DuckDuckGo’s free web browser now blocks most video ads on YouTube, and the feature is enabled by default for iPhone and Mac users running the latest version of the app.
Announced Wednesday, YouTube ad blocking stops ads playing before and during videos on YouTube’s website, and DuckDuckGo says the result is the regular YouTube experience minus the interruptions, so features like viewing history and saving your place in playlists continue to work.
One thing to watch for on iPhone is that if you tap a YouTube link, it often opens the dedicated YouTube app if you have it installed. The blocking feature obviously won’t work there and you will have to open the YouTube website in the DuckDuckGo browser instead.
DuckDuckGo says it uses community-curated filter lists from uBlock Origin, as well as its own rules to help minimize breakage. The company warns that videos may buffer a little longer than usual, but playback should be seamless once the clip is loaded.
Note that YouTube ad blocking is separate from Duck Player, the browser’s distraction-free video viewing mode, but the two can be enabled together.
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The move follows Google’s continued efforts to break ad blockers through any means possible, including recent changes to Chrome that targeted uBlock Origin. It’s worth mentioning that DuckDuckGo isn’t the first browser to block YouTube ads, with similar features already available in Brave and Opera.
DuckDuckGo’s browser offers more than a dozen privacy protections, including blocking ad tracking and removing contextual cookies. It is available for iOS devices on the App Store and for Mac on the Mac App Store and the DuckDuckGo website.
