VLC > media > open network stream > paste video link > convert > enjoy

This is good for one-off video watching type of things but it introduces a lot of friction

yeah its not a 1click, but less intrusion, no buffering unless your device is prehistoric, if its a keeper, you can snip off kruft, and do all the neat VLC, and Handbrake things.

thank you SO much!

I don't think they are blocking based on browser. They are probably on another push. I'm getting "Ad blockers violate YouTube's Terms of Service" on lastest Firefox and uBO. I'm in Australia.

Using duckduckgo video search opens the video on the search results page, playing there plays without ads, I get the “sign in to confirm you’re not a bot” message sometimes though.

Brave brazenly makes adverts in which they claim to skip YT adds. They would at some point grow big enough for YT to become a problem.

Youtube also blocks all but the crudest resolution on firefox.

I see plenty of 4K video on YouTube in Firefox.

Aha. There's a bunch of config switches that might need tweaking. "webm" did it for me. Thanks!

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1078015

https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/13u2diq/youtube_vi...

I didn't need to tweak any config switches.

I think you might be overtuning your browser. Probably best to reset to defaults and go from there.

I doubt that I actively disabled webm. But yeah, it's been years of switching this or that, firefox adding or removing this or that, etc. That does add up. One of these pages seems to imply that "webm" was turned off when it first came out in firefox. And until not so long ago, Google didn't send everything in webm.