Did ublock origin used to work with chromecasted youtube videos?

YaDong , 5 months ago

smarttube.app has been my solution

MimicJar , 5 months ago

I don’t know the answer.

Technologically speaking, ublock origin runs on your browser and Chromecast runs as a separate instance outside of your browser, as a result the two are completely separate and have no effect on each other.

Generally speaking you can start a Chromecast session and then reboot your device/phone/computer/etc and the Chromecast will continue to play.

Now, for a time, the YouTube Chromecast session did not support ads. So it’s likely you thought it was ublock origin, but in reality even if the extension were off, you’d still have no ads.

Jimmycrackcrack OP , 5 months ago

aaaah that must be it. I’m actually a little uncertain how the chromecast works. I think it’s a little smarter than I might have realised. I used to think it was kind of ‘dumb’, in a good way. I figured it couldn’t really do anything but relay very specific formats of video through an HDMI interface. I assumed then that the wifi connection was just allowing it to receive a stream locally that a different device, a phone or laptop for example, was pulling from the internet and sending the chromecast’s way. It seems like it actually works a bit like a browser in its own right and is actively requesting streams directly from the internet and all my controlling device is doing is basically sending it a URL. Is that more like it?

MimicJar , 5 months ago

Exactly. An early (pre-2014) Chromecast bug was that it couldn’t play private YouTube videos for that exact reason.

The Chromecast had no context for an “account” so a private YouTube video wouldn’t play, even if “you” played the video.

I assume a concept of “account” exists now and it works fine.

I also don’t know how it works in depth, but as I understand many (all?) YouTube/Google IP/DNS are hard coded into the YouTube Chromecast “app”. As a result even if you had adguard or similar adjustments on you device or home network, the blocking would still fail.

That isn’t to say it’s impossible, just difficult. (And it’s a classic cat and mouse game, so hard to say if it works right now.)

Darkassassin07 , 5 months ago

DNS based adblocking doesn’t work at all on youtube. They serve it all from the same domains so you can’t block the ads without blocking the site. (there are other methods ofc, this is just dns)