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What software can I use to block YouTube ads on a smart TV? The TV does not allow the YouTube app to be modified.

I have looked at PiHole but it appears that it is no longer capable of blocking YouTube ads since they are now served from the same domains as the actual content. Proxies don't seem able to do the job because YouTube uses HTTPS and there is no way to install my own certificate on the TV to perform a man-in-the-middle attack.

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  • since you didn't specify any limitations. Pay for youtube red, then its commercial free. Regarding, PiHole, did you change the DHCP server to provide the IP address of the PiHole for the DNS server? If not, its using the regular DNS server and bypassing PiHole altogether. The DNS request is not encrypted.
    – cybernard
    Nov 27, 2018 at 15:22
  • YouTube Red is not available here, unfortunately. PiHole is working fine thanks, it's just a limitation of DNS based blocking because YouTube serves the ads from the same servers as the videos, meaning if you block ads you block the videos too.
    – user
    Nov 27, 2018 at 17:24
  • Is it possible to install an unofficial client for YouTube, rather than using the official YouTube app? Any such client, one hopes, would either not bother to implement ads or allow them to be disabled.
    – Kodiologist
    Nov 28, 2018 at 18:07
  • @Kodiologist please read the question, particularly the second sentence.
    – user
    Nov 29, 2018 at 9:38
  • @user I read the question in full. The second sentence is "The TV does not allow the YouTube app to be modified." I'm asking if you can install another app, not if you can modify the existing app.
    – Kodiologist
    Nov 29, 2018 at 13:22

1 Answer 1

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The current state of the art is to use regex filters with PiHole.

(^r[[:digit:]]+(\.|\-+)[[:alnum:]]+\-+[[:alnum:]]+\-+[[:alnum:]]+\.)(googlevideo|gvt1)\.com$

This will block most in-video ads and seems to have no side effects.

(^r[[:digit:]]+(\.|\-+)[[:alnum:]]+\-+[[:alnum:]]+\.)(googlevideo|gvt1)\.com$

This will block the ads before videos start, but also tends to stop the video playing as well. Currently there is no solution.

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  • Can you explain how to deploy this code in tv?
    – imba22
    Aug 6, 2019 at 10:13
  • Neither of these work at the current time. The first only seems to work in certain countries, and then not very well. The latter, as you say, breaks YouTube.
    – user
    Aug 7, 2019 at 7:51

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