******* Youtube ads issue discussion & fix for it begins in the middle of this topic *******
The Main Reason why i have done this is due to spotify constantly angering me by showing this annoying banner every time its been launched, this below issue also shows im not the only one who feels this way as some other users also posted this…
they even work on updating the banner for older windows versions but doesn’t seem to put the effort to update the actual desktop app… just seem to jump on the bandwagon and dropping support because “everyone else is doing it”
Personally, i see this as psycho behavior of the developer and this banner often seem to offend me as everytime i see this banner, it’s like they want to belittle win 8.1 wherein reality win 8.1 is much more futuristic, faster and user friendlier than win 11…
Even Microsoft and Windows 8.1 provides option to disable notifications…
Why not Just uninstall the desktop app and use only web player ?
There are certain things which the Brave browser/web player unable to do which only the desktop version of spotify can do… Good Example is Multi select option which is Ctrl+A, you cannot do this on web player/Brave browser
i needed this because 98% of the playlists which are made by spotify has the annoying habit of removing entire songs in a playlist and re-adding them again with only 7 to 8 songs being added as New…i dont have the time and energy to find exactly what has been added as new for all of the playlist which i follow…so to filter out the duplicates, i need this feature which only the desktop version seem to do…
Currently, i have managed to block all kinds of Banner/Poster ads on the desktop version of the spotify app by using the following method… Be aware that if you follow the same on the latest version of windows, you will break spotify’s update feature and offline feature, this is recommended to be followed only by users who use windows 8.1 and windows 7
Go to C:\Users\Your username\AppData\Local\Spotify\Browser
Make sure to close the spotify desktop app first
once its closed, Navigate to the above shown directory and open all of the folders which i have selected and delete everything inside it(Not the actual folders but only the files which are inside each folder)
Once Deleted, Go to C:\Users\Your username\AppData\Local\Spotify
Select Browser, Right click and select properties, switch to security tab, click edit permissions and select your username and “Deny” the write permission for the entire folder
Repeat the above 2 tasks of deleting files/denying write permission again for these selected folders aswell…
Now, Go to C:\Users\Your username\AppData\Roaming\Spotify
try to see if you find any Spotifymigrator or Spotifystartuptask.exe or something similar and delete those .exe files(only recommended for win 8.1/7 users)
Im unsure about its exact name as i have already deleted it before few weeks but im sure that name of the .exe file will have the keyword startup and migrator. Make sure these are the only files present on that directory
For Win 10 and Win 11 users, you can follow the below method-> if you are willing to miss out on updates OR dont care about updates and would be just happy if poster/banner ads are gone…
currently, i have two options for you to choose…
- Doing all of the above steps and undoing it whenever you feel like you need to update(Removing the deny permission for the Browser folder as once you uncheck the deny permission and hit apply, the spotify app will create those deleted files upon your next launch of spotify desktop app). You can follow this cycle for every 3 months once whenever “you feel like its been a while and you need to update it”…
with the current advancements, spotify desktop app should be able to work without updates and without causing issues for continuously 6 months straight.
- An Alternative intelligent way would be to uninstall the app and reinstall it again for every 4 months once and using the deny permission method again(once you have got the latest version installed).
The following steps which i’ll explain further should be seen as a update for the below thread
https://www.reddit.com/r/windows8/comments/15v7dsx/permanently_get_rid_of_spotifys_your_version_of/
The above thread which i posted on reddit is no longer effective… so follow the below steps and be aware that if you follow this method, the home page will have the sponsors fail to load and there will be empty area on the top side of the app where spotify will be ferociously attempting to load the image but will fail to load it, check the below video to gain clarity…
As you see on the above video, home page banner ad and the poster ads which usually appear on the bottom of the playlists will be gone… Also if you minimize the spotify desktop app and use some other app and then come back again to spotify, you will see an ad opened in Lightbox, right? Those type of ads will be gone too… This method also improves the responsiveness and load times of the app…
Denying the write permission for the browser folder should only be seen as primary step, ->>>>>To make the Blocking of ads and trackers to be super effective, you need to modify the windows hosts file by adding the following domains… This below method is also necessary to make the youtube ads blocking to be super effective… Some Microsoft/Google services may no longer work as intended… you may consider about removing the domains which are in bold if you wish to use those certain services…
Gmail ? Will work
Google Drive ? Will work
Youtube? Will Work
Google Search ? Will Work
play store ? No
MSN? No
Remove the highlighted domains in the below list to make the play store and msn to work as intended…
Also note that some domains might be invalid or outdated but adding them shouldnt harm your pc…i didn’t have the time to verify each of them one by one, just copy and paste these in your hosts file
# Use this to block ad servers
############## Begin manual list
#
0.0.0.0 upgrade.scdn.co
0.0.0.0 adeventtracker.spotify.com
0.0.0.0 adclick.g.doubleclick.net
0.0.0.0 scdn.co
0.0.0.0 apresolve.spotify.com
0.0.0.0 media-match.com
0.0.0.0 audio-ak-spotify-com.akamaized.net
0.0.0.0 ingest.sentry.io
0.0.0.0 googleoptimize.com
0.0.0.0 optimize.google.com
0.0.0.0 adserver.adtechus.com
0.0.0.0 ade.googlesyndication.com
0.0.0.0 tpc.googlesyndication.com
0.0.0.0 anycast.pixel.adsafeprotected.com
0.0.0.0 d361oi6ppvq2ym.cloudfront.net
0.0.0.0 idsync-ext.rlcdn.com
0.0.0.0 showads33000.pubmatic.com
0.0.0.0 securepubads.g.doubleclick.net
0.0.0.0 core.insightexpressai.com
0.0.0.0 crashdump.spotify.com
0.0.0.0 log.spotify.com
0.0.0.0 analytics.spotify.com
0.0.0.0 ads-fa.spotify.com
0.0.0.0 audio-ec.spotify.com
0.0.0.0 heads-ec.spotify.com
0.0.0.0 ads.pubmatic.com
0.0.0.0 sto3.spotify.com
0.0.0.0 b.scorecardresearch.com
0.0.0.0 bs.serving-sys.com
0.0.0.0 d3rt1990lpmkn.cloudfront.net
0.0.0.0 doubleclick.net
0.0.0.0 ds.serving-sys.com
0.0.0.0 audio-sp-tyo.spotify.com
0.0.0.0 audio-sp-ash.spotify.com
0.0.0.0 audio-fa.spotify.com
0.0.0.0 audio-sp-sjc.spotify.com
0.0.0.0 audio-sp-sea.spotify.com
0.0.0.0 audio-sp.spotify.com
0.0.0.0 audio2.spotify.com
0.0.0.0 audio4.ak.edgesuite.net
0.0.0.0 heads-fab.spotify.com
0.0.0.0 ads.yahoo.com
0.0.0.0 agkn.com
0.0.0.0 rlcdn.com
0.0.0.0 adnxs.com
0.0.0.0 msn.com
0.0.0.0 assets.msn.com
0.0.0.0 data.msn.com
0.0.0.0 fastclick.net
0.0.0.0 pubmatic.com
0.0.0.0 cloudfront.net
0.0.0.0 ravenjs.com
0.0.0.0 play.google.com
0.0.0.0 googleadservices.com
0.0.0.0 googletagservices.com
0.0.0.0 googletagmanager.com
0.0.0.0 secure-ds.serving-sys.com
0.0.0.0 cm.g.doubleclick.net
0.0.0.0 dp.g.doubleclick.net
0.0.0.0 googleads.g.doubleclick.net
0.0.0.0 googleads2.g.doubleclick.net
0.0.0.0 googleads3.g.doubleclick.net
0.0.0.0 googleads4.g.doubleclick.net
0.0.0.0 pagead.doubleclick.net
0.0.0.0 pagead46.l.doubleclick.net
0.0.0.0 pagead.l.doubleclick.net
0.0.0.0 pagead2.l.doubleclick.net
0.0.0.0 pagead3.l.doubleclick.net
0.0.0.0 partnerad.l.doubleclick.net
0.0.0.0 pubads.g.doubleclick.net
0.0.0.0 securepubads.g.doubleclick.net
0.0.0.0 video-ad-stats.googlesyndication.com
0.0.0.0 analytics-google.com
0.0.0.0 stats.g.doubleclick.net
0.0.0.0 static.doubleclick.net
0.0.0.0 ssl.google-analytics.com
0.0.0.0 s.innovid.com
0.0.0.0 secure-ds.serving-sys.com
0.0.0.0 s0.2mdn.net
0.0.0.0 rtd.tubemogul.com
0.0.0.0 googletagmanager.l.google.com
0.0.0.0 google-analytics.l.google.com
0.0.0.0 pagead.googlesyndication.com
0.0.0.0 pagead2.googlesyndication.com
0.0.0.0 pagead1.googlesyndication.com
0.0.0.0 innovid.com
0.0.0.0 googleadapis.l.google.com
0.0.0.0 g.doubleclick.net
0.0.0.0 fwmrm.net
0.0.0.0 fls.doubleclick.net
0.0.0.0 files.adform.net
0.0.0.0 dts.innovid.com
0.0.0.0 doubleclick.net
0.0.0.0 analytic-google.com
0.0.0.0 ad.youtube.com
0.0.0.0 ads.youtube.com
0.0.0.0 adservice.google.com
0.0.0.0 ads.doubleclick.net
0.0.0.0 ad.mo.doubleclick.net
0.0.0.0 ad-g.doubleclick.net
0.0.0.0 ad.doubleclick.net
0.0.0.0 2mdn.net
0.0.0.0 tsyndicate.com
0.0.0.0 2975c.v.fwmrm.net
0.0.0.0 rr1---sn-ci5gup-jwcl.googlevideo.com
0.0.0.0 rr2---sn-ci5gup-jwcl.googlevideo.com
0.0.0.0 rr3---sn-ci5gup-jwcl.googlevideo.com
0.0.0.0 rr4---sn-ci5gup-jwcl.googlevideo.com
0.0.0.0 rr5---sn-ci5gup-jwcl.googlevideo.com
0.0.0.0 rr6---sn-ci5gup-jwce.googlevideo.com
0.0.0.0 rr7---sn-ci5gup-jwce.googlevideo.com
0.0.0.0 rr8---sn-ci5gup-jwce.googlevideo.com
0.0.0.0 rr9---sn-ci5gup-jwce.googlevideo.com
0.0.0.0 rr10---sn-ci5gup-jwce.googlevideo.com
#
############## End manual list
Sources which were used to compile this domain list : Google, bing, Brave Shields, Github
The above article motivated me to block youtube ads…
If you’re confused as to where to add these domains or where the hosts files are located, follow this video
and on the hosts file add it below the highlighted area as show in the image
The flashing ui bug on spotify’s home page of the desktop app cant be fixed ? I have added an batch file for you where it will get rid of it…
The Output ?
open your Notepad and save the following in it
@echo off
title Spotify
echo ********************* Spotify Banner Fix *********************
echo.
REM This batch file disables and enables all network adapters using PowerShell commands
REM Disable all network adapters
echo Instructing Windows to Disable All Network Adapters
powershell -Command "Get-NetAdapter | Disable-NetAdapter -Confirm:$false"
echo.
echo Done, All Network adapters were successfully disabled.
timeout /t 2 /nobreak >nul
echo.
echo Working…
timeout /t 2 /nobreak >nul
start “Spotify” “C:\Users\Arun\AppData\Roaming\Spotify\Spotify.exe”
timeout /t 75 /nobreak >nul
TASKKILL /F /IM spotify.exe
timeout /t 8 /nobreak >nul
start “Spotify” “C:\Users\Arun\AppData\Roaming\Spotify\Spotify.exe”
timeout /t 57 /nobreak >nul
REM Enable all network adapters
echo.
echo Finishing up…
timeout /t 2 /nobreak >nul
echo Activating your Network Adapters…
powershell -Command "Get-NetAdapter | Enable-NetAdapter"
timeout /t 4 /nobreak >nul
echo.
echo Check your spotify now, the annoyance should be gone now.
echo.
echo This window will automatically close in 50 seconds or hit Enter to exit now.
echo.
echo (C) Microsoft Corporation. All Rights reserved.
timeout /t 50 >nul
if %errorlevel% equ 1 exit
-
Replace the Name Arun with your account username.
-
Name it as Spotify.bat and click Save.
-
Now, Instead of using the spotify icon to launch spotify, Run this batch file in admin mode"Run as Administrator"
-
You might say why just not disconnect the Wi-Fi, Launch the Spotify app and enable Wi-Fi again as that seems to be a much simpler way ? I already tried that but the issue persisted for me, essentially it requires a timeout and thus batch file way of getting things done seems to be more efficient for me. You can feel free to try what you think as best way to workaround…But for me, i like to follow this way as the batch files automates everything also this method effectively helps to get rid of the annoying banner “your operating system is out of date”
I personally Like this “Out of Sight, Out of mind” thing where its much better if i dont see that banner, its great as it’s been constantly annoying me…
If doing these methods helps me to avoid seeing this banner, i will do it, i dont mind about the wait times as there are plenty of things available to explore on the brave browser while cmd is doing its operation…
Video animations of Batch file functioning while you run it…
what i will do if spotify breaks this method aswell? im wondering how they will do it but even if they were to ruin my experience, i am actively working on optimizing the vm use case and will just use that instead But only if they manage to break this existing method…
The above clip is taken from this thread…
i have also contacted the developer of the Xlite os by giving my suggestions to improve its speed and performance even further and much faster. Click on image for immersive view
other measures which i take to avoid the spotify desktop app ? Most of the times i use web player on brave and launch the desktop app only during Friday… I am also working on going back to old school ways of listening music and breaking the dependency with spotify altogether…
Increasing my addiction towards Awesome Foobar and working my way of going back to old school ways of listening to Music… The Next 5 videos are shared only for fun, if you are not interested, you can go the next part of this topic…
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Let’s Get into the Discussion of blocking Youtube ads…
First you need to Modify the windows hosts file, just follow the same steps which i said for spotify.
Next, You need to setup a pattern for Network Request Blocking where the end result would look something like this
In the above image, Ignore watch.tataplay and tm.tapi.videoready which shows 0 blocked(they are not related with yt)
How to get Network request blocking feature shown ? By default, i think its hidden but you can enable it using the inspect feature and using the 3 dot overflow button on the top right side of the browser and choosing show console drawer
on the console drawer which will be shown in bottom, use the same 3 dot overflow button again and enable it here as shown in the below image
Now, Click on the + icon and start adding the following patterns, i would have just shown you the image and asked you type everything very carefully similar to how you were to use code for cmd BUT to make it easy it for you, i have done the work and added the lines for you, Take it one step at a time and finish setting up the pattern real quick.
https://static.doubleclick.net/instream/ad_status.js
https://www.google.co.in/pagead/lvz?evtid
https://googleads.g.doubleclick.net/pagead/id
https://play.google.com/log?format=json
https://www.youtube.com/ptracking?
https://www.youtube.com/api/stats/qoe?
https://www.youtube.com/youtubei/v1/log_event?
https://www.youtube.com/oembed?format=json
https://tpc.googlesyndication.com/
https://www.google.com/pagead/1p-user-list/
https://www.youtube.com/pagead/viewthroughconversion/
www.youtube.com/generate_204
www.youtube.com/api/stats/watchtime?
www.youtube.com/manifest.webmanifest
www.youtube.com/youtubei/v1/notification/get_unseen_count?
jnn-pa.googleapis.com/$rpc/google.internal.waa.v1.Waa/Create
www.gstatic.com/cv/js/sender/v1/cast_sender.js
https://www.google.com/pagead/lvz?evtid
https://rr4---sn-ci5gup-jwcl.googlevideo.com
https://rr1---sn-ci5gup-jwce.googlevideo.com
https://rr5---sn-ci5gup-jwcl.googlevideo.com
https://www.youtube.com/youtubei/v1/player/ad_break?
https://www.youtube.com/api/stats/playback?
https://www.youtube.com/pagead/adview?ai
https://www.youtube.com/api/stats/ads?
https://www.youtube.com/pagead/interaction/?ai=
https://www.youtube.com/pcs/activeview?xai=
https://accounts.youtube.com/RotateCookies
https://rr3---sn-ci5gup-jwce.googlevideo.com
https://www.youtube.com/sw.js
https://rr7---sn-ci5gup-jwce.googlevideo.com
https://rr8---sn-ci5gup-jwce.googlevideo.com
Once you have done this, Go to your Framework Ignore List on the setting page which you can go to using
and add the following pattern…
The End Result should look similar to this
Enable Ignore Listing.
Custom Exclusion Rules
/serviceworker-kevlar-appshell.js$
/base.js$
/endscreen.js$
/desktop_polymer_enable_wil_icons.js$
/webcomponents-sd.js$
/watch\b
^chrome-extension://ejoemlajhghppkakhhebjngamgbmepbj\b.*/youtubeBase.bundle.js$
/RotateCookiesPage\b
/sw.js$
/scheduler.js$
/web-animations-next-lite.min.js$
/app\b
/d49eaee7fefd5e3626e1.bundled.js$
The tricky part is here, install these two extensions at first
Before we start discussing this, i wanted to let you know that you need to enable “network request blocking” everytime you open youtube as although the pattern will be saved permanently, the activation of Network request Blocking doesn’t stay that way atleast that’s what the case in chromium 109…
As for these above two extensions, For Doubleclicker, as the name suggests double clicking a link will open that link in a new tab and for smartup gestures, you should configure it 1st where you can do this in options page of that extension… Configure it in a way where right swiping a link is equivalent to commanding the link to be opened in a new tab
if you are having trouble setting it up, leave a comment on this thread and i will share the config file of the smartup gestures extension which you can import it… why not just right mouse click and choose open link in new tab ? Its because you will miss out on timing as you need to be perfect, you should not do it too fast nor too later…for example, if its 1 second, on a scale of 1 to 100% you should do it at 35% which is equivalent to 0.35ms
i mean at first, you can do Either of the doubleclicker method or link swipe method to open the link of video which you want to watch in a new tab 1st and then once the next 0.35ms gets passed(after the desired video link tab has been opened), you need to click on it again before the newly opened tab gets loaded fully. Watching the test videos below will give you more clarity. If an ad manages to penetrate, its because your timing of click is wrong.
The Difference between doubleclicker method and link swipe is that if you had tabs like
A B C D E F
If you are now on Tab A and use doubleclicker, the new links of tabs which you double click will be opened Next to A. However if you are on A tab and use link swipe method, the newly swiped tabs will be placed/stacked after the F tab.
A B C D E F G H
Here if you are on Tab A and used the link swipe method, then your newly opened tabs will be G and H however if you use doubleclicker, those tabs will be opened next to A as said earlier.
After you set the Network patterns, make sure to perform a Hard Refresh
uncheck file system and check everything else. Make sure to add it to your context menu and Perform a Hard Refresh
If you need some bit of automation, you can use the below extension to automatically close the tabs which have been opened by you in youtube by configure the timing to 1 minute
Make sure to enable this extension only when you are about to use the youtube site by using the Extension manger. Personally, i dont recommend using the suspend feature offered by it as these types of tab suspending extensions tends to permanently close all of the tabs which it suspended during the moments you disable the extension…,so think twice before using those features… This was just a friendlier advise to not make you lose tabs and dealing with the pain of not knowing exactly what you lost… you have the choice on what to do.
personally, here is what i would do, at first i will make sure there are no active tabs in the current browser profile which im in and then if i did have some tabs opened i will use a session manager or bookmark them and close it first and then load youtube after enabling tab suspender so that in a way if tab suspender messes up something it will become a less of problem for me. once i am done with youtube, i will also disable tab suspender and only enable it again the next time whenever i need to use youtube.
I stopped using youtube daily and now a days i find myself going to youtube only 3 times a week and total duration of youtube usage is less than 2 or 3 hours per week. Sometimes it will be 6 to 7 hours aswell but thats becoming rare as i stopped the habit wanting to keep up with everything and realized that the real joy is while we can say “i created it, i fixed it, i did it”… Now most of the time, im working on doing some of the above instead of constantly consuming what others are doing with their Life and keeping up with news, facts and trends… If something is important for me, i will eventually come to know across it… If not, im alright with that. My Brain needs peace and rest and i am not willing to give others power to control it.
Here are the test videos…
New videos which i captured yesterday and today with speedy performance improvements as i updated the network request blocking patterns recently… My Favorite Win 8.1 will also receive credit for this speed
Ads which you may see are the result of wrong timing… If some ad manages to penetrate, make sure to use this method which i posted in my 2nd account
Who helped me to discover this method ? i discovered this method by myself, Not wanting to and Refusing to Let go of my favorite win 8.1 helps me to learn more tricks… i hope you find them useful.
Test 1
Test 2
Test 3
Test 4
Test 5
Test 6
Test 7
Test 8
Test 9
The Recent Loom update has messed up the animations on console/network view but you can see the clear animations here …
This doesn’t mean you cannot see the same behavior now on your browser, it’s just the visuals wont be just like this during the moments of you recording something…if you are not recording, everything will work… If i missed something or something could be improved, let me know…
