DuckDuckGo browser starts blocking YouTube video ads by default
The privacy-focused browser now strips pre-roll and mid-roll ads on the world's biggest video site, joining Brave and Opera in offering built-in blocking.
Key points
- DuckDuckGo rolled out YouTube ad blocking in its browser for iOS, Mac and Windows, on by default, with Android available as a manual toggle.
- The feature blocks pre-roll and mid-roll video ads on the standard YouTube site by using community filter lists from uBlock Origin.
- Users can run it alongside Duck Player, DuckDuckGo's separate privacy-hardened YouTube viewer.
- DuckDuckGo warns buffering may be slightly longer and blocking may break temporarily when YouTube changes how it serves ads.
- Brave and Opera already ship similar built-in ad blocking for YouTube.
DuckDuckGo has switched on YouTube ad blocking inside its browser. The feature strips out most video ads on YouTube, including the ads that play before a clip starts and the ones that interrupt it partway through.
It is on by default on iPhone, iPad, Mac and Windows. Android users have to turn it on themselves, under Settings then Ad Blocking. The rollout was first reported by BleepingComputer.
YouTube is the biggest video site on the internet, with billions of viewers. If you don't pay for YouTube Premium, Google shows you ads. Those ads pay the platform's bills and pay the creators. They have also, over the last few years, got longer, more frequent, and often impossible to skip.
DuckDuckGo's answer is to block them at the browser level.
How does the blocking actually work?
It uses filter lists borrowed from uBlock Origin, a well known free ad blocker maintained by volunteers, to spot and drop YouTube's ad requests. DuckDuckGo has added its own compatibility rules on top to catch things the community lists miss.
Think of a filter list as a constantly updated recipe book that tells the browser: "anything that looks like this is an ad, don't load it."
This is separate from Duck Player, a feature DuckDuckGo already offered. Duck Player is a stripped-down YouTube viewer inside the browser that uses YouTube's strictest privacy settings to stop tracking cookies and personalised ads. The two can run together. You can use Duck Player for privacy when you click a video link, and the new ad blocker when you browse the normal YouTube site.
"YouTube Ad Blocking blocks video ads on the YouTube website, so you can watch without interruption," the company said in its announcement. "It's the regular YouTube experience, just without ads."
Features like watch history and saved playback position still work.
What's the catch?
Two things worth knowing.
First, DuckDuckGo says videos may take a little longer to start buffering, the short wait while the video loads before it plays. Once playback begins, it should feel normal.
Second, YouTube regularly changes the way it serves ads. Every ad blocker on the market gets broken by those changes, then fixed a few days later when the filter lists catch up. Expect the feature to occasionally stop working until an update lands. DuckDuckGo is asking users to send anonymous feedback from inside the browser while the team stabilises it.
The move puts DuckDuckGo alongside Brave and Opera, two other browsers that already ship with built-in ad and tracker blockers capable of hiding most YouTube ads without any extra extension.
What does this mean for ordinary users?
If you use DuckDuckGo's browser and you watch YouTube in it, ads should mostly disappear on their own. You don't have to install anything.
If you rely on creators you like, be aware: blocking ads means those creators don't get paid for your views. Many viewers choose to whitelist favourite channels in other blockers, or subscribe to YouTube Premium, or tip creators directly. DuckDuckGo's tool is all-or-nothing for now, either on for YouTube or off.
Google has not commented on the change. It has previously nudged users of other ad blockers with warnings and slowdowns on YouTube, so a cat-and-mouse phase is likely.
