Adverts on YouTube are a nuisance for many users. In recent years, they’ve become so frequent and intrusive that we would prefer to skip them entirely. However, some ads are completely unskippable and must be watched before you can enjoy the video you’ve searched for.
Many people resort to ad blockers, but Google has apparently declared war on them. Some no longer work in the browser or only show a black screen. However, there is an alternative way to skip adverts at the start of YouTube videos without the need for a browser extension or other tools.
How to watch YouTube without ads
The trick to ad-free YouTube is based on a glitch in the Bing search engine. It works in almost every browser (we tested Chrome, Firefox and Edge) and on both PCs and phones.
All you have 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 on the new link. If not, you may need to copy and paste the title of the video instead.
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 adverts.
It’s worth noting that with longer videos, YouTube may update itself again later in the video and load further adverts. 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 re-opening Bing or changing the browser.
Tech Advisor Entertainment Editor’s note: The original article says this hack worked when clicking on the link to open the videos directly on YouTube, but this didn’t work for me. To be safe, I’d recommend staying in the Bing video player to avoid ads.
Is YouTube Premium too expensive?
Google naturally doesn’t like it when users try to skip their adverts – especially as YouTube Premium offers the option to get rid of them via a subscription.
For many, however, this is simply too expensive, especially as 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 cancelled.
Therefore, we don’t want to encourage you to always block YouTube adverts. 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 may eventually put an end to it.
This article originally appeared on our sister publication PC-WELT and was translated and adapted from German.
