this post was submitted on 15 Apr 2024
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When YouTube Red first dropped they were putting hour-long pilot episodes of their shows as pre-roll ads. Now I notice ads on shorts are full of obvious scams related to "new monthly health credits". Still better than getting an ad on Facebook reels that was uncensored hardcore porn.
I'm almost thinking of breaking down and buying YT premium because god, I watch a lot of youtube (I'd go so far as to say it's my primary entertainment stream at times) but I'm already paying so fucking much for cable that I don't even want.
Cable's 80, Internet's 80, somehow extra fees bring it up to nearly 200, and I can't convince other members of my household (who watch a grand total of four fucking channels, MSNBC, Weather channel, sports, etc) that we should ditch cable, absolutely miserable.
Nvidia Sheild pro + smartTube Next. I see 0 ads. The app also bypasses the self promotion/hit the like and subscribe button crap as well.
Smart Tube Next
You can put custom apps on the Shield pro? neat.
For Android on phones and tablets look up Revanced. You have to download the YouTube .apk from somewhere like apkmirror, then use the Revanced manager to apply patches to block ads and change functionality. Then you log into your account with their own version of MicroG/gmscore. It was briefly affected by the issue in the main post but was working again in a few hours.
For Android-based smart TVs and streaming devices there's SmartTube (SmartTubeNext). Not sure how well they'll do if YouTube goes cat and mouse though.
And for a wider variety of devices (including Apple TV and now WebOS) there's also Kodi which has a YouTube addon although logging in with it is kind of a pain as you need to get API keys, etc.
& finally on a desktop browser uBlock Origin alone handles all the ads pretty well, and you can optionally add Sponsorblock.
Oh. And check out some of the over the top TV services and see if there are any cheap ones that might meet your needs to replace cable. Though the way the cable companies do their bundling even that might not save you much as the net might jump up to more than $80 standalone.