I am for sure one of the smaller number of people doing this, but I watch YouTube on my TV using the TV app. As a result I always had to watch ads. I wish I could avoid them. I suppose a could watch from an alternative and then AirPlay it to my TV, but that’s about it.
Changing your router DNS to something that blocks ads (or a pihole at home) and you’ll never have to watch ads ever again, YouTube or elsewhere
YouTube video ads can’t be blocked with just DNS blocking unfortunately, they are served from the same hosts as YouTube videos.
Trying to use it via Firefox is pointless. I just downloaded the video and pirated. Fuck YouTube.
If you run
mpv https://url
it will stream it from youtube and play it in mpv, without having to wait for the whole video to download first.