DuckDuckGo introduces built-in Ad Blocker for YouTube and other video platforms

DuckDuckGo, the privacy-focused search engine/browser, has now introduced a built-in video adblocker. While it primarily blocks ads on YouTube, it should also work for most video websites.

The feature was officially revealed through a post on X, emphasizing that video ads can get annoying, so they’ve developed this built-in tool to solve it.

The company also published an article explaining how you can enable the feature. For iOS, Windows, and macOS, it’s already live.

However, it’s still an opt-in feature for Android users at the moment (enable it via Settings -> Ad Blocking). You don’t have to specifically enable any settings on other platforms to use the feature.

It’s worth noting that the DuckDuckGo ad-blocker cannot access the YouTube app and block ads on it. You’ll need to specifically open YouTube links in the DuckDuckGo browser (if you’re on mobile). Just make sure you’re on the latest version of the browser. It’s also completely free to use.

I’ve checked for this feature myself on the macOS app and the iOS app. Sure enough, it says “YouTube Ad Block on,” and it didn’t play any ads throughout the duration of the video. The usual banner ads weren’t present either.

On iOS, it does give you the same prompt that an ad has been blocked. In both cases, I did not sign in to YouTube. So, I can confirm that the feature is fully functional. In fact, video ad-blocking first landed on iOS last month, and it could be enabled via Settings, as we reported previously.

Note: The feature is different from the “Duck Player,” which is an optional and separate UI from Settings.

While blocking ads on YouTube isn’t a “new feature” we haven’t seen before, it’s still good to see the company catch up to rivals such as Brave. The privacy-centric browser scene is rather intense in 2026. Marketing or not, it’s good that users now have so many choices of privacy-centric browsers on the market.

It’s not just ad-blocking that DuckDuckGo has recently introduced. In a podcast, the company also elaborated on its plans to improve the AI implementation in the browser. We covered that here.

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