That probably helps. I haven’t set up a Pi-hole, but I expect that it can do as good a job or better than even uBlock Origin. I have an iPad but my other devices are Android. The iPad experience is bad enough that I hardly use it (as compared to my Android phone or desktop). Maybe I should look into a Pi-hole. I have a bunch gathering dust (they’re awesome, and I use them for all sorts of things, but most of my projects use the Zeroes, and the bigger ones are clunkier than I’d like).
I have a Google Wi-Fi mesh system at my home.
I went in and overrode the automatic DNS with a manual DNS that pointed to something like what Pi-hole does and is a DNS sinkhole.
Worked great for 36 hours, no problem. Then…my entire home internet broke. I couldn’t change anything. Mind you…this system has been running flawlessly, non-stop, for 3+ years till this change which worked then…didn’t work.
I had to completely hard-reset my router and access points and re-build my network. Not hard to do but took several hours to sort out everything.
Did Google torpedo my network? I dunno…I can never prove it. But it was suspiciously weird timing.
Here is a Reddit post (see below) which describes how to use uBlock to stop YouTube ads. I followed its directions exactly and it worked for me on Firefox (although I had to re-do Step #3 at a later time).
YMMV (really read what they are telling you). I will say not all extensions need to be disabled…that is troubleshooting to me. I have a few others running with no problem but that have nothing to do with this.
Note: You may need to re-do Step #3 on a regular basis. It’s not hard at all and takes less than a minute but still…an annoyance.
ETA: The video tutorial links in the above Reddit post are very helpful. Really short (15-20 seconds long), no audio. Just click on this, that and the other thing.
Here is what it says the last 3 options are links :
Ad blockers are not allowed on YouTube
It looks like you may be using an ad blocker.
Ads allow YouTube to be used by billions worldwide.
You can go ad-free with YouTube Premium, and creators can still get paid from your subscription.
Allow YouTube Ads
Try YouTube Premium
Not using an ad blocker? Report issue
I have seen that message occasionally recently (I use Ghostery), but when I close the message window, it goes away. So far, it hasn’t done anything else but give advice, which I can ignore.
It started that way for me too. It progressed to more stern warning then fully blocked YouTube. Took a week or so from start to finish.
It may work out differently for you.
Unfortunately uBlock Origin is considerably better than a Pi-Hole. It has a much fancier filtering system. All Pi-Hole can do is return 0.0.0.0 (or NXDOMAIN) for the IP address of a blocked hostname. That means Pi-Hole is not useful for blocking ads from places that serve the ad from the same host as the content, such as YouTube.
Pi-Hole also runs into problems when a blocked site is necessary for another site or app to work. The only real choice is to unblock the blocked site for all apps. UBlock Origin will let you unblock things for a specific web page.
Having said that, I use Pi-Hole to block ads on my Android phone and iPad. I use the private DNS, DoT, and DoH features of both devices to hit my cloud based Pi-Hole. It works pretty well for blocking typical banner ads and tracking stuff.
Newer versions of IOS and iPadOS allow a few extensions into Safari. After playing with a few, I find 1Blocker has been the best. That along with the Pi-Hole gets rid of most browser ads on my iPad. Even before YouTubes crackdown, sometimes 1Blocker would block YouTube ads, and sometimes it would break YouTube completely.
I know uBlock Origin is supposed to be good, but while using Ad Block Pro and AdGuard on iOS I can’t remember the last inline ad, YouTube ad or big ugly box I saw.
I guess YMMV.
I gave those two a shot, and I have to admit, they seem to do the trick, at least when combined. The ugly boxes I mainly saw here, and don’t see them now. The inline ads were mainly at Reddit, and I don’t see those either. Nor does YouTube seem to show any. Thanks for the suggestion!
Just curious, why can’t ad blockers be set to pretend to view ads, while not actually displaying them on the screen in a way that would not deprive the site of money?
Before I get to responses (even though I know this is a contentious issue, I’m a little surprised by how quickly this blew up), I just want to get one thing 100% clear: I don’t BS. If I say it happened to me, it happened to me. Unbelievably horrible childhood, the season premiere that left my jaw on the floor, gigantic difficulty spike in a game I used to be a fan of, all 100% real. I may omit some details from time to time, but most people think my posts are too long as it is.
So anyway, going by PastTense’s suggestion, I looked through UBlock’s options and found something called “Incognito”, flicked it on, and…it appears to have completely solved the problem. 
Huh. Of course there may be future complications, but at least I can rest assured that I’m not powerless in the face of irritations.
GeSancMan - It was some time ago. That would’ve been around the time TVTropes suspended my account for undisclosed reasons. DeviantArt, although I’m not a fan of the new format, is definitely much better now. I haven’t given a damn about TVTropes for a long time, so I can’t vouch for it.
Mangetout - I’ll admit that I didn’t really take the time to go over the details of the economic situation (I was tired, all right? ). My position regarding proper compensation, however has always been: If you want to pay the man, pay the man, don’t go through some indirect channel which’ll only pass a fraction through. Nearly all these people have periodic payment services or tip jars, and if I like what they’re doing, heck yeah I’ll open my wallet (and if they have a store like August Pollak did, that’s even better).
Fair enough. I don’t think it’s all that uncommon for people to get paid in the indirect way though - it’s pretty similar to the marketplace model used by eBay, Amazon, Etsy, DeviantArt, Fiverr, etc (except on those, you’re paying with money rather than attention) - the indirect channel still takes a cut; that cut is the thing that funds the existence of the platform on which you’re consuming the media.
Also when you pay through most of the ‘tip jar’ methods, there’s usually someone taking a cut there too (short of you paying the man in cash or crypto or via bank transfer or something)
Edit: sorry, just re-read that and it comes across as more of a lecture than I intended. All I am really saying is that there are two things happening when you watch a video - someone put time and effort into making it and someone else is providing technology to allow you to see it; the latter part in particular is difficult to do for free.
Thank you!
I practically never sign into Youtube. You may have to “kickstart” the process by searching for the sort of content that you want, but Youtube does usually remember what you like to watch, and will populate the home page with at least some of that.
Signing out is different than using private/incognito mode. When you open youtube in private/incognito mode, it’s a blank slate. It’ll populate the front page with suggestions based on what you watched during that session, but as soon as you close the window, it’s gone and you’ll start over next time.
Just right click on the video in your logged in session and select “open in incognito window”
Well, whatever weird situation was letting watch again has dissipated and I’m blocked again. I guess a YouTube diet is not a bad thing.
I got my first Youtube notice on ad blocking. I decided to make my prime browser Brave instead of Chrome, and it worked better then Youtube on chrome, but I just got a popup saying youtube wants to install Widevine which I declined and blocked Widevine - Wikipedia.
I do fear this is going down the road of many now ruined good things. They make it a game of cat and mouse where one has to work to get it to work right, and after a while just gives up.
Brings back fond memories of the Direct TV card hacking in the late 90’s. I knew someone who knew someone and had ALL channels. And then it would break, they’d fix it, then it would break again.
uBlock with the additional script has been working since I tried it. Fingers crossed. I assume most people aren’t about to run script extenders on their browser so Google could see a 50-80% reduction in ad blocker usage and call it a win.
One thing I miss is that my old YouTube-specific blocker removed the obnoxious “other video” cards that pop-up at the end and obscure half the screen while the video is still playing. This setup doesn’t do that. Such is the burden of the ad-evading miscreant, I suppose