YouTube · This computer and Android
YouTube without ads on your PC
On the computer where AdHole runs, YouTube videos start without ads, in Chrome, Edge, Brave or Firefox. It asks YouTube, on the player’s behalf, for an ad-free response, with no extension. Same thing in an Android phone’s browser, once the app’s certificate is installed. Not in the YouTube app of a TV, a console or a phone: there, the ads stay.
- Free
- No account
- No ads
- Windows, Linux, Android
- Removed Video ads, in the browsers of this computer and of an Android phone
- Usually The wait YouTube imposes when no ad plays, avoided
- Stays Ads in the YouTube app of a TV, console or phone
How it works
It gets an ad-free answer. It doesn’t just hide the ads.
The YouTube player doesn’t choose its ads. It asks YouTube’s server what to play, and the answer lists the video and the ads to show with it. AdHole rewrites that request on its way from your browser, so that YouTube returns an answer that schedules no ad: the player finds none, and plays the video.
Removing the list afterwards is no longer enough: since September 2026, the video server does not serve the video until the scheduled ad has been played. Ads in video lists — home, suggestions, search — are removed from the responses, and items that are only an ad go with them, so no empty card is left behind.
{
"streamingData": { … },
← the video
"adPlacements": [ … ],
← absent
"adSlots": [ … ],
← absent
"playerAds": [ … ]
← absent
}The wait
The black screen before the video, and how AdHole avoids it.
When YouTube can’t play an ad, it can make the player wait before the video starts, or not serve it at all. Remove the ads and do nothing else, and you trade an ad for a black screen.
So AdHole asks the server, in the player’s own request, for an answer that schedules no ad. When you open a video from its address, it makes the player send that request instead of reusing what’s already in the page. With no ad scheduled, there is nothing to wait for. The cost: each video starts a few hundred milliseconds later, and a video opened with a click may start muted.
YouTube also looks for blockers: an ad-network script that must load, a consistency check inside the player, tests inside the page. AdHole serves that script itself, stops the player from raising its alert, and no longer modifies the page’s code. The “Ad blockers violate YouTube’s Terms of Service” message no longer appears.
It also removes YouTube’s “Experiencing interruptions?” pop-ups, which only offer to turn ad blocking off.
Every browser
Every browser, no extension.
AdHole works beneath your browsers, not inside them: there’s no extension to install or keep up to date. Chrome, Edge and Brave go through it from the moment it’s installed.
Firefox keeps its own certificates. On Windows, one setting: in about:config, set security.enterprise_roots.enabled to true. On Linux, AdHole registers its certificate with Firefox when certutil is present.
On Windows, YouTube and page filtering applies to the account AdHole was installed from. On Linux, the browsers’ proxy is set automatically under GNOME and KDE, by hand elsewhere.
On an Android phone, the app cleans YouTube in the phone’s browsers, once you install by hand the root certificate it creates there. Firefox asks for one more setting, and page cleaning needs Android 10 or newer. In the YouTube app, on the same phone, nothing changes.
One switch in the settings turns it off: “YouTube without ads”.
Where it stops
Not in the TV app, on the console, or in the phone’s apps.
On a TV, a console or in the YouTube app of a phone, AdHole doesn’t remove YouTube ads, even when their DNS points to it. There, the ads come from the same servers as the video, and cleaning the player’s list means reading the traffic of the app that asks for it: a certificate on the device, and that app’s traffic going through AdHole. TVs and consoles don’t allow it, and Android doesn’t let one app read another app’s encrypted traffic.
The phone’s browser is the exception: there, with the Android app installed and its root certificate in place, YouTube video ads go the way they do on a computer. The YouTube app, on that same phone, keeps its own.
DNS blockers
Why Pi-hole and DNS blockers can’t remove them.
A DNS blocker, Pi-hole or AdHole’s own whole-home filter, works by refusing server names. YouTube’s videos and ads come from the same ones (*.googlevideo.com): refusing them would stop the videos too.
So every DNS blocker lets YouTube’s ads through. It isn’t a question of settings or lists: the handle is in the player, and only a browser AdHole filters gives it access — this computer’s, or an Android phone’s with the app.
If YouTube changes
If YouTube stitches the ads into the video.
Google is testing ads stitched into the video itself. There is then no list left to remove: the ad and the video are the same file. If that becomes the norm, no blocker will be able to remove them this way, AdHole included.
Until then, no blocker stops every ad either: one may get through now and then, or more often with some Google accounts.
Questions
The usual questions.
Does AdHole remove YouTube ads?
On the computer where it’s installed, yes: in your browser, videos start without ads. On a TV, a console or in the YouTube app on your phone, no: there, ads come from the same servers as the video, and nothing on the network can tell them apart. An Android phone with the app is a third case: in its browsers, once page cleaning is on and the root certificate is installed, YouTube video ads go the way they do on a computer — but not in the YouTube app.
Does it work in Firefox?
Yes, after one setting on Windows: in about:config, set security.enterprise_roots.enabled to true, so Firefox trusts the certificate AdHole created on your computer. On Linux, AdHole registers it with Firefox when certutil is present. On Android, Firefox asks for one more setting too.
Do I need a browser extension?
No. AdHole is one program for every browser on this computer. There’s nothing to add to the browser.
Is blocking ads legal?
In France, filtering what your own computer displays falls within your freedom to use your own machine: nothing obliges you to display the ads a site sends you. Rules may differ elsewhere. AdHole never unlocks content reserved for subscribers.
What it doesn’t do
- Remove YouTube ads in the app of a TV, a console or a phone.
- Clean YouTube on a device where AdHole isn’t installed.
- Promise every ad: no blocker stops them all, and YouTube can change the way it serves them.
- Filter Firefox until you change one setting: on Windows, and on Android.
Free, for Windows, Linux and Android.
One program on your computer, one app on your phone. No account, no ads, nothing to pay.
- Free
- No account
- No ads
- Windows, Linux, Android