I’m using a stock Samsung Galaxy 8 phone right now (with Android 10) and I disabled the YouTube app. I was basically sick of its s***. Since then, I never sign in to the app/site, and so may aspects of using the site are much better now.

  • Everything is faster, since they don’t know me / aren’t tracking as much.
  • I always open YT in Firefox Focus, which doesn’t ever keep cookies or history each time I close it, so there’s no history for YT to mine each time I visit again.
  • I’m pretty sure I see fewer ads since I don’t have a deep history for YT to mine / target.
  • More random suggestions from YT means I am mostly broken out of the bubble caused by their tracking. I find new, interesting music, for instance, now, from the suggestions.
  • Hitting “back” in the browser means I go back wherever I was before, not to the YT home page (like the app used to do to me)

I still visit the site often, and appreciate all the good music and channels I watch, but now it’s overall a much more positive experience, more like YT was a few years ago versus the horrible mess it’s become recently.

I’d still appreciate any other tips anyone has for making YT visits even more enjoyable.

  • Pons_Aelius
    2•1 year ago

    Do you have ublock or ublock origin?

    ublock origin is what I use. I also made no changes to the defaults on pc and see no adds on youtube there as well.

      • Pons_Aelius
        2•1 year ago

        Then not sure why you are seeing ads.

        Are the in video sponsor pieces? As sponsor block is quite good at skipping them in most case.

        • AlmightySnoo 🐢🇮🇱🇺🇦English
          2•1 year ago

          YouTube is playing cat and mouse with the adblockers, so recently it is sometimes able to show you ads even if you have uBlock Origin enabled. Only reliable way to completely get rid of the ads is to go through a Piped or Invidious instance, or the NewPipe app on Android.