YouTube Premium Lite Is Coming Back, but There’s a Catch

YouTube concisely offered a Premium Lite subscription for prime nations successful the EU earlier discontinuing it successful October 2023. This tier costs fractional arsenic overmuch arsenic the Premium and offers an ad-free viewing acquisition without immoderate of the different perks associated with the full-priced Premium subscription. Recent reports, on with a confirmation to Android Authority, corroborate that the Premium Lite is coming back, but it seems similar it’ll nary longer beryllium wholly ad-free.

Recently, immoderate screenshots spotted by aggregate users connected Reddit and Threads (via Android Authority) began to look wherever they spotted a caller Premium Lite enactment portion signing up for a paid tier. The Lite was shown arsenic astir fractional of the regular Premium’s price, with the Premium priced astatine $22.99 and the Lite astatine $11.99.

Just a time later, Google confirmed to the site that the Lite tier is making a return. “We’re investigating a antithetic mentation of Premium Lite, and immoderate users successful Australia, Germany, and Thailand whitethorn spot the enactment to motion up,” it said. It remains unclear precisely however this mentation volition beryllium antithetic and whether oregon not it volition go disposable successful the US.

However, determination was thing successful those screenshots that caught our attention. This time, dissimilar the archetypal clip the Premium Lite was available, it doesn’t connection a wholly ad-free acquisition and has softly changed that to “Limited ads” instead. I’m not connected YouTube Premium yet, and I was considering signing up for the Lite if it comes to the US, but the constricted ads diagnostic enactment maine off. This is chiefly due to the fact that an ad-free acquisition is each that the Lite tier offers (and it did). The remainder of the perks—offline downloads, inheritance play, and YouTube Music Premium—are each features of YouTube Premium. So, it’s a bummer to cognize that it volition nary longer bash the 1 occupation it has—remove ads.

I’m hoping things mightiness alteration erstwhile the tier is officially rolled out. It’s confusing what Google is trying to bash with shutting down the Lite subscription conscionable 2 years aft introducing it successful 2021, limiting availability for circumstantial countries successful the EU, abruptly bringing the tier backmost successful specified a discreet manner, and bringing “limited” ads to it.

With the caller crackdown connected 1 of the astir fashionable adblockers successful the satellite (and my past favorite), uBlock Origin, I request confirmation connected the Premium Lite’s details much than ever now. The Verge precocious reported that the adblocker is seeing a implicit phaseout arsenic Chrome has started to automatically disable the extension. uBlock Origin developer Raymond Hill reposted a tweet that showed Chrome informing a idiosyncratic astir the adblocker being “no longer supported.”

Google’s warfare against adblockers isn’t new. Just a fewer months ago, it rolled retired a new defence strategy that automatically skipped videos to the extremity whenever you tried to ticker YouTube with an adblocker enabled. It besides tested showing viewers a painfully agelong and non-skippable loading surface to deter them from utilizing adblocking extensions.

So far, astatine least, adblockers person ever reverse-engineered Google’s codification rather rapidly and tackled each caller strategy that YouTube incorporated. The implicit withdrawal of enactment for uBlock Origin and a much affordable tier for an ad-free (or constricted ads) acquisition marque it wide that Google is bushed of this years-long cat-and-mouse crippled betwixt its products (YouTube) and adblockers. It wishes to wholly bash distant with shortcuts that won’t capable up its pockets and, instead, present much palatable solutions that users are much inclined to motion up for.