I have YouTube Premium, and I use whatever device is most convenient.
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YouTube on TVs Now Supports iPhone Syncing for Easier Access to Commenting, Liking and More
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All these comments are really interesting, I've been tempted for a while but that £11.99 is a hard sell just to remove ads. I'd be more inclined if I was interested in the background play, downloads or YouTube Music but I just feel like I'd be paying for features I'm never going to use.
If it’s anything like the casting thing where you link the app on the phone and the TV then it will hardly ever work.
I would much prefer to be paying half the price for just the ad-free aspect, but they of course choose to bundle it with things I don't care about (YouTube Music and such). But I justified it by realizing that, in a given week, I ended up watching perhaps as much YouTube content as I did, say, Disney+. I'm fine with paying for Disney+, why was I subjecting myself to ads on YouTube? Now that I have it (I subscribed, oh, something over a year ago), it'd be very hard to go back. The only times my TV shows me actual ads are on the rare occasions that I watch broadcast TV (like watching SNL occasionally, or, say, the SuperBowl - most of my life I had some familiarity with the then-current crop of TV ads - I still know kids cereal jingles from when I was a kid - but since "cutting the cord" years ago, now it's all pretty foreign to me).
There are still a few channels on YouTube that I watch that do paid promotions (basically, them personally pitching Audible or whatever in the middle of one of their videos), which can be annoying, but since that's entirely within their normal video stream, and not something controlled by YouTube, nothing is stopping me from skipping forward 30/60/whatever seconds to get past it (they nearly all put up a banner with a URL and promo code at the end, easy enough to spot, if still annoying). There's one channel (ScreenCrush) where he tries to slyly/cutely segue in from his actual content to the promo ("yes, Thor loves his long golden hair, and if you love your hair too, you should totally get these <dubious hair pills I'm pitching this week>"), which I find quite annoying (dammit, stop that, it's like you decided to lie for 10 seconds in the middle of your interesting content to trick us into watching your ad, just be honest and say, "and now a word from this week's sponsor" like others do), but it's a love/hate thing - after I watch the latest episode of Obi-Wan or whatever, I like to watch the corresponding ScreenCrush episode, because he brings up interesting connections and backstory and "things you might have missed" - he does a good job of it and I find those insightful and entertaining. I wish the channels that did paid promos like this would switch to using the YouTube ads (which go entirely away) instead, but that comes down to the decisions of the individual YouTuber rather than YouTube itself, so you have to decide whether you care on a case-by-case basis. In any case, that only affects a handful of channels that I sometimes watch - the rest are entirely just content with no ads or promos.
In any case, I believe YouTube has a free trial - you could try it for a week or whatever and see what you think.
Oh, I didn't know that Brave / uBlock Origin now have solutions for the Apple TV. Since you clearly understand this better than us, please tell us more.
I wrote my reply before realizing you were referring to Apple TV specifically. I'd stay away from native apps when possible and use a web browser experience instead. I have a Mac hooked up to my TV and it is far better than my Apple TV was, more control, more flexibility, and you can even AirPlay to your Mac. The YouTube app and other apps can bypass a lot of the ad/tracking prevention.
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Brave is a Chromium web browser so it works the same as Google Chrome. It has some great built-in tracking prevention called Brave Shields. Note that Brave has done some sketchy things with cryptocurrency affiliate links to generate income, but overall their security/privacy posture is far better than Chrome and Edge.
uBlock Origin is a Chrome extension (since Brave is Chromium it works seamlessly) and is by far the best tracker/advertisement blocker extension there is. AdBlock and its variations still allow some tracking to the highest bidder. uBlock Origin can effectively block all YouTube (and other) ads and is constantly updating.
I also recommend the Lockdown app which sets up a VPN/root-level firewall on your phone to block apps from contacting known advertisement/tracker servers. You can even fully block services like Facebook from ever touching your phone. On the phone it's harder to block things because of how locked-down iOS is, so this is a good step. They have a Mac app as well.
That's great that it works for you in that way, but I am way too lazy to do all that and tech support my TV when the mac does something wrong.
I just:
1. Flip on my AppleTV.
2. Start to stream Stranger Things Season 4
There is no step 3.
I just:
1. Flip on my AppleTV.
2. Start to stream Stranger Things Season 4
There is no step 3.
This is a mediocre solution. No thanks. My Mac is doing other things, I don't want it tied up feeding my TV, whether over HDMI or AirPlay. If I wanted to use my Mac to watch YouTube, I'd just watch YouTube on my Mac.
I decided I wanted to support the content creators I frequently view.
There are much better ways to support them that doesn't involve also supporting Google.