YouTube is funded by advertising. So far so good, but there are videos and clips where Google's subsidiary really overdoes it with advertising. Ad clips don't just appear at the beginning – no; there's also advertising several times in the middle of a video. Worse than commercial breaks on analogue TV. Anyone who watches a lot of YouTube and doesn't have a YouTube Premium subscription knows what we're talking about. Ad blockers and other ad blockers don't help here. Even a VPN doesn't always work.
But all that advertising doesn't have to be. In this blog post, you'll find a tip on how to use the video platform ad-free, i.e. completely without annoying ad clips or advertising banners, without having to install an app or anything else.
Effective Ad Blocker: A simple dot frees YouTube from ads - for free
There's a little trick here. This possibility was discovered by a Reddit user. It went public, and we learned about it on golem.de, among other places. All you have to do is add a simple dot to the URL of the video you want to watch. You just have to add another dot to the YouTube URL in the browser after ".com". To a ".com.".
So instead of:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bZkp7q19f0
the URL is (with a dot added in the browser):
https://www.youtube.com./watch?v=9bZkp7q19f0
And just like that, you can enjoy YouTube and your video completely ad-free. One dot achieves what ad blockers can't. Try it out right away! It works for all content (old and new) and on every device, whether via the smartphone app or on your PC.
Watch YouTube ad-free, download and keep the video
You want more? Not just watch videos and music clips ad-free, but also download them and save them (ad-free) to your hard drive?
Then we recommend MovieJack - the music ripper for YouTube, Dailymotion, Vevo, Vimeo and co. With it, your favorite videos will be on your computer in no time. Simple - legal - fast. And of course ad-free ;-)
Update as of 02/23/2021
Unfortunately, not only we, but also YouTube learned about this little trick and assigned its best developers to fix this bug on the site. The bad news: They succeeded, and ad-free YouTube is once again only available for a fee with a YouTube Premium account. Everyone else has to watch with ads again – or pay a few euros for Premium. The good news: Ad-free music or video downloads with MovieJack are still possible without any problems. And a video that you have once saved ad-free on your own hard drive, you will never have to search for on YouTube or watch with ad interruptions again.
And more good news: For all readers of our blog, we have set up an offer through which you can purchase MovieJack at a reduced price. Here you also only pay once and not for every month your subscription runs with YouTube / Google.
