Advertisements on YouTube are a nuisance for many users. In recent years, they have become so frequent and intrusive that we would prefer to ignore them altogether. However, some ads are completely unmissable and must be viewed before you can enjoy the video you searched for.
Many people use ad blockers, but Google has apparently declared war on them. Some no longer work in the browser or only display a black screen. However, there is another way to skip ads at the beginning of YouTube videos without the need for a browser extension or other tools.
How to watch YouTube without ads
The trick for ad-free YouTube relies on a glitch in the Bing search engine. It works in almost all browsers (we tested Chrome, Firefox and Edge) as well as on PCs and phones.
All you need to do is copy the URL of the YouTube video you want to watch into the Bing search bar. If the video appears directly, click the new link. Otherwise, you may need to copy and paste the video title.
Hannah Cowton-Barnes / Foundry
Hannah Cowton-Barnes / Foundry
Hannah Cowton-Barnes / Foundry
That’s it! You can now watch the video in the window that appears without ads.
It’s worth noting that with longer videos, YouTube may update again later in the video and load more ads. However, you can always skip them at the start of a new video or for shorter clips. If that doesn’t work, you can try reopening Bing or switching browsers.
Tech Advisor Entertainment Editor’s Rating: The original article says this hack worked by clicking the link to open the videos directly on YouTube, but it didn’t work for me. To be safe, I recommend staying in the Bing video player to avoid ads.
Is YouTube Premium too expensive?
Google of course doesn’t like it when users try to skip their ads, especially since YouTube Premium offers the option to get rid of them via subscription.
For many, however, this is simply too expensive, especially since YouTube recently blocked a popular VPN trick that allowed users to get the Premium subscription at a significantly lower price. Subscriptions already taken out have also been canceled.
Therefore, we do not want to encourage you to always block YouTube ads. After all, this not only harms YouTube itself, but also the channels you enjoy watching. However, the fact that this trick works is very newsworthy in our eyes… even if Google or Microsoft could eventually put an end to it.
This article was originally published on our sister publication PC-WELT and has been translated and adapted from German.
