Unfortunately this is a question that comes up very often in the Pi-Hole community where the answer is always: no, a Pi-Hole cannot block YouTube ads.

This is because a pihole blocks at the DNS level and YouTube serves their ads from the YouTube.com domain. Block that and you lose full access to the site.

They recommend running either uBlock Origin alongside it and/or use apps such as newpipe for android and freetube for desktop.

That said, I will always recommend setting up a Pi-Hole if you're able to as the benefits of blocking trackers and ads from the entire network (which includes your cellphones, smart TVs, printers, IP cameras, etcetera) is definitely a good thing. Once set up it is 99% a "set it and forget it" kind of setup.

I think a pi hole dosen't work for youtube ads.

Piholes rely on blocking DNS requests to ad servers, but on youtube the servers that host the videos and the servers that host the ads are the same thing.

While a Pi-hole would work in theory, Ads are just wrapped youtube videos as they come from the same servers. It would be a need of pinpointing each video individually.

My take is that we need uBlock to have a functionality to send data to people's Pi-Hole on a page by page basis.

I tried watching an hour long video yesterday on YouTube. So many ads. So today I shall sort out a rip of the video I think so I can watch stuff uninterrupted.

When you do, please post a write up in diy so I can build one too 🥰