viable ”. It is speculated that this means that they could ban your Google account by blocking advertising on the platform, although this has not been confirmed by the company.

AdSkip, an app based on the Android accessibility service, does not actually remove the advertising, but rather skips or skips it when you have the video in view (not minimized). In other words, it does the same thing as when you press the “Skip ad” button in a video, but automatically. It also silences the advertisement for the required viewing seconds (3 to 6 seconds), after which time the aforementioned Skip Ad button appears.

This means that you will only have to see the initial seconds of the advertisement, between 3 and 6, and you will automatically jump to the video. Although it is not the most ideal, it is probably more “secure” than the rest of the options in this list, because then you could remain “commercially viable” for Google. After seeing the initial seconds of the advertisement, YouTube will already be charging the advertiser for that advertisement.

The only disadvantage of AdSkip is that its performance is not consistent and sometimes it does not work.

«Adblock» para Android

In other words, an ad blocker that affects the entire Android system. There are several apps that achieve this, such as Adclear O DNS66, which basically filter ads on YouTube and other apps, analyzing traffic based on hostnames or DNS, through a VPN interface.

In theory, these apps only work locally, so your traffic would not be exposed to third parties.

Both of the aforementioned apps are already preconfigured, so you just have to start them, allow the VPN connection and they should already block advertising on the entire cell phone, including YouTube, other apps and even websites.

It is a third-party version based on and practically the same as the original YouTube app, but enriched with several interesting features, such as ad blocking, playing in the background or screen off, and downloading content. Best of all, it works WITHOUT root, although the login requires an extra APK.

YouTube Vanced already has an integrated SponsorBlock. To activate it, tap on your profile button at the top of YouTube Vanced, “Settings” and then “SponsorBlock Settings”

A great advantage of YouTube Vanced is that it currently incorporates SponsorBlock, a software that automatically skips self-advertising or sponsorships in videos, which I will discuss in more detail below. If you want to see what advertising I mean, this video by Linus Tech Tips It’s a good example. There you will find intro, outro and sponsorship or sponsors that are talked about in the video. All of this is automatically skipped by Sponsor Block.

SponsorBlock detects sponsors and introductions in videos and skips them automatically.

Other old YouTube Vanced variants include iYTP O OGYouTube, currently discontinued.

NewPipe is an “open source” alternative that does not look anything like the original YouTube, including the fact that you will not see advertising anywhere, plus you can download the videos or their audio and play in the background or screen off. Its disadvantage is that you will not be able to log in with your Gmail account, although you will be able to import your subscriptions.

It is basically a YouTube mobile web viewer, but it blocks your advertising, as well as allowing you to download the videos and music. However, the app has its own advertising, so it is not as clean an experience as in the previous cases.

Web browser with “Adblock”

Brave Browser settings screen, where ad blocking can be activated

To avoid advertising on YouTube, you can also visit this page from a web browser that includes an option for “AdBlock”, “Adblock Plus” or “Ad Blocking”. Google Chrome is not one of them, but there are other excellent options such as Mozilla Firefox or Samsung Internet (with the previous installation of an add-on). Microsoft Edge, Opera or Brave Browser do offer this option by default, without the need to install something extra.

Skip Introductions, «subscribe to channel» and sponsorships

Another annoying thing in some YouTube videos is the typical introduction of the creator of the video talking about the channel, asking to subscribe or activate the bell to receive notifications of new videos and even talk about a product or service sponsoring the video. This is something that many content creators add to the end of the video and other more annoying ones usually add it at the beginning or even in the middle of the video.

All this content added “manually” within the video can also be skipped automatically thanks to SponsorBlock. This software knows where all that “advertising” is thanks to crowdsourcing, that is, users who manually add these unwanted video segments.

SponsorBlock is an extension for browsers, which can also be used on Android, since browsers such as Firefox or Kiwi Browser incorporate support for this and other extensions. Once the extension is activated, you should see YouTube from its website m.youtube.com for SponsorBlock to do the job.

As I said before, another way to use SponsorBlock on Android is through the YouTube Vanced proxy client (its latest version) and the latest trial version of Newpipe.

References: Reddit

How to activate the hidden ad blocker in Netguard

How to Minimize YouTube: Get Out and Keep Listening

YouTube in background, screen off: APKS