Let’s face it, YouTube ads are no ones favorite, but neither is paying for a premium membership if you don’t have to, and now you don’t have to thanks to this super easy bypass method.
To bypass YouTube ads, all you have to do is take the URL of whatever video you’re wanting to watch, and alter it a tiny bit.
This changes things for many users no doubt. Especially for those that perhaps can’t afford to pay for YouTube Premium. But also don’t care to watch the ads (they can be pretty rampant in some videos). Thanks to a user on Reddit and spotted by Android Police, ads in YouTube videos can be a thing of the past. For now at least.
Bypass YouTube ads by adding a dot to the URL
It really is this easy. And it’s likely something that not a lot of people have thought about. So this very well may be a revelation for many users.
To bypass the ads, all you have to do is add a dot to the URL. Placement is of course key. To ensure that the ads won’t play, click on a YouTube video, or copy and paste its URL into the browser, then place the dot (period) after the .com and before the backslash.
After this you will still have to refresh the page. So there is that one little detail that may stop some users. Because it is and extra step. Perhaps an extra step that’s worth it though. You can watch the video in peace and won’t have to worry about mid-roll ads or any ads in the beginning or end.
That being said, if you really want to avoid the ads, you should probably just pay for YouTube Premium. Ads on YouTube are how creators make money. So bypassing them in this way sort of takes away from that.
This method should also work for some paywall websites
According to the Reddit user who has enlightened everyone on how to avoid seeing ads, the very same method is said to work from some paywall sites.
Now, it’s never guaranteed that it will work with every single paywall site out there on the web. Some may still have ads that come through. Also worth mentioning is that this only works for desktop browsers.
It can technically be used on mobile devices, but you’ll need to request the desktop version of the site you’re visiting to apply it.