Samsung Internet could lose its YouTube ad blocking capabilities

Samsung Internet is one of the best browser apps available for Android devices (yes, unlike other Samsung apps, the browser is available for non-Galaxy devices as well). It has a number of useful features, and for many, one of the best things about Samsung Internet is its support for ad blockers.

Samsung Internet supports quite a few third-party ad blockers, including AdBlock and AdBlock Plus, which are ad blocking extensions available for popular browsers like Google Chrome. However, those who use ad blockers in Samsung Internet to watch YouTube videos without ads might be disappointed to hear that Google is working on a way to disallow the use of ad blockers on YouTube.

Google working on ad blocker detection on YouTube

A Reddit user revealed that while watching videos on YouTube, they encountered a popup asking them to either allow ads on YouTube in their ad blocker settings or buy YouTube Premium, and Google confirmed that it is part of an experiment it is running. It seems to be in a very early stage as there is currently one just report of the popup showing up, but there's no doubt Google will one day make it much harder to block ads on the world's largest video sharing platform worldwide.

It's worth pointing out that many ad blockers, including those available for Samsung Internet, already have YouTube as an exception and don't block ads on the site. However, once Google expands the ad blocker limitation globally, it's possible all popular ad blockers will be affected, though we are assuming some ad blockers will eventually find a way to get around YouTube's ad blocker detection.

Still, at this point ad block detection seems to be some ways off from going live for everyone, so you should have some more time to enjoy an ad-free video experience without having to pay for a YouTube Premium subscription.