Watching videos on YouTube has become a frustrating experience – unless you pay for its Premium plan. Robert Irvine reveals expert ways to improve your viewing for free
As the second most popular website in the world (after Google, see www.snipca. com/48815), YouTube doesn’t need to make huge efforts to attract new viewers.
However, in the last few years, it has seemed determined to annoy and alienate existing users, especially those who threaten its business model.
The most notable and unwelcome change happened last October, when YouTube started banning ad blockers – despite having no strong objection to them for the first 18 years of its existence. Although most viewers understand that adverts help creators earn money from their content, a huge proportion of videos are shared on YouTube for free (often without copyright holders’ consent) – so who’s really profiting here?
But ads aren’t the only problem. YouTube has become cluttered with irritating content such as its TikTok-style Shorts clips and increasingly pushy recommendations, which distract from rather than enhance your viewing experience. It also restricts useful features – such as avoiding ads, downloading videos and playing them in the background on your phone – to its Premium subscription, which recently increased its price to a wallet-stretching £13 per month.
Fortunately, because we still think YouTube is the best video-streaming service, there are plenty of free tools that can fix its annoyances, omissions and restrictions. In this feature, we reveal expert ways to improve how you watch every video. Some of them beat YouTube’s restrictions, but we won’t tell if you won’t.
WHAT YOU CAN DO
• Stop YouTube forcing you to disable your ad blocker
• Protect your privacy by deleting your watch history
• Hide reminders to subscribe to YouTube channels
• Replace misleading thumbnail images for videos
• Convert and download videos in any browser
• Automatically play content in 4K resolution
• Normalise the volume of YouTube videos on your phone
• Customise YouTube’s layout and theme
MAKE YOUTUBE LESS ANNOYING
1 Block annoying adverts
Adverts are undoubtedly the biggest annoyance on YouTube and one that’s got considerably worse in the last year. They have become more frequent in videos on the YouTube website and mobile apps, and are now longer and often impossible to skip on smart TVs (see www.
