Most guides to this get one thing wrong, and it is the thing that matters most: a Pi-hole, a filtering DNS or a clever router cannot remove YouTube’s ads. Here is what actually works on each device, what does not, and where the money goes if you want the quiet version. Everything below was checked in September 2026 against the makers’ own pages, not against other blogs.
The short version
- In a browser, on a phone or a computer: Firefox with uBlock Origin, or Brave. Free, and it genuinely works, including on YouTube in the browser.
- Chrome: uBlock Origin is gone. Google removed the last of that kind of extension on 31 August 2026.
- iPhone and iPad: a browser that blocks on its own, like Brave, or a content blocker for Safari. Neither reaches inside another app.
- The YouTube app, on any phone: nothing blocks those ads. Not AdGuard, not a VPN, not a DNS.
- The television: you can block what the television itself sends and shows. You cannot block what YouTube plays before the video.
Why the DNS trick does not work on YouTube
This deserves its own section, because it is the advice you will find everywhere and it is wrong. A DNS blocker works on names: it can allow a domain or refuse it, and that is the whole of its vocabulary. YouTube serves its ads from the same domains as the videos, so refusing the ad means refusing the film.
AdGuard, who sell a DNS blocker, say so themselves in the AdGuard Home documentation: “any ad that shares a domain with content cannot be blocked by a DNS-level blocker, unless you are ready to block the content as well”, and, more bluntly, “DNS will never be enough to do this”. NextDNS has a help article with the title “Why can’t Youtube ads be blocked?”, whose answer is that it is “unfortunately impossible to block them using DNS ad blocking at this time”.
Any blocklist promising otherwise either does nothing or breaks YouTube. That is the predictable result of blocking a domain that also carries the content.
Android
Firefox with uBlock Origin is the answer, and it is free. Install Firefox from the Play Store, open the menu, go to Add-ons, add uBlock Origin. It is one of Mozilla’s recommended extensions and was last updated on 25 August 2026, so it is not an abandoned project. From then on, YouTube in Firefox plays without ads.
Brave is the no-configuration alternative: blocking is built in, nothing to install on top. Brave states on its own site that it blocks “on-page ads, pre-roll and mid-roll ads, end-card ads” on video sites including YouTube.
AdGuard for Android goes further and filters every app on the phone, not just the browser, using a local VPN. Two things to know before you look for it. It is not on Google Play, because Google does not allow apps that block ads across the device: you download it from adguard.com or from the Samsung, Xiaomi or Huawei stores. And the free version only covers browsers; filtering other apps is the paid one.
The trap: there is an app called AdGuard Content Blocker on Google Play, it is free, and it is not the same thing. It works only in Yandex Browser and Samsung Internet. Install it expecting the full product and you will think ad blocking is broken.
Windows, Mac and Linux
The Chrome news first, because it changes the usual advice. Chrome finished retiring the old extension format on 31 August 2026, when the last of those extensions were removed from the Chrome Web Store. uBlock Origin was one of them. It had already been switched off inside Chrome for everyone since July 2025, and its authors have not made a replacement. If a guide still tells you to install uBlock Origin in Chrome, that guide is more than a year out of date.
There is uBlock Origin Lite, by the same author, built for the new rules, and it is still on the Chrome Web Store. It is a real blocker and it is free, but its own documentation lists what it gave up: no dynamic filtering, no remote filter list updates between extension releases, a much thinner log, and the broader cosmetic filtering switched off unless you raise the blocking level yourself. Its author pointedly refuses to call it a drop-in replacement.
So: Firefox with uBlock Origin, which is where the full version still lives, updated the day this was written. Or Brave, if you would rather not change browser habits twice.
AdGuard for Windows or Mac is the paid option that works outside the browser too, filtering other applications and system telemetry. It is not free: there is a 14-day trial, one licence covers several devices across platforms. Current versions are 8.0 for Windows (August 2026) and 2.19 for Mac (July 2026).
iPhone and iPad
The simplest answer on an iPhone is Brave. It is a full browser from the App Store, and it blocks ads and trackers itself, without you installing anything else. YouTube watched inside Brave plays without the ads. Brave describes its mobile version as a browser with a built-in ad blocker “optimized for mobile data and battery life savings”. The blocking happens inside Brave, so it covers what you open in Brave and nothing else.
For Safari itself you need a content blocker, and this is where most guides oversell, so here is the ceiling, from Apple’s own developer documentation. A content blocker on iOS is a list of rules compiled in advance, with exactly five possible actions: block a load, block cookies, hide an element, ignore earlier rules, upgrade to HTTPS. It cannot run code, it cannot read the page, and Apple notes that content blockers “have no knowledge of users’ history or the websites they visit”. It affects Safari, and whatever else displays web pages through Safari. Nothing else.
Within that ceiling they work well, and they are cheap. Swiss App Store prices, September 2026:
- Wipr 2, CHF 4.00 once, no subscription, and no paid whitelist: the developer states that nobody can pay to have their ads unblocked.
- 1Blocker, free to try, CHF 14.00 a year or CHF 35.00 once. Its own App Store text is honest about the limit: not all ads can be blocked.
- AdGuard for iOS, free with a paid tier, and it adds DNS filtering on top of the Safari part, which does reach the whole device.
What none of this reaches is the YouTube app itself, as opposed to YouTube in a browser. Brave blocks inside Brave; a content blocker works inside Safari; the app is neither. AdGuard’s own suggestion for iOS is to share the video out of YouTube into AdGuard’s own player, which is watching it somewhere else rather than blocking anything.
The television
A television has no extensions, so the only lever is the network, and the network lever is blunter than people expect. What it is genuinely good at is the advertising the television itself runs, which is a real business and not a small one.
Amazon sells the banner on the Fire TV home screen as “the most visible placement of the Fire TV user interface, engaging viewers the moment they power up their device and before they start streaming”. LG runs an advertising arm that claims 216 million smart televisions worldwide and sells placements “integrated natively into the user experience on the smart TV home screen”. Samsung sells a “sponsored tile” inside the TV’s own menu. On top of that sits the viewing measurement: Samsung’s support pages describe collecting viewing history, device identifiers and IP address from the set.
All of that goes to identifiable advertising and analytics domains, and all of it is blockable at the network. YouTube’s pre-roll is not. That is the honest trade.
- Android TV and Google TV: it has a Private DNS setting under Network and internet, which takes the hostname of a filtering service. It can also install apps, which is why the sideloaded YouTube clients below exist.
- Fire TV: the older, Android-based sticks accept sideloaded apps. The newer ones do not. Amazon moved to a new system called Vega OS from the end of September 2025, and it is not Android, so Android apps do not apply.
- Samsung and LG: nothing can be installed. DNS only. LG documents how to change it, under Network, then the connection, then Edit. Samsung confirms its own IP settings screen can change DNS but does not publish the steps.
- Apple TV: Apple’s own guide to the network settings never mentions DNS, and Apple’s device-management DNS profile does not list tvOS at all. NextDNS documents a way in through a hidden menu (Settings, General, Privacy, hover over the analytics line and press Play, then Add Profile). Otherwise it is the router.
Blocking for the whole flat at once
Point your router at a filtering DNS and every device on the Wi-Fi is covered, including the guests and the devices that have no settings of their own. Two ways to do it.
Someone else runs it. AdGuard’s public DNS is free, no account, and you simply enter the addresses. NextDNS gives you rules, logging and per-device names; the free tier is 300,000 queries a month, and the catch is worth knowing: that limit is per account, not per device, and when you pass it the service quietly becomes an ordinary resolver with no filtering at all, rather than telling you. Their paid plan is 1.99 dollars a month.
You run it. Pi-hole (version 6.4.3, July 2026) and AdGuard Home (version 0.107.79, August 2026) are both free, both still actively developed, and both run on almost anything: a Raspberry Pi, an old laptop, a spare mini PC. Pi-hole wants about 512 MB of memory and a couple of gigabytes of space, which is nothing.
Three things escape all of it: a phone on mobile data, which never touches your router; any app or browser that sends its own encrypted DNS queries past your settings, which Mozilla describes plainly as defeating exactly this kind of filtering; and, once more, YouTube’s ads.
The part no blocker fixes
YouTube’s position is published and unambiguous: “When you block YouTube ads, you violate YouTube’s Terms of Service”, and if you keep doing it, “we may block your video playback”. That is worth knowing before you build anything elaborate, and it is why this page describes what is possible rather than telling you what to do.
The paid way out is YouTube Premium. In Switzerland the App Store lists it at CHF 23.90 a month, or CHF 43.90 for a family, and signing up through a browser is normally cheaper than through the App Store, so check both. There is a student rate that needs verifying once a year. Two caveats from Google’s own text: creator sponsorships inside the video are not ads and do not disappear, and Switzerland is not one of the countries with a cheaper annual plan.
Then there are the modified apps: ReVanced on Android phones, SmartTube on Android televisions. They do remove the ads, they are free, and they are open source. I am not recommending them, for reasons that have nothing to do with taste. You install a rebuilt version of an app from outside any store, with no vendor security updates behind it. SmartTube’s own README warns that copies on app stores and download sites may carry malware. And they do the exact thing YouTube’s terms forbid, with playback blocking as the stated consequence. If you go that way, go with your eyes open, and download only from the project itself.
Still recommended elsewhere, and no longer true
- “Install uBlock Origin in Chrome.” Not possible since 31 August 2026.
- “Get AdGuard from the Play Store.” The full app has never been there. What is there blocks ads in two browsers only.
- “A Pi-hole blocks YouTube ads.” It does not, and the vendors of competing DNS blockers say so themselves.
- “Use Vanced.” Discontinued. ReVanced exists because Vanced stopped.
- “1.1.1.1 for Families blocks ads.” It blocks malware and, optionally, adult content. Cloudflare never claims it blocks advertising.
- “Put SmartTube on your Samsung or LG TV.” Impossible: it runs on Android televisions only, and on Fire TV devices released before October 2025.
- “Kiwi Browser with extensions.” Archived in January 2025 and no longer maintained.
Checked in September 2026 against the pages of the people who make these things: Mozilla’s add-on listings, the Chrome extension timeline, Brave, AdGuard, Apple’s developer documentation, the Swiss App Store, Pi-hole, NextDNS, Cloudflare, Amazon, LG, Samsung and YouTube’s own help pages. Prices and versions move; the structure of what is possible moves more slowly.