If you own an iPhone or iPad, you know the drill. You open the official YouTube app, and within seconds, you’re hit with an unskippable ad. Then another. Then a sponsorship segment. Then a banner asking you to try YouTube Premium for $13.99 a month.

It takes the $14/month Premium experience, adds features Google refuses to build (SponsorBlock, Return Dislikes), and costs exactly nothing except a 5-minute setup process every 7 days.

But what if there was a middle ground? What if you could keep the native iOS YouTube experience but strip away the annoyances?

Note: uYou+ is another popular tweak, but development has slowed. YTLite is currently the most actively maintained fork. If you are a casual user who watches one cat video a day, stick to the official app. But if you are a power user —someone who watches YouTube for hours, listens to music on the go, or hates the modern ad clutter—YTLite is arguably the best thing you can install on your iPhone.