Question What DNS, VPN, or tool to block youtube ads other than Pi Hole?

Most times you block ads with browser extensions.

PIhole is kinda a firewall in many ways. A DNS server or VPN do not filter any traffic. Both the browser extensions and pihole have lists of sites that they block. It is these lists that do all the work. A VPN site I guess could have a firewall that filtered traffic or you might find some special DNS server that also filtered.

The brute force way if you have the lists of ad sites is to just add them to the host file in the machine and point them to a dummy address.

The DNS method only works for things that use names some are using direct IP addresses. Those never do DNS lookup so you would have to block them with a firewall of some kind. Also a most DNS things do not work if you use encrypted DNS, which you should be using.

The browser extension tend to be what most people use. Unfortunately google and apple make it harder to get stuff if you are wanting to block ads on a phone.
 

yargd

Commendable
Jan 9, 2021
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1,545
Most times you block ads with browser extensions.

PIhole is kinda a firewall in many ways. A DNS server or VPN do not filter any traffic. Both the browser extensions and pihole have lists of sites that they block. It is these lists that do all the work. A VPN site I guess could have a firewall that filtered traffic or you might find some special DNS server that also filtered.

The brute force way if you have the lists of ad sites is to just add them to the host file in the machine and point them to a dummy address.

The DNS method only works for things that use names some are using direct IP addresses. Those never do DNS lookup so you would have to block them with a firewall of some kind. Also a most DNS things do not work if you use encrypted DNS, which you should be using.

The browser extension tend to be what most people use. Unfortunately google and apple make it harder to get stuff if you are wanting to block ads on a phone.

I'm trying to block ads on my TV Youtube app. I don't know how to make Pihole so I'm searching for an elternative. Thanks for the reply.
 
In general a DNS block does not work for youtube. The somewhat good and bad is that youtube itself hosts the ads on their servers. This at least means that youtube itself is filtering the ads so you do not get malware unlike a lot of the ad hosting sites. The bad part is you can not block it with a simple DNS setting.
I have never see a way to get around youtube other than something that is a add on to the browser/player. Since things like tv or roku , firestick etc are even more locked down than a phone or tablet I do not think there is anyway to do it.

If you are willing to go the way of thing like pihole is you could just use a browser on a raspberry pi directly. You can then use the standard adblockers that work on the browser. I am sure someone has a method that lets you use a remote with raspberry pi rather than a keyboard and mouse. Raspberry is pretty easy but does require more than just taking things out of the box and plugging them in. It is designed for children to learn programming. It really only gets complex if when you start looking at controlling hardware like led strips with it.

The problem of ad is why I only use a pc to watch youtube.
 

Old Molases

Prominent
May 3, 2021
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Yes, some VPNs can block YouTube ads. However, even if a VPN has a built-in ad blocker, it might be impossible for it to block ads on YouTube. However, Ivacy VPN, NordVPN and Windscribe can be a solution at this point.
 

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