Play audio only on YouTube and save bandwidth | Hacker News Reader

Play audio only on YouTube and save bandwidth

chrome.google.com

83 pointsthunderarea91 comments

I've been working on a small Go program to do this specifically for the lofi hip hop beats youtube stream (file here: https://git.sr.ht/~asimpson/lofibar/tree/exec-ffmpeg/item/ma...). You can pretty easily parse the Youtube page to get the HLS stream and pass that to ffmpeg. No need to even have the overhead of another browser tab then.

P.S. also if anyone knows how to statically compile ffmpeg or libvlc into go I'd love to know :)

Nice.

I hadn't seen systray before. That's cool, too.

YouTube Vanced does this for me in Android when playing in the background. That is my Spotify basically :)

Are you sure that it blocks the video? I think that just plays the video in the background

I assume YouTube Vanced does the same as NewPipe which only fetches the audio in background mode

Right. "NewPipe does not use the official YouTube API, but instead scrapes the website for video and meta-data such as likes, dislikes, and views.". So it can do it. If they used the YouTube API this would not permitted.

On my phone at least there is an audible gap if you close the phone with the app playing, which doesn't happen with anything else. My guess is that it's fiddling with something in the background to only fetch audio instead of video.

sure

I always assumed this was because they are switching from builtin app code to their override for the feature... I tried opening a video and locking immediately and it seems like it saturates the download speed until the video is buffered X seconds to the future. Another piece of evidence against it is that when unlocking, it immmediately shows the video: it would need to buffer if only the audio was loaded

You have a point on this

> when unlocking, it immmediately shows the video

On my phone, on mobile data at least, it takes ~5 seconds to display the video again.

5 seconds is a lot of time. This shows that it has to load the video

It is immediate on all phones I have tried it on. 5 seconds is unbearable.

I am sure, yes.

You are right. This extension for the time being is not available for Android but I have in my plans to create a similar app

If you have a slow connection, or you want to hide NSFW content on YouTube there is Music Mode for YouTube™ a Chrome extension that blocks the video and plays only the audio on YouTube and YouTube Music. Additionally, it skips the ads and hides the thumbnails (optional). So, you can convert YouTube into a music player. It helps you a lot to save bandwidth while you work or play games listening to music on the background and also reduce the use of RAM, CPU and GPU since there is no video. Finally, it helps you focus on your work and spend less time on YouTube clicking on clickbait thumbnails. Give it a try!

The Android API for YouTube provides access to audio only streams, you can see this if you use yt-dlp with the -F option to list all the available formats for a video.

Yes of course. But it is not permitted by the API policy

https://developers.google.com/youtube/terms/developer-polici...

You and your API Clients must not, and must not encourage, enable, or require others to: ... separate, isolate, or modify the audio or video components of any YouTube audiovisual content made available as part of, or in connection with, YouTube API Services. For example, you must not apply alternate audio tracks to videos;

yea, if wishes were horses ...

we are talking about files on a public webserver, it's absolutely fair game to download and modify/recombine the bit's in those files however i please.

Yes. But they give you the API. This is the policy for the API. You can modify the files as you say but not using their API. You must find the way...

sry, all i can see is

API ... API ... API.

this is the way!

This extension uses the ability that Chrome Extension API gives to block some URLs. So it blocks the video and keeps only the audio since the YouTube serves them in separate files

...In case, as a compromise, one could always set the video rate at 144 rows - taking roughly one twentieth (to even one thirtieth) of the bandwidth of a 720 rows - from the original YT interface.

(Video at 144p can take as little as 2 kilobytes/second to download (for more static content); typical 720p can easily take 100 kilobytes/second. You can see those values using "-F / --list-formats" on the downloader command.)

But surely there is also the ability to stream good ("-f 140", ~128kbit/s m4a) audio piping from downloaders.

The youtube player keeps using codec 251 for audio (opus, about 120 kbps) until quality 240p. For 144p it switches to codec 250 (opus, about 60 kbps). At least here, on firefox on linux.

Same, I'm aware of this, but unless you can hear the difference between 120kbps and 60kbps 144p is worth its efficiency

Unless it's just speech, most people can. Even then the low level noise can make a podcast tiring to listen to.

Could YouTube automatically omit video stream when the tab is in the background? DOM has visibilitychange/pagehide events.

If anyone in youtube management is aware of these events, they'll use them to make the playback automatically pause when the page is in the background and pop up a big message saying "Buy Youtube Premium to listen to your music while you do other things. First month half price!".

Ha ha ha. I think that they know them. But in desktop there are many ways to change it with extensions or even browsers other than Chrome. So they don't give it a try

It could. But it does not do it :)

If you have ever switched resolutions manually in the browser, you will notice that it takes a while to rebuffer and decode the stream. I would guess it would be hard to do this in a glitch-free way. The YouTube Music app has a button to toggle it, and it exhibits just this lag.

IIRC the audio is the same for all formats, so this shouldn't be an issue. You just continue playing what you have and stop downloading new video chunks. I think the biggest problem is that when you switch to the tab you would need to wait a bit for the video to appear (or it would need to pause and stutter). That is actually quite a hard problem as well because the player needs to decide how far into the future it should start fetching video.

Google provides renditions in two codec pairs for most video - vp9 + Opus and h.264 + AAC. Assuming the manifest for audio only keeps you using the same codec family of renditions, this should work just fine (minus, as you said, the player not showing anything until the next video+audio segment is fetched) as long as we're talking VOD content. Live content should also be able to switch from source to audio only with no re-fetch, but live transcoded renditions won't be in line with either rendition, so that'll cause a burp.

I feel like the YouTube Music app is actually changing to a totally different SKU when you switch between video/audio, and not just giving you the audio stream from the video.

youtube-dl -x --audio-format mp3 https://youtu.be/k3WkJq478To

Oh - slight typo in that, try this:

    youtube-dl -x --audio-format mp3 https://youtu.be/dQw4w9WgXcQ

The transcode to mp3 is lossy. I just use `-f bestaudio` and call it a day.

Aren't all formats available on yt lossy transcodes?

Usually, but there's no use in adding an extra layer of transcoding (I've never seen yt offer mp3 directly)

It did once, over 10 years ago (in 2008 or so, with the whole fmt=18 arguments etc), if your total video bitrate was below 320 kbps, it left the audio untouched ... I wonder if those videos from back then are still around and if yes, still have untouched audio.

Found one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AavrI7RLU0g

Of course now it only has 96kbps aac, but it did have untouched mp3 audio back then.

And another update, I downloaded it back in 2013, where it still had 160kbps mp3 audio!

Note after formatting: As you can see from the video FPS, the trick was to keep the video bitrate as low as possible, by using a still image (or pad it with black + silence at the end). I'm not sure anymore if you had to also already use the same video codec as youtube did back then, i.e., if the video stayed untouched too. I never managed to upload a video like this, so I don't exactly know.

MediaInfo output:

    General
    Complete name                            : Luke Warner and Mat Lock - Deep Psychosis (Daniel Kandi's Cure mix) (HQ).flv
    Format                                   : Flash Video
    File size                                : 12.7 MiB
    Duration                                 : 7 min 34 s
    Overall bit rate mode                    : Variable
    Overall bit rate                         : 234 kb/s
    httphostheader                           : r13---sn-4g57knek.c.youtube.com
    
    Video
    Format                                   : Sorenson Spark
    Codec ID                                 : 2
    Duration                                 : 7 min 34 s
    Bit rate                                 : 69.5 kb/s
    Width                                    : 480 pixels
    Height                                   : 360 pixels
    Display aspect ratio                     : 4:3
    Frame rate mode                          : Constant
    Frame rate                               : 1.044 FPS
    Bit depth                                : 8 bits
    Bits/(Pixel\*Frame)                       : 0.385
    Stream size                              : 3.76 MiB (30%)
    
    Audio
    Format                                   : MPEG Audio
    Format version                           : Version 1
    Format profile                           : Layer 3
    Format settings                          : Joint stereo / MS Stereo
    Codec ID                                 : 2
    Codec ID/Hint                            : MP3
    Duration                                 : 7 min 34 s
    Bit rate mode                            : Variable
    Bit rate                                 : 160 kb/s
    Channel(s)                               : 2 channels
    Sampling rate                            : 44.1 kHz
    Compression mode                         : Lossy
    Delay relative to video                  : -131 ms
    Stream size                              : 8.68 MiB (68%)
    Writing library                          : LAME3.97

bestaudio is usually opus thou, which not all devices and app's can handle as seamless as mp3. ymmv

`-f 'bestaudio[ext=m4a]'` is also an option - m4a is somewhat more widely supported than opus.

Use yt-dlp and pass it the SponsorBlock flags to auto skip intro/outro/sponsor/non-music sections. I used to use this to pipe videos into cmus or MPV but now just let a browser with ublock/sponsorblock go in the background

Note this will download the video and ffmpeg the audio out of it, so you're no longer saving bandwidth.

Incorrect. This will download

251 webm audio only │ 139.66MiB 134k https │ opus 134k 48000Hz medium, webm_dash

and then use ffmpeg to reencode opus to mp3

The -x option will do that ONLY if no pure audio stream is available -- for youtube.com, this seems only to happen for live streams. More common on other sites. (Youtube-dl supports many different sites.)

Is this a command in order to download the audio?

If so I think that is not an easy way to listen to music on YouTube if you have every time to download the song

Nice.

FYI for those using Android, NewPipe also supports this.

Invidious also supports "audio only" mode, either by clicking on a little headset icon or by appending `&listen=1`

This is going to be removed by Google soon: they want you to view the YouTube ads

But their own app includes an audio-only mode.

If you pay you can get audio only, I don't think you can get it without paying?

It seems you can on Android. Just close the video and start playback from the drop-down notification. I get audio only but I don't remember if I did that before I started paying for YT.

No. This is one of the main features of the Premium YouTube

But that's dumb. I don't even pay for data. I'm helping _them_.

Not really, they can't show you their ads if you only listen and it's a feature people are willing to pay for.

As a paid feature.

This is a possible scenario. But there are many ad blockers out there with millions of users and they continue to be accepted by the Google

In addition, since I am the creator of this extension I had a similar problem in the past. Chrome Web Store had rejected one version of my extension with the explanation that the adblocker function is irrelevant to the main purpose of the extension. I send them an email explaining that the adblocking function is crucial for my extension because the ads interfere with the extension and cause problems in its function. Google apologized and accepted the extension.

This is what the program policy for the extensions say: "An extension must have a single purpose that is narrow and easy-to-understand. Do not create an extension that requires users to accept bundles of unrelated functionality. If two pieces of functionality are clearly separate, they should be put into two different extensions, and users should have the ability to install and uninstall them separately."

And thats the answer from Google: "Hello Developer,

Thank you for reaching out to us. We apologize for the inconvenience caused in this matter. Upon a subsequent review, we found that your item with ID : “abbpaepbpakcpipajigmlpnhlnbennna” to be compliant with our “Single Use” policy. Unfortunately, we cannot approve a submission that has been rejected. Hence, we request you to re-submit your extension on the developer dashboard.

Thanks,

Chrome Web Store Developer Support."

The ability to just play music and save bandwidth is a wonderful thing.

This is probably a dumb question but why isn't this a Show HN?

It kind of should be, right?

From the Show HN rules:

> Show HN is for something you've made that other people can play with [...]

"play" in this case does not imply that the product should be game or something like that but something that the user can interact with. From the Show HN rules: "On topic: things people can run on their computers or hold in their hands. For hardware, you can post a video or detailed article. For books, a sample chapter is ok"

You cannot play with a chapter of a book but it is acceptable. So, the "play" does not used with its exact meaning

I don't think that's an accurate interpretation of the rules.

There have been plenty of Chrome extensions that are Show HNs: https://hn.algolia.com/?q=Chrome.google.com+Show+Hn

Thanks a lot graderjs. I don't know very well Hacker News. After I made this post I discovered the Show HN. I prepare a post for it. Thanks

Very nice. Does anyone know how this works? I'm currently embedding a tiny player on a site I just made www.ridd.im

Youtube has separate audio and video streams to save on bandwidth (you can find them all by using youtube-dl or yt-dl with the "-F" option)... this probably just downloads the audio stream.

Yes. The extension block the video URLs and keeps only the audio ones that sets them as source in the video

Youtube serves the audio and video in separate streams. Presumably this extension just blocks the video stream.

Music Mode for YouTube is the only browser extension that blocks the video. All the other extensions they don't use the video but the video is downloaded. You can check this in the dev tools and specifically in the network panel where you can see all the files that are downloaded (or not)

I wish there was an app for this in 2010-ish. Would have saved me so much cell data.

There is a Firefox extension doing the same:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-audio...

Sorry but it does not do the same. It does not block the video. The video is downloaded but it does not used

You can check in the dev tools that when you use audio only extension the video files are downloaded normally. So, it does not save so much bandwidth

But it is a good alternative for Firefox since Music Mode for YouTube is currently only for Chrome

so no alternative one for Firefox? God this is a bad news to me.

There are two extensions in Firefox neither of which blocks the video. Music Mode for YouTube™ is the only extension that blocks the video entirely until now. These two extensions are Youtube Audio (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-audio...) and Audio Only for YouTube™ (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/audio-only-fo...). The second one is better and the one that recommend. Both have bugs and they do not block the video but they are better from nothing. I plan to create a version of Music Mode for YouTube™ for Firefox but, you know, it is difficult to spend a lot of time for things that you earn nothing.

Looking at the plugins source it seems you are right.

The video just gets replaced by the plugins text.

I am not sure if this would even save much battery if running in a tab.

No. The extension is not fake. It changes the video source with the audio file URL but it does not blocks the video. The video file is downloaded but it is never used. That's what I said

https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/372074-youtube-audio-mode

As it says it does not load the video. But it downloads it. This file is from the Audio only YouTube extension

Freetube [1] also let's you default to audio streams.

[1] https://freetubeapp.io

If only there were service to listen to music only…

I'm not condoning this extension at all, but it has a skip adverts option built in, which means you can play endless hours of ad-free music, for free. Unlike almost all of the other [legal] online music streamers.

why? What is the difference?

This would be categorized into Show HN

Now that I know that there is the Show HN I will post it also there

Reply on news.ycombinator.com