A chromium extension to Bypass Youtube Ads...

...by reloading a video page until Youtube stops showing ads.

Install

1. Download latest release zip file and unzip it
2. In Chrome (or any chromium-based navigator like Brave or Arc), go to "Manage extensions"
3. Enable "Developer mode"
4. Click on "Load unpacked" and select "bypass-youtube-ads" folder
5. That's it ! You can go to youtube.com to watch your video, the extension should now works. (You can check logs in the console).

Read an external "install extension in developer mode" tutorial here

How it works ?

In resume

1. You go to a Youtube video page
2. The extension checks if there is an ad playing
3. If yes : reload the page
4. Do it until there is no more ads playing.

The principle

Youtube will show you some ads (as of today its generally 2x 10-20s ads, with sometime a skip button) before a video. Then, it will let you watch some video (I believe it's more a timer) without ads.
It's a cycle, watch an ad to get some free time.
Based on that, I used to reload page manually each time I saw an ads. Now, it's automated.

Some stats

• It takes ~ 4s to bypass ad when you begin your watching session, it's always fun to see how the algorithm is tricked by a simple reload.
• Then you'll have some free time
• Next ads bypass might be even shorter (~2s).

Why the extension is not on the Chrome Web Store ?

• Project still in development (subject to big changes in function of users feedbacks)
• This adblocker idea could be invalidated quickly (I believe that this adblocking system is very simple but also very fragile)
• Maybe it's conterproductive to publish on a google service a tool to block another google service ?

Possible improvements

• Handle ads in the middle of video
• Auto mute ads
• Some ads can be skipped after 5s. If bypass by reload takes more than 5s, we could rather check if we can skip ads.
• Way to inform users that a new version is available (if a patch is deployed for example)