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How to use the MacBook Pro Touch Bar to skip unskippable YouTube Ads

by Felix Omondi
macbook pro touch bar youtube ads

YouTube Ads can be quite annoying, but given it is through the advertisement that we get to access its videos for free. Most of us have learned to live with them; well at least the first five seconds before we can hit the skip button.

Guess what, if you are a MacBook Pro with the Touch Bar user, you have the option of quickly skipping YouTube Ads; yes even the initial non-skippable parts. I bet that would sound like news flash to users who have been hating on the Touch Bar; thinking Apple ruined a perfectly good design by introducing unnecessary whistles and bells.

News of MacBook Pro (with Touch Bar) uses being able to skip YouTube Ads first broke out on Reddit with Redditor BiggerBadgers who uploaded a video last Wednesday showing how he skipped an Ad on YouTube using the Touch Bar. He skipped the non-skippable part of YouTube Ad by tapping on the skip button on the Touch Bar.

Not sure if already known, but you can skip unskippable ads with the touch bar! from r/mac

However, this trick only works if you are watching the YouTube video on a Safari browser. The ability to skip the non-skippable part of YouTube Ad is baked in the Touch Bar settings. Hence works best with macOS native apps (such as the Safari web browser).

The settings for it are available within the Keyboard settings in the System Preferences. When a non-skippable YouTube Ad comes up, you simply drag the bar on the timeline, which appears on the touch bar, and move it to the far right. Doing so jumps the Ad right to the end.

Usually, one can skip YouTube Ads after the first five seconds. But with Touch Bar, what you really do is Fast Forward the Ads right to the end by swiping to the right. It is not yet clear if YouTube or Apple are aware of this workaround Ads on the social media site.

There is no doubt this new feature is going to get a lot of attention until such a time YouTube or Apple work to fix the ‘anomaly.’ But given some sources claim this trick has been working since November 2016, I would bet it will be around for quite some time to come.

So here’s the trick to avoid advertisement on YouTube. Get yourself a MacBook Pro with the Touch Bar and use the Safari web browser to watch videos on YouTube. Immediately an Ad comes to bombard you, swipe right on the Touch Bar to forward the video to the very end.

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