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Comment by girishso | Hacker News Reader

Can't block Youtube shorts with these DNS adblockers, I know I can use browser extensions on a computer (and I do), but I really want to block shorts on iOS/Android apps. Tried the squid https proxy rabbit hole, but could not get it to work with mobile devices.

Any hints?

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I use revanced for this on Android. Pretty cool, adblocker, sponsor block, customization like removing shorts. It patches YouTube APK, so you retain same UX, no need to use a new app.

Edit: forgot to add link - https://revanced.app/

Be aware of the fake ones.

Just don't go to the shorts section? Or are you talking about the ads in the shorts section?

The shorts section on mobile is kinda inbetween all other videos. If you don't pay attention you can end up on one quite easily...

And then it's back to doom scrolling

Shorts plague the search. Short clips are always completely irrelevant to anything I can possibly be looking for, while not entirely insane, anyway.

NewPipe for Android has no shorts

Came to say this. NewPipe is great. Superior to the default android YouTube app in many ways.

I stopped using yt app on iOS and instead use browser (safari) with addons

Tried the squid https proxy rabbit hole, but could not get it to work with mobile devices.

You'll need to generate your own CA and root certs to install if you're setting up a MITM proxy.

I did create a self signed root cert, it works as expected when accessing net from my Mac. But mobile devices refuse to work, zero network requests succeed. I did trust the root cert on both mac and mobile. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Certificate pinning perhaps?

Righto, looks like impossible to fix then.

On newer versions of android it can be hard to install a root cert and trust it; mitmproxy and httptoolkit both have some great guides though. On iOS its easier - but yeah unfortunately/fortunately certificate pinned applications wont work

Depending on how much time you are willing to put in you could create a list of apps that dont PIN and selectively MiTM apps that dont

There are YouTube clones for iOS & Android that have Adblock, Shorts Block & Sponsor Blocks

Which ones for iOS?

Yattee

https://github.com/yattee/yattee

it requires either public or private Piped or Invidious instaces [1][2].

1. https://github.com/TeamPiped/Piped/wiki/Instances

2. https://docs.invidious.io/instances/

Sideload a tweaked YouTube IPA, like YTLitePlus.

I use Orion on ios.

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