If you’re like me, you use Chromecast regularly and were getting infuriated by those idiotic “Get ad-free YouTube and more” ads that popup seemingly on every single video and, despite having a “Dismiss” button, have no discernable way to actually dismiss them.
Do they expect us to press on our TV screen? I mean, come on, Google. Use that big, dumb, AI brain of yours.
Supposedly you can use your TV remote to do it, but my TV remote has nothing to do with my Chromecast so that obviously doesn’t work.
The app doesn’t seem to have any option to press a button or dismiss anything.
…Or does it?
It turns out the method to dismiss these annoying popups is pretty asinine and nearly impossible to figure out on your own, but after pressing every single button on the YouTube app until I figured it out, I’m here to share with you the results of my labor.
First, the short version, then the long and detailed one. Note that this worked with my Android device and the YouTube app. I suspect the instructions are the same on an iOS device.
How to dismiss the Chromecast popup ads:
- From the YouTube app, click the Cast icon again and press “Remote” to open up the remote
- Press the center button to dismiss
- Press up a couple times to hide the progress screen
And now for those who need a bit more detail (who am I kidding: this is just because Google won’t rank this page unless I give excruciating detail and screenshots):
- Load up your YouTube App and make sure that you are connected to your Chromecast already
- Press the cast icon again
- Press the “Remote” button to load up the Chromecast remote
- Press the center button to “Dismiss” the ad
- Because Google doesn’t want you to be happy, for some reason the progress bar and related content will show up now and won’t ever go away until you do something. So you may as well press the “Up” button a couple times to make it go away.
And that’s it! Unfortunately, you’ll probably still keep getting this idiotic ad for YouTube Premium on every video you watch, despite the fact you’re already seeing other ads before and after every video. It would seem that Google’s strategy to monetize YouTube truly is to just annoy you into submission.
The future is here, and it is terrible.
14 Comments on “How to Dismiss those Stupid Premium YouTube Popup Ads on Chromecast”
I haven’t yet seen this on YouTube but it pops up at the beginning of every song when I cast music via the YouTube Music app to the TV using Chromecast.
I will never submit to this constant harassment to subscribe. I was a passionate advocate of Google from it’s inception to around 2011, but they have over the years degraded their products. Ever since Alphabet it has worsened. YouTube is so saturated with ads that it’s got to the point of my rarely watching a YouTube video. The free version of YouTube Music is again so full of annoying aspects I often simply grab a CD rather than put up with the glitches, ads and poor quality of casting music.
Another annoying bug of late is YTM intermittently pauses while playing music and being cast to the TV. Hard to identify the issue. Could be the Chromecast device, apparently Google are no longer supporting updates for early devices, or it could be YTM.
Suffice to say the Internet of things is just becoming a nightmare rather than a utopia it was once hailed.
Agreed, in general things are getting worse instead of better.
I’ve had similar issues even with Spotify connecting to my Sonos speakers. Sometimes they just pause for no reason or become disconnected. Even when it works, it’s very slow to connect and extremely unresponsive, to where any pause or play action, or song switching is generally delayed several seconds.
The idea of doing it all over wifi and having the device connect directly to the server sounds good, but in practice has some serious limitations, apparently.
And Google definitely seems to be ending support for early Chromecasts. I can’t even get the Chromecast to connect to wifi anymore. It used to be a 1-step process, and now it requires like 20 steps and 3 apps, and it seems to just fail due to unknown errors now. It’s unbelievably asinine. I can’t tell if it’s incompetence or maliciousness on the part of Google at this point.
You can also just pause the video and it goes away but WTF YouTube why are you hijacking my video to extort me.
Really? I might give that a shot. It would be faster.
on screenshot #5, you can also click the top-left x to remove the annoying 1/3 bar
Ah, good tip! I’m going to try that next time.
Thanks! I discovered that pressing “play” button (TV remote) does the same… What disrespect with those who paid money for this shit Chromecast.
I’ll try that on mine next time, but I doubt that in my setup, it will do anything. I don’t think the TV can communicate with the Chromecast at all. But I guess we’ll see.
F YouTube. this made me install rumble and start watching as much as I can on their site.
thanks for the fix though
I can’t thank you enough. my spouse and I were going nuts trying to figure this out!
Thank you for sharing this advice. I tried it just now on my iPad, which is what I use to cast videos to my TV via a Chromecast, and I am happy to confirm that it does work
Thanks. By diminishing the experience like this I think they chase people away from the platform.
Legend. This has been pissing me off for a while
Great help I been trying to solve that problem for weeks. Thanks a mil.