How to deal with Google's and YouTube's aggressive popups (before you continue, sign in)

Martin Brinkmann
Sep 27, 2020
Updated • Jan 1, 2022
Google, Youtube
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130

When you visit Google's main website for the first time, or after clearing cookies, you get a "before you continue" popup. On YouTube, another Google property, you will get a "sign in to YouTube" popup instead.

You need to click on "I agree" on Google's site or "no thanks" on YouTube to get rid of these popups and start using the sites.

block-google before you continue

Problem is: if you clear cookies regularly, you will get these prompts again. It can be quite annoying to deal with these popups each time, e.g. to inform YouTube for the hundredth time that you don't want to sign-in to the site.

block sign in to youtube

You have a handful of options at your disposal to deal with this. One of the easier ones is to use a different search engine and site, without losing access to Google search results or YouTube videos.

You could use Startpage Search, as it is powered by Google's results, and for YouTube, you could use an Invidious mirror site, a desktop program like SMPlayer, or an app like NewPipe.

If you prefer to use the original sites, you could block the popups that Google displays on its main site and on YouTube instead.

For that, you need to use a content blocker such as uBlock Origin; it should work with others as well as the syntax is used by many.

Tip: We reviewed PopUpOff recently, a browser extension for Chrome and other Chromium-based browsers, that deals with the overlay on Google and YouTube sites.

To block YouTube's "sign in to YouTube" popup

block youtube popups ublock

Add the following lines to the My filters tab of the uBlock Origin settings:

www.youtube.com###dialog

www.youtube.com##.opened

The first blocks the actual popup, the second a fullscreen overlay that YouTube displays once you block the popup.

YouTube won't display the popup anymore after you add these options. Note that you need to reload the pages, and that there is a downside to using these as all videos will pause a moment after they have started. You can hit the play button to start playback anew though and watch the videos like you normally do.

Note: if you notice issues with the first, some users reported that search stops working, you may want to try the following lines instead:

youtube.com##ytd-popup-container
youtube.com##ytd-consent-bump-lightbox.style-scope

www.youtube.com##.opened

To block Google's "Before you continue" popup

block google before you continue ublock

To block Google's before you continue popup on the main Google site add the following lines to uBlock Origin's My filter tab:

www.google.com###lb
www.google.com##:root:style(overflow-y: visible !important;)

This one breaks the "more" link on Google's search results page but search functionality itself is working fine.

Now you: Use a different method? Feel free to share it in the comments below.

Summary
How to deal with Google's and YouTube's aggressive popups (before you continue, sign in)
Article Name
How to deal with Google's and YouTube's aggressive popups (before you continue, sign in)
Description
Find out how to block Google's "before you continue" and YouTube's "sign in to YouTube" popups when you visit the sites.
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Ghacks Technology News
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Comments

  1. Pat said on June 13, 2023 at 3:06 am
    Reply

    For Version 116.0.5817.0 (Official Build) dev (64-bit), Chrome Refresh 2023 has an option to enable omnibox at the same time.
    Screenshot above is not showing the round shape. This is eye candies.

  2. D.M said on June 13, 2023 at 3:02 pm
    Reply

    I wonder how to return the gray stripe but on a new design?

    And in general, it’s strange why they didn’t make the entire top panel be painted in the color of the open site, like on android.

  3. Disappointed said on June 19, 2023 at 10:42 am
    Reply

    @D.M: +1, the new light blue looks odd, and the tab group buttons (the color dots) became way too big

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