Ad blockers don't work anymore, at least not with the version YT serves me. If it thinks that I have an ad blocker active (false positives happen too), it will only show a black rectangle and not even load the comments.
On PC, I use Firefox with the uBlock Origin extension and I see no ads on Youtube.
Same with my pocket supercomputer: Firefox works great on Android, including for Youtube. And it uses extensions like the PC version does. No ads there, either.
On the BFT in the living room, I have a Google-manufactuered Google TV device. It runs SmartTube, and displays no ads on Youtube.
I even have an iPad that I use primarily for watching Youtube videos. For that, I stay completely within the confines of the walled garden and use Safari with the AdBlock add-on. And: If you're guessing that I'm about to write that have no ads on Youtube there either, then you're right. There's no ads on Youtube with that device, either.
Am I doing this wrong?
Maybe my perspective differs from that of some others, but it seems to all work very well for me here in 2026. (There's been some ups and downs with this over the years, but it all finds its way back to exactly what I wrote above, anyway.)
I also use Firefox with uBlock Origin. It worked flawlessly until some time this January. It happened with the switch to a new version of the video player which changed the design and behaviour. I'd be curious if you're still on the old version or something else is different.
Roughly in that timeframe YT also successfully blocked downloads with yt-dlp for a bit. Seems like they're trying harder now because of AI scrapers.
And that's about it. I recently pruned some other Firefox extensions while troubleshooting ompletely unrelated issues, and all that's left is uBlock Oorigin, Dark Reader, and BitWarden.
Seriously, I've had no recent issues with Youtube ads at all and certainly none in January or February of this year. It's been smooth-enough for me on all of the platforms I mentioned before (and I use them all quite a lot, except perhaps for the BFT).
try firefox, librewolf, waterfox, chromium. In these browsers I had ublock origin (lite for chromium), adguard and NoScript (And/Or Privacy Badger) on my phone and PC, I didn't see any ads at all. I use the unhook and enhancer extensions with them)
