Watch YouTube Without Ads with FreeTube for Mac, Windows, Linux
YouTube is the webs most popular video site by a long shot, practically serving as a television replacement for millions. But as any Youtube viewer knows, the ads can be very aggressive and there are times where you’ll have to watch a 30 second ad before you can watch one minute of content, which is not exactly a great experience. Other times you may be watching a video of music or a movie, or even a workout, and suddenly your watching experience is interrupted by interstitial ads and commercials, that can be distracting and annoying. Wouldn’t it be nice to watch YouTube without the ads?
Is an ad-free YouTube experience possible, for free? And the answer to that question is yes, thanks to FreeTube.
FreeTube is a free app that lets you watch YouTube videos without ads
FreeTube is an open sourced YouTube Player for Mac, Windows, and Linux, and it’s built with privacy in mind, removing advertisements, and it apparently aims to prevent being tracked by YouTube cookies and Javascript too. It’s basically just a desktop app alternative interface to YouTube, complete with the familiar search functions, and all the YouTube content you’d expect to find is still there.
You can grab FreeTube for free from Github for your platform of choice:
If you’re unfamiliar with downloading apps from Github, check out this article for some guidance. As a Mac user you’ll likely want to get the “freetube-0.xx-x-mac-x64.dmg” or .zip file to get the built app, unless you’re looking to browse through the source code or get a version for a different operating system.
When you attempt to open FreeTube, the Mac will state the developer is not recognized and offer a warning about opening the app. You can right-click on the FreeTube app and choose ‘Open’ to bypass that warning.
You can search for YouTube videos or channels that you’d like to enjoy:
And then watch you’re able to enjoy favorite YouTube videos without ads:
It’s important to remember that ad blockers have a negative impact on the creators, whether that’s a YouTube channel, a website like you’re reading now, a game or app, or any other content provider that is ad-supported (which is much of the web). Thus it’s a good idea to be mindful of your ad blocker usage, and be sure to whitelist sites and channels that you want to support (like osxdaily.com), so that they can continue to provide articles, videos, and whatever other content, for free.
Thanks to MJTsai.com for the heads up about this cool app. If you have any recommendations for similar apps, share them with us in the comments.
Just putting it out there also, an app for appleTV would also be great.
Regarding the ad blocking, it has become ridiculous. Ads right is the middle of a video, web sites unreadable because of ads.
They have gone overboard with ads. Google can pay for our “free” internet now that we have paid Google billions of dollars.
Link doesn’ t go to Github
Link has been fixed, sorry about that!
Here’s the Github page for the project as well:
https://github.com/FreeTubeApp/FreeTube
link goes to OSXDaily instead of Gitthub
Why is OSXdaily promoting how to bypass paying for YouTube Premium? Then, in his closing paragraph, the author makes a pitch not to use ad blockers on the OSXdaily.com website because it reduces their ad revenue.
I hope this was just an oversight and not the result of a new policy. Let’s not ignore the legalities for OSXdaily promoting theft.
The link for FreeTube is:
https://freetubeapp.io/
The link: Get FreeTube free from Github does not work – it takes you back to the original page.
This just links to the article we are reading, not the Github site.
Can you fix it?
“You can grab FreeTube for free from Github for your platform of choice:
Get FreeTube free from Github”
Would be really cool if it worked on Apple TV
As the download link is incorrect in this article, go to https://freetubeapp.io/#download to pick your platform/downloader.
Or https://github.com/FreeTubeApp/FreeTube and you’ll find it in the top right-hand corner.
But do i then select zip, dmg or 7z?
Been paying for my own domains and hosting for over 20 years now. Ads are just annoying.
That link should point to https://freetubeapp.io/#download . It just brings you back to this page. (I’m not sure whether my first comment was submitted.)
The GitHub link takes you back to this page.
Also … I wonder how long it’ll take before YouTube figures out how to defeat FreeTube?
The link: “get freetube free from github” is pointing to the original article. Fix it please
link “Get FreeTube free from Github” doesn’t link to Github, but to this article.