How do I remove ads on YouTube without Premium?

YouTube doesn't really offer a legal and free way to completely remove ads without Premium, unfortunately. What you can do is use an ad blocker like uBlock Origin on your desktop browser, which blocks most ads (even though YouTube keeps trying to get around it), or just put up with the short ads you can skip after 5 seconds. If you're using your phone, the only free solution is basically to resign yourself to the ads, because ad blockers don't work well on apps; some people say YouTube Vanced (now defunct) was the solution back in the past, but it's not officially available anymore. Bottom line, if you don't want to pay, you gotta choose between tolerating ads or using an ad blocker on your computer.

If you're looking for shortcuts like sketchy extensions or modified APKs you're just wasting your time, they haven't worked in years and you risk catching malware. what people don't tell you is that if you use YouTube on your browser with uBlock Origin (which is legal) and then log in through a Google profile, the platform's algorithms still keep giving you personalized recommendations because they read your login data, so at least on the advertising side the dirty work is done. it's not perfect like Premium but you get rid of most of the annoyance without spending a dime.