YouTube Freemium
Whether you use it for music, how to’s, politics, games, or whatever else, YouTube is nearly essential for everyday living, but it’s pretty damn obvious that the ads are getting out of control. Having one or two 15 second ads at the start of a video was one thing, but having several every couple minutes is absolutely ridiculous. Of course you could use YouTube Premium, but what if you don’t have the money? Or you’re like me and just don’t like Google?
Thankfully, there are solutions and we are going to see exactly how they can be done. Now depending on what kind of device you use to stream, the solutions could range from being simple and easy to a little tricky. Just to keep it short: If you’re using desktop or smart phone, you’re good; console or smart TV, not so good. There are solutions, but they make take extra time, work, and (probably) money, at which point, unless you’ve got several services/devices, you might as well just use Premium.
Freemium on Desktop
Like most instances, desktop is easiest to setup with added benefits. All you need to do to get that luxurious free content is install browser extensions. Browser extensions expand the potential and utilities of you browser (kinda as the name would suggest) and are easy to install by going into your browser’s extension center. What we need is an ad blocker.
Click the hamburger icon at the top right of your browser and click Add Ons and Themes or Extensions depending on which program you’re using. This will show you which extensions you have installed. Click Find More or type in which ad blocker you’re looking for. I prefer uBlock Origin and would highly suggest it for everyone. Once you find the ad blocker you’d like, just click install and your problems should be almost immediately solved.
YouTube Dislike
While the uBlock solves almost everything, there are still some things we YouTube consumers miss like the damn dislike button. Sure, it’s there, but what’s the point of it if you can’t see how many dislikes there are? If I’m looking for a how to video, the like to dislike ratio is a quick way to see whether or not the video is worth my time.
If you want that ratio back also, there’s a solution in the same extension center: Return YouTube Dislike. This simple extension restores that magic number to give you exactly what Susan took away.
Freemium on Smart Phones
The ad block on computer is easy, but if you’re like me- were like me; working from home is a God sent- most of your consumption is on the road. Clearly a desktop ad blocker isn’t enough. But what if it is?
There’s no getting around ads in the YouTube app without premium, but you don’t need the app to watch YouTube, it’s a website. The simple solutions is just installing a web browser app that supports ad block (i.e Brave Browser). This little app for iOS and Android gives you built in ad block for YouTube and most any other site you intend to visit, including most the hentai sites.
On top of just ad block, the Brave app also lets you close your screen and still keep the audio going. Go into the app settings, scroll down until you see Background video playback, toggle it on, and hard close the app. Once you reopen it, you will be able to start a video and have it keep playing even if you turn the screen off. If it doesn’t work the first time, just close the app again and it should work.
The mobile web version of the site is built almost exactly like the app with two drawbacks (one small one and another big one). Small: you can’t shrink a video down and watch it while you explore the site. Big: you can’t put a playlist on shuffle unless you go into the desktop version of the website. This shouldn’t be a deal breaker, but if it, Premium might just be only answer.
This will solve most of your problems for general streaming, but if you’re like a certain friend and can’t have unlimited data, just streaming may not be enough. Thankfully, there’s an app for that
Download Videos
If you want to download videos from your phone for free, well do I have the solution for you. This is will take