YouTube puts third-party clients on notice: Show ads or get blocked

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | Chris McGrath )

YouTube is putting third-party ad-blocking apps on notice. An ominous post on the official YouTube Community Help forum titled “Enforcement on Third Party Apps” says the company is “strengthening our enforcement on third-party apps that violate YouTube’s Terms of Service, specifically ad-blocking apps.” Google would really like it if you all paid for YouTube Premium.

YouTube has been coming down on third-party apps, which often enable YouTube ad blocking. The company shut down one of the most popular third-party apps, “YouTube Vanced,” in 2022. Vanced was open source, though, so new alternatives sprung up almost immediately. Vanced takes the official YouTube Android client and installs a duplicate, alternative version with a bunch of patches. It turns on all the YouTube Premium features like ad-blocking, background playback, and downloading without paying for the Premium sub. It also adds features the official app doesn’t have, like additional themes and accessibility features, “repeat” and “dislike” buttons, and the ability to turn off addictive “suggestions” that appear all over the app.

Another popular option is “NewPipe,” a from-scratch YouTube player that follows the open source ethos and is available on the FOSS-only store F-Droid. NewPipe wants a lightweight client without the proprietary code and million permissions that YouTube needs, but it also blocks ads.