If you are an avid YouTube user, you already know how frustrating it is to skip ads and watch them over and over again when switching between videos. If you are searching for how to block YouTube ads, you found a great page here. According to a Reddit user who goes by the username /r/webdev, there’s a simple trick to block YouTube ads.
You won’t need a string of code or ad-blockers or any extensions or software for you. Accordion got the Redditor, the trick is to add a period (.) at the end of the parent domain name that should do the job. For example, assume that you are watching a video with the URL “https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2hlhrb1LbLQ”. Instead of waiting for five seconds and then going through a few mid-roll ads, simply add a period after the parent domain such as “https://www.youtube.com./watch?v=2hlhrb1LbLQ”.
How Does This Block YouTube Ads?
Now you might be wondering how it can block ads on YouTube. Turns out adding a period at the end of domain name breaks the page in a certain way. Although the page loads without any glitch, some of the properties and elements tend to fail to load such as the pre-roll ads, mid-roll ads, and others. You might also notice that the YouTube homepage doesn’t recommend videos with infinite scrolling anymore at least some times if not all the time.
The simple trick works on YouTube on desktop and YouTube website on smartphones and not YouTube app since you would need to alter the URL to get it working.
This doesn’t work on just the YouTube ads but also blocks cookies on YouTube and also goes through paywalls that certain news sites impose. Adding a period at the end of the domain could circumvent paywalls too unless there is a countermeasure ready to tackle such exploitation of code in place.
Note that this simple trick has already received more than 4,000 upvotes when we checked last. It is also referred to by tens of websites already so it is possible YouTube knows about it. The Google-owned company will fix the bug soon so use it until it is gone. There’s also a negative impact of circumventing ads on YouTube as your favorite content creators might encounter the wrath of this simple trick by getting underpaid for it.
