Creating this as I know there’s been multiple topics open. Just going to try to merge together to make it easier to track.
Description of the issue:
YouTube returns “You’re offline” error when attempting to watch videos with advertisements on Brave for iOS while using Standard or Aggressive setting on “Trackers & Ad Blocking”.
10/14 Edit:
YouTube occasionally returns an “Ad Blockers not allowed” error instead of an “offline” error. However, at present, this can be closed and/or ignored.
How can this issue be reproduced?
- Download latest version of Brave.
- Navigate to YouTube and click on any video that normally has advertising.
(Most any video on the front page will probably work.)
Expected result:
The video should play normally and without advertisements.
Brave Version( check About Brave):
1.57.2 (23.9.27.14) for iOS / iPad
Mobile Device details
iPad Model: iPad (7th generation)
iPadOS Version: 16.7, 16.7.1
Additional Information:
From what I can gather, YouTube has started aggressively cracking down on ad blocking. If I had to guess, whatever they changed in their back-end made it so videos no longer play through Brave’s routing methods, thus the website assumes users are “offline”.
Disabling all of the filter lists does not change this unintended effect. Changing “Trackers & Ad Blocking” from Standard to Aggressive, or Disabled to Standard / Aggressive also has no long-term effect – changing this setting allows for one video which would normally have ads to play ad-free. Completely disabling the Trackers & Ad Blocking setting allows for normal playback, but the video has adverts. Videos also play normally in other apps and browsers, such as Chrome and the YouTube app for iOS. So… that’s happening, I guess.
10/14 Edit:
sola35’s workaround of simply refreshing the page works, so that’s good news. Weird news, but good news.
Relevant Screenshot
Related Topic
- YouTube can no longer be played (Japanese)
10/11 Edits:
- Added link to relevant topic from Japanese community.
- Clarified and expanded Additional Information.
10/14 Edit:
- Added temporary workaround for “Offline” error, as noted by sola35 and added a little note about the “Ad blockers not allowed” error to the opening paragraph.
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My Brave is the latest version. Can you tell me how to solve this problem?
Same issue,Only started today.(11/october/2023) version 1.57.62 portable.
i disabled the brave shield and everything worked perfectly but after i close and reopen the browser again none of my changes to the shield settings are saved. The exclusion list doesnt work either.
Is Brave aware of the issue? X
Not quite sure. Will tag in @Mattches and @steeven on it so they can test and/or pass on to the teams.
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same is happening on my ipad, your offline. check your connection, started last night for me, its annoying but refreshing the page solves the issue.
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Thanks for the refreshing tip. It’s annoying to have to do it, but it did work.
Okay. Without updating my iPad, without updating my browser, and without changing any of my YouTube settings… I’m suddenly able to watch videos without interruption and with ad-blocking enabled, again.
I’m curious about what changed on YouTube’s side of things. Did they revert the change? I’m not about to look a gift horse in the mouth, here, but that seems unlike Google, LLC’s YouTube division. Well… it’s working now, anyway, so… yay!
Yay! Perhaps Brave fixed it? It’s working again for me also.
I suspect this was an change on Youtube’s side that was resolved — I’m not seeing this issue on my iPad. Will try some more testing.
I’m seeing this issue on PC as well. Started a couple of days ago. Reloading the page allows me to view the video but its all the offline message that shows up first. Quite annoying.
@Shaun how frequently do you see this/can you reproduce this? For example, if you were to close the browser, launch Brave then go to YT and try to play a video, will you see that message every time?
Now I’m getting a pop up from youtube saying ad blockers are not allowed and telling me to switch to premium. I can click out of it and still watch the video—it’s just annoying.
Yep. Me, too. And the weird thing is that it seems to happen entirely at random. (On monetized videos, I mean.) This is a strange w turn of events, to be sure.
I guess I should probably update the original post…
I appreciated your original post—I had tried everything from changing settings to deleting and reinstalling apps.
Back to the “offline check your connection “ screen again . . .
I’ve gotten both “Offline” and “Ad Blockers Not Allowed” errors at random times – the former of which requires a refresh of the page to get around, as noted by sola35. I get this funny feeling that they’re either desperately trying to find “that one fix” to completely and perfectly block all ad blockers on YouTube, or they’re being extremely indecisive. Either way, it’s quite annoying… especially since if they keep changing it up, it makes it very difficult for the Brave techies to troubleshoot!
Well… someone, somewhere, will figure something out, at some time. Until then? Minor inconvenience.
Good catch. Looks like shields is the culprit. I tried multiple videos without shields without any problems. As soon as I enabled shields, I got the offline error message. At this point I have to reload the page for the message to go away and the video to play.