4.65★ from 64,019,470 ratings · 256 negative reviews read in 4 storefronts · 11 complaints
Excessive ads throughout app experience
56of the 256 read·22%
Users report an overwhelming number of ads appearing constantly—every few minutes, during pauses, on home feed, and between videos, making the app nearly unwatchable.
United States 32 · Germany 11 · France 8 · Britain 5 · joined from 4 wordings
›read 4 of these reviews
“Ads — They ruin my experience.” — ★☆☆☆☆ · English“ridiculous ads. never using yt again — my entire college and i have agreed to uninstall youtube and never use it again. forced ads are insane can’t even scroll in peace” — ★☆☆☆☆“So many FREAKING ADS!!!!!!! — I remember a simpler time when YouTube didn’t have ads or ai…yea let’s go back to that! 😠🙄” — ★★☆☆☆“Unfortunately only ads now — 80% ads 20% content” — ★☆☆☆☆ · German
Recent UI updates make app worse
10of the 256 read·4%
Users report new interface updates are ugly, confusing, harder to navigate, hide content, and remove previously useful features without improvement.
›read 3 of these reviews
“Stop changing things!!!! — You keep making this app worse! Stop updating it!!! Please!” — ★☆☆☆☆“Everything is pointless — Every update YouTube has something about it gets worse, first it was subscriptions no longer notifying you about who you subscribed to when they added the bell, then the bell had 3 different options to personalize notifications, and now if you haven’t watched the person who you’re both subscribed to and have the bell set to all notifications for a while YouTube decides your request to…” — ★☆☆☆☆“New update — I HATE THE NEW USER INTERFACE. it’s ugly but more than that it makes it harder for me to get out of yt shorts (which automatically open half the time…) STOP RUINING SOMETHING PERFECTLY GOOD” — ★☆☆☆☆
Unskippable ads that cannot be bypassed
6of the 256 read·2%
Users complain about forced unskippable ads appearing frequently, with some skip buttons not working, making videos difficult to watch.
›read 3 of these reviews
“Ads are outta control. — Double skippable ads now? Ridiculous.” — ★☆☆☆☆“Didn’t know this was an infomercials app — Forcing people to watch multiple un-skippable ads before every video and then another couple every 2 minutes is ridiculous. If I wanted to watch useless adds then I would just watch infomercials. An ad blocker is a must to use this money app.” — ★☆☆☆☆ · English“Ad Simulator — Seems like you Youtube accidentally put the videos youre searching for in their ad montages. And on the app theirs multiple things to swipe/dismiss/click out of. Its to the point where its disgusting now. You watch a video? Unskippable ads. You want to rewind the video? Unskippable ads. You finish the video and you want to click the next one? Unskippable ads. Ads load it perfectly to force feed you and…” — ★☆☆☆☆
Videos freeze or stop after ads
6of the 256 read·2%
Videos freeze at the end of ads, stop playing entirely after ads, or require force-quitting the app and rewatching ads to resume.
›read 3 of these reviews
“Current Version, Videos keep freezing at end of ads — Current Version, Videos keep freezing at end of ads and the only way to get the video to replay is to force quit the app and reopen the video, hoping it logged your progress in the video.” — ★☆☆☆☆“Please fix this — For the last while my videos restart if I pause them then unpause them while it’s minimized” — ★★☆☆☆“Bugs — Picture in picture videos restart after pausing them and resuming by hitting ‘play’. Please fix it.” — ★☆☆☆☆ · English
App crashes, glitches, and performance issues
5of the 256 read·2%
App crashes frequently, has numerous bugs, drains battery quickly, and experiences general instability affecting usability.
›read 3 of these reviews
“They destroyed this site — After recent updates it now crashes consistently and constantly, the ads on the site are all AI slop even after blocking 50+ of them I still get more garbage thrown in my face, and moderation does nothing about blatant homophobia or racism when you report videos with them very clearly present” — ★☆☆☆☆ · English“Terrible — Glitches all the time” — ★☆☆☆☆“Burns battery — Who’s in your team that’s vibe coding and deployed on Friday? Legit after Friday deployment I could feel YouTube is drain my battery. How could you guys let this release in prod? No test require? Before I used YouTube 5 hours straight it burns 20% of my battery. Now less than a hour is burning the same amount. I could sense my phone is like a volcano after used 10 mins. JUST 10 MINS. And don’t tell me…” — ★☆☆☆☆
Casting to TV broken or unusable
4of the 256 read·2%
Casting to TV has stopped working properly, disconnects frequently, or lacks the ability to stop casting, requiring workarounds like Google Home.
›read 3 of these reviews
“Casting ruined — Casting has effectively been ruined over the course of the past year. Maybe I’m just a very small minority but I have seen people frustrated with it especially with the latest update. I however will only go over the issues with the current update as it is the biggest blow. Essentially now you can only cast WHEN something is playing now. Not only that but when you do cast something the queue has…” — ★☆☆☆☆“Casting is broken — There is no longer a button in YouTube to STOP casting. The user interface is so dumb. It is impossible to stop casting. I had to go to Google home to stop casting. change it back!” — ★☆☆☆☆“Casting broken — have completely broken casting to the tv, it's nearly unusable now” — ★☆☆☆☆
Premium membership does not remove enough ads
4of the 256 read·2%
Premium subscription is expensive and still contains ads, making the paid tier feel like a ripoff with limited ad removal.
›read 3 of these reviews
“Greedy — The price of premium is ridiculous and the lie version is a ripoff. Paying to have limited ads is a joke I’m finding a new app for music” — ★☆☆☆☆“Too many ads — I used to love YouTube. I watch it more than I watch all the other streaming platforms I subscribe to. I did the trial for no-ads and it only eliminated some of them. I get that they need to make money, but it is so annoying.” — ★★☆☆☆“Premium includes adds now for some car wash channel — Stop displaying adds on premium” — ★☆☆☆☆
Home screen changed to single video tile layout
4of the 256 read·2%
The home page now displays one large video tile filling the screen instead of multiple thumbnails, forcing excessive scrolling.
›read 3 of these reviews
“iPad version broken again 2026 Sep — Home page now not a gallery of tiles instead 1 video tile fills the screen” — ★☆☆☆☆ · English“Home screen ruined — For the past 14 years that I have used the YouTube app on iPad the Home Screen has shown multiple video thumbnails to choose from (probably about 12 to 15 or so). A few days ago this changed to one thumbnail filling my entire iPad screen. Who thought this would be a good user interface? I now have to scroll maybe 15 screens to see what I could previously see without scrolling at all. Please fix…” — ★☆☆☆☆ · English“Single scroll layout — The new layout is such an eyesore it makes me dread opening the app, please change it back.” — ★★☆☆☆ · English
Recommendation algorithm broken or ignored
3of the 256 read·1%
Algorithm does not learn from 'not interested' clicks, keeps showing already-watched videos, and shows irrelevant content despite repeated feedback.
›read 3 of these reviews
“Homepage — Youtube is only showing me videos I have already watched, and when I refresh its just more videos I have already seen” — ★☆☆☆☆“Wow — This was an easy 5 star, but now a 1. Ever since the reccomendations across every platform has been HORRIBLE! HORRIBLE! I click not interested 25 times and the channel still shows! I always click not interested and dont reccomend channel but IT DOESNT LEARN I ONLY WANT TO WATCH THE CONTENT I LIKE! I dont care abt OLD VIDEOS OR VIDS I MAKE CLEAR IDC ABT!!! I DISLIKE, DONT RECCOMEND ON CHANNELS WITH TOPICS I DONT…” — ★☆☆☆☆“New home feed — The newest update to the home feed on mobile has actively worsened my user experience. Not only has my algorithm felt more and more broken as of recent, but I’m not sure it’s fully even there anymore now. My home feed is a jumbled mess of the array of all topics I watch and listen to in different settings, and featuring more new channels than the ones I watch daily. Instead of having a mild mix on my…” — ★★☆☆☆
Poor UI redesign and navigation changes
3of the 256 read·1%
New feed layout with oversized thumbnails, subscribe button placed to encourage suggested videos, and unintuitive controls.
›read 3 of these reviews
“new start view — What a load of crap. A preview image (just one!) across the entire screen. …and no way to change it yourself. Who came up with this? Probably a developer who forgot his glasses.” — ★☆☆☆☆ · German“Subscribe button and advertising — Unfortunately the subscribe button was moved in such a way that you basically only watch the videos that YouTube suggests. (I suspect that YouTube makes the most money this way). Plus you're being forced more and more advertising just to get a subscription...” — ★☆☆☆☆ · German“Controls broken — The new controls in the app are just sick!” — ★☆☆☆☆ · German
Ad-free subscription too expensive
3of the 256 read·1%
The option to remove ads costs too much, making it unaffordable for users who want an ad-free experience.
›read 3 of these reviews
“Ad-free option too expensive — Ads are annoying but the ad-free option is too expensive. The algorithm pushes content on me that makes me waste my life time.” — ★★☆☆☆ · French“Too many ads — There are now too many ads to force us to subscribe. The ads don't serve much purpose because either we don't watch them or we skip them.” — ★★☆☆☆ · French“Too many ads — Too many ads made me tired. I'm thinking of switching to the Chinese website” — ★★☆☆☆ · Turkish
Reviews are grouped one storefront at a time, so each storefront words its complaints separately. Two are added together here when they carry the same name, or when their wordings share half their meaningful words — one fixed rule, applied the same way to every app, and the reviews under each complaint are there to check it against. Where it is close but not certain the two stay apart, so this under-joins rather than over-joins.
Storefront by storefront
United States
4.67★ from 49,224,091 ratings · version 21.39.4 · 104 of the last 200 written reviews are one or two stars
Excessive ads throughout app experience
32of the 104 read·31%
Users report an overwhelming number of ads appearing constantly—every few minutes, during pauses, on home feed, and between videos, making the app nearly unwatchable.
›read 3 of these reviews
“Ads — They ruin my experience.” — ★☆☆☆☆ · English“ridiculous ads. never using yt again — my entire college and i have agreed to uninstall youtube and never use it again. forced ads are insane can’t even scroll in peace” — ★☆☆☆☆“So many FREAKING ADS!!!!!!! — I remember a simpler time when YouTube didn’t have ads or ai…yea let’s go back to that! 😠🙄” — ★★☆☆☆
Recent UI updates make app worse
10of the 104 read·10%
Users report new interface updates are ugly, confusing, harder to navigate, hide content, and remove previously useful features without improvement.
›read 3 of these reviews
“Stop changing things!!!! — You keep making this app worse! Stop updating it!!! Please!” — ★☆☆☆☆“Everything is pointless — Every update YouTube has something about it gets worse, first it was subscriptions no longer notifying you about who you subscribed to when they added the bell, then the bell had 3 different options to personalize notifications, and now if you haven’t watched the person who you’re both subscribed to and have the bell set to all notifications for a while YouTube decides your request to…” — ★☆☆☆☆“New update — I HATE THE NEW USER INTERFACE. it’s ugly but more than that it makes it harder for me to get out of yt shorts (which automatically open half the time…) STOP RUINING SOMETHING PERFECTLY GOOD” — ★☆☆☆☆
Unskippable ads that cannot be bypassed
6of the 104 read·6%
Users complain about forced unskippable ads appearing frequently, with some skip buttons not working, making videos difficult to watch.
›read 3 of these reviews
“Ads are outta control. — Double skippable ads now? Ridiculous.” — ★☆☆☆☆“Didn’t know this was an infomercials app — Forcing people to watch multiple un-skippable ads before every video and then another couple every 2 minutes is ridiculous. If I wanted to watch useless adds then I would just watch infomercials. An ad blocker is a must to use this money app.” — ★☆☆☆☆ · English“Ad Simulator — Seems like you Youtube accidentally put the videos youre searching for in their ad montages. And on the app theirs multiple things to swipe/dismiss/click out of. Its to the point where its disgusting now. You watch a video? Unskippable ads. You want to rewind the video? Unskippable ads. You finish the video and you want to click the next one? Unskippable ads. Ads load it perfectly to force feed you and…” — ★☆☆☆☆
Videos freeze or stop after ads
6of the 104 read·6%
Videos freeze at the end of ads, stop playing entirely after ads, or require force-quitting the app and rewatching ads to resume.
›read 3 of these reviews
“Current Version, Videos keep freezing at end of ads — Current Version, Videos keep freezing at end of ads and the only way to get the video to replay is to force quit the app and reopen the video, hoping it logged your progress in the video.” — ★☆☆☆☆“Please fix this — For the last while my videos restart if I pause them then unpause them while it’s minimized” — ★★☆☆☆“Bugs — Picture in picture videos restart after pausing them and resuming by hitting ‘play’. Please fix it.” — ★☆☆☆☆ · English
App crashes, glitches, and performance issues
5of the 104 read·5%
App crashes frequently, has numerous bugs, drains battery quickly, and experiences general instability affecting usability.
›read 3 of these reviews
“They destroyed this site — After recent updates it now crashes consistently and constantly, the ads on the site are all AI slop even after blocking 50+ of them I still get more garbage thrown in my face, and moderation does nothing about blatant homophobia or racism when you report videos with them very clearly present” — ★☆☆☆☆ · English“Terrible — Glitches all the time” — ★☆☆☆☆“Burns battery — Who’s in your team that’s vibe coding and deployed on Friday? Legit after Friday deployment I could feel YouTube is drain my battery. How could you guys let this release in prod? No test require? Before I used YouTube 5 hours straight it burns 20% of my battery. Now less than a hour is burning the same amount. I could sense my phone is like a volcano after used 10 mins. JUST 10 MINS. And don’t tell me…” — ★☆☆☆☆
Casting to TV broken or unusable
4of the 104 read·4%
Casting to TV has stopped working properly, disconnects frequently, or lacks the ability to stop casting, requiring workarounds like Google Home.
›read 3 of these reviews
“Casting ruined — Casting has effectively been ruined over the course of the past year. Maybe I’m just a very small minority but I have seen people frustrated with it especially with the latest update. I however will only go over the issues with the current update as it is the biggest blow. Essentially now you can only cast WHEN something is playing now. Not only that but when you do cast something the queue has…” — ★☆☆☆☆“Casting is broken — There is no longer a button in YouTube to STOP casting. The user interface is so dumb. It is impossible to stop casting. I had to go to Google home to stop casting. change it back!” — ★☆☆☆☆“Casting broken — have completely broken casting to the tv, it's nearly unusable now” — ★☆☆☆☆
Premium membership does not remove enough ads
4of the 104 read·4%
Premium subscription is expensive and still contains ads, making the paid tier feel like a ripoff with limited ad removal.
›read 3 of these reviews
“Greedy — The price of premium is ridiculous and the lie version is a ripoff. Paying to have limited ads is a joke I’m finding a new app for music” — ★☆☆☆☆“Too many ads — I used to love YouTube. I watch it more than I watch all the other streaming platforms I subscribe to. I did the trial for no-ads and it only eliminated some of them. I get that they need to make money, but it is so annoying.” — ★★☆☆☆“Premium includes adds now for some car wash channel — Stop displaying adds on premium” — ★☆☆☆☆
Recommendation algorithm broken or ignored
3of the 104 read·3%
Algorithm does not learn from 'not interested' clicks, keeps showing already-watched videos, and shows irrelevant content despite repeated feedback.
›read 3 of these reviews
“Homepage — Youtube is only showing me videos I have already watched, and when I refresh its just more videos I have already seen” — ★☆☆☆☆“Wow — This was an easy 5 star, but now a 1. Ever since the reccomendations across every platform has been HORRIBLE! HORRIBLE! I click not interested 25 times and the channel still shows! I always click not interested and dont reccomend channel but IT DOESNT LEARN I ONLY WANT TO WATCH THE CONTENT I LIKE! I dont care abt OLD VIDEOS OR VIDS I MAKE CLEAR IDC ABT!!! I DISLIKE, DONT RECCOMEND ON CHANNELS WITH TOPICS I DONT…” — ★☆☆☆☆“New home feed — The newest update to the home feed on mobile has actively worsened my user experience. Not only has my algorithm felt more and more broken as of recent, but I’m not sure it’s fully even there anymore now. My home feed is a jumbled mess of the array of all topics I watch and listen to in different settings, and featuring more new channels than the ones I watch daily. Instead of having a mild mix on my…” — ★★☆☆☆
Apple publishes the most recent written reviews, up to five hundred, and that is what was read — not a search for bad ones. Why so many of them are angry. The complaints above come from the 104 most recent negative ones. Newest review 24 days ago (08.09.2026), last collected 23 days ago.
Germany
4.53★ from 3,927,588 ratings · version 21.39.4 · 62 of the last 99 written reviews are one or two stars
Excessive advertising throughout the app
11of the 62 read·18%
Users report constant ads, sometimes multiple per minute, making videos unwatchable and forcing Premium subscription.
›read 3 of these reviews
“Unfortunately only ads now — 80% ads 20% content” — ★☆☆☆☆ · German“Advertising — So nowadays an ad runs every minute or even 2, what's that supposed to be? Soon you'll be able to watch more ads than videos…” — ★☆☆☆☆ · German“Too much advertising — If you're going to do it, at least make it possible to skip the ads, especially since 100% of the advertising has nothing to do with my interests. On the contrary, whoever advertises gets on my blacklist, their own fault.” — ★☆☆☆☆ · German
Poor UI redesign and navigation changes
3of the 62 read·5%
New feed layout with oversized thumbnails, subscribe button placed to encourage suggested videos, and unintuitive controls.
›read 3 of these reviews
“new start view — What a load of crap. A preview image (just one!) across the entire screen. …and no way to change it yourself. Who came up with this? Probably a developer who forgot his glasses.” — ★☆☆☆☆ · German“Subscribe button and advertising — Unfortunately the subscribe button was moved in such a way that you basically only watch the videos that YouTube suggests. (I suspect that YouTube makes the most money this way). Plus you're being forced more and more advertising just to get a subscription...” — ★☆☆☆☆ · German“Controls broken — The new controls in the app are just sick!” — ★☆☆☆☆ · German
Apple publishes the most recent written reviews, up to five hundred, and that is what was read — not a search for bad ones. Why so many of them are angry. The complaints above come from the 62 most recent negative ones. Newest review 23 days ago (08.09.2026), last collected 22 days ago.
France
4.58★ from 4,658,821 ratings · version 21.39.4 · 48 of the last 110 written reviews are one or two stars
Excessive number of ads per video
8of the 48 read·17%
Users report YouTube now shows multiple consecutive ads per video, forcing them to watch ads longer than the actual content.
›read 3 of these reviews
“Too many ads — For a few years now, you've gone from one ad per 10 minute video to two, then three, then you put two ads in a row, and now three for every single video on your application.... I know my comment is useless and that my opinion doesn't matter, but do something, we don't want to use VPNs but you're forcing our hand.” — ★★☆☆☆ · French“Buggy Chromecast and too many ads — Since the latest updates the chromecast is faulty and the number of ads is abusive” — ★☆☆☆☆ · French“Way too many ads — Nothing but ads” — ★☆☆☆☆ · French
Ad-free subscription too expensive
3of the 48 read·6%
The option to remove ads costs too much, making it unaffordable for users who want an ad-free experience.
›read 3 of these reviews
“Ad-free option too expensive — Ads are annoying but the ad-free option is too expensive. The algorithm pushes content on me that makes me waste my life time.” — ★★☆☆☆ · French“Too many ads — There are now too many ads to force us to subscribe. The ads don't serve much purpose because either we don't watch them or we skip them.” — ★★☆☆☆ · French“Too many ads — Too many ads made me tired. I'm thinking of switching to the Chinese website” — ★★☆☆☆ · Turkish
Apple publishes the most recent written reviews, up to five hundred, and that is what was read — not a search for bad ones. Why so many of them are angry. The complaints above come from the 48 most recent negative ones. Newest review 23 days ago (08.09.2026), last collected 22 days ago.
Britain
4.63★ from 6,208,970 ratings · version 21.39.4 · 42 of the last 106 written reviews are one or two stars
Excessive number of ads interrupting videos
5of the 42 read·12%
Users report an overwhelming frequency of ads, sometimes every minute, making the app unbearable and nearly unwatchable.
›read 3 of these reviews
“unbearable — the new ads system on this app have made it so unbearable to watch anything atp its also just glitching out and breaking the app on multiple occasions” — ★☆☆☆☆ · English“ADS — I’ve been using YouTube since probably 2013 and I understand obviously if you want to add free you can buy a subscription or you could watch an ad. However, the adverts have gotten so bad that I’m getting one every minute or so . And I’m sorry that has just gotten beyond the point of fair trade. I will be deleting the app. just looked up that they made $60 billion in revenue they need to stop getting greedy now…” — ★☆☆☆☆ · English“Adverts — A great platform completely and utterly ruined by the constant interruption of adverts.” — ★☆☆☆☆ · English
Home screen changed to single video tile layout
4of the 42 read·10%
The home page now displays one large video tile filling the screen instead of multiple thumbnails, forcing excessive scrolling.
›read 3 of these reviews
“iPad version broken again 2026 Sep — Home page now not a gallery of tiles instead 1 video tile fills the screen” — ★☆☆☆☆ · English“Home screen ruined — For the past 14 years that I have used the YouTube app on iPad the Home Screen has shown multiple video thumbnails to choose from (probably about 12 to 15 or so). A few days ago this changed to one thumbnail filling my entire iPad screen. Who thought this would be a good user interface? I now have to scroll maybe 15 screens to see what I could previously see without scrolling at all. Please fix…” — ★☆☆☆☆ · English“Single scroll layout — The new layout is such an eyesore it makes me dread opening the app, please change it back.” — ★★☆☆☆ · English
Apple publishes the most recent written reviews, up to five hundred, and that is what was read — not a search for bad ones. Why so many of them are angry. The complaints above come from the 42 most recent negative ones. Newest review 24 days ago (08.09.2026), last collected 22 days ago.