YouTube’s skip ad button has gone poof for many, including us

If you’re an avid YouTube user, a Premium subscription is almost necessary at this point. That, or an ad-blocking extension.

Not only does Premium give you access to ad-free viewing, it also unlocks video downloads, background play, picture-in-picture, and even YouTube Music Premium.

On the other hand, if you don’t spend a lot of time on either YouTube or YouTube Music, and your occasional visit is only for a specific video or two, the paid subscription probably isn’t worth the cost. You’d normally just watch a few seconds of an ad and skip it to dive right into the content of your choice. However, with YouTube’s ever-increasing adamancy to monetize every moment possible, the Premium-less experience is getting progressively harder to endure.

Late last year, the streaming giant began testing a skip button that would only show up roughly five-seconds after an ad had started playing. This replaced the familiar UI which highlighted the skip ad countdown. Although it took some time to get used to the new UI, it essentially let users skip ads just as before, albeit with a delayed visual cue.

This time around, though, users report that the skip button has completely vanished, as it doesn’t even show up when the ad’s yellow progress bar reaches the right end (shown in the first screenshot below). We then found the button hiding at the very end of the ad (shown in the second screenshot below), essentially breaking the literal meaning of the word ‘skip.’

This looks like an intentional change

Pointed out by several users on Reddit within the last day (via TechIssuesToday), the issue seems to be impacting many, but it’s not universal. I was able to replicate the disappearing skip button on Opera GX on desktop, but not on Google Chrome. Android Police News Editor Dallas Thomas, on the other hand, didn’t encounter the change, and is still seeing the old skip UI on both browsers.

Once visible, the skip button stays on the screen for a few seconds, before the media player moves on to the second ad (if applicable), which essentially repeats the frustrating process of waiting for the skip button to show up all over again. From the looks of it, this is intended behavior and not a bug, which means YouTube is actively making ads harder to bypass (and ignore).

Try out these tricks if you’re still adamant about not paying for YouTube Premium.