This is not clickbait — in this video I show you how to watch YouTube without ads without paying for YouTube Premium, and it works on both desktop and mobile. I’m not just repeating the usual “download an ad blocker” advice either, because that doesn’t solve the mobile problem. On desktop, I do recommend the Adlock for YouTube Chrome extension for blocking regular ads, and I also like SponsorBlock because it auto-skips the sponsored segments baked into videos (those little green sections on the timeline). But the real “gatekept” method is using a VPN and setting your location to Albania. For whatever reason, ads aren’t allowed on YouTube in Albania, so once I connect to an Albanian server and refresh YouTube, the sponsored placements disappear and I can scroll Shorts or watch videos without getting hit with ads. I demonstrate this on desktop in incognito and then again on mobile: without premium I get an ad, I switch my VPN to Albania, refresh, and the ads are gone. If you already have a VPN (which you should for basic online protection), this becomes a simple bonus perk that saves you time and money.