Blockers not blocking ads on YouTube in Chrome? Try this fix!

If you are running a recent version of the Google Chrome web browser and a blocker extension such as uBlock to block advertisement and other undesirable elements on websites, you may have noticed that the blocking did not work as thoroughly as before.

While contents and resources are still blocked on many sites, you may have noticed that this is not the case on all anymore.

YouTube or Spotify for instance seem to fall into the category as ads may not get blocked on those sites anymore in the Chrome browser.

While your first thought may be that the sites changed something on their end that renders current ad blocking rules useless, it is apparently not the case.

Discussion on uBlock's Github page points the finger at new Web Request code that Google implemented in the last four weeks.

The main issue in regards to blocking content on the Web is that the new code is treating installed applications -- YouTube or Spotify -- like extensions as well which impacts installed blocker extensions.

You may want to try the following workaround if you are affected by this:

1. Open chrome://apps/ in the web browser. It opens a page that lists all installed applications in the browser. Please note that you may see apps listed there even if you have not installed any as Chrome may ship with apps preinstalled.
2. To remove an application from Chrome, right-click on its icon on the page and select "remove from Chrome".
3. Chrome displays a confirmation prompt. Make sure you select remove on it as well to get rid of the application.
4. The removal of the apps' icon on chrome://apps indicates a successful uninstallation of the app.
5. Repeat the steps for other applications that you may have installed and are not using.

Note: Removing the YouTube application has no impact on the actual website of the service.

You should notice afterwards that contents are blocked again on affected sites. So, if you notice that ads are not blocked on sites you visit, you may want to check the applications installed in Chrome to make sure that they are not the reason for this.