NewPipe: A lightweight YouTube experience for Android | Hacker News Reader

NewPipe: A lightweight YouTube experience for Android

newpipe.net

451 pointsmarcodiego220 comments

Some time ago Google made some changes to age verification, and now you can't watch age restricted videos without logging in, which means you can't watch them using NewPipe. It also means you can't watch them without handing over your phone number to Google, because it seems it's no longer possible to create a YT account without a phone number.

This whole thing makes NewPipe a lot less useful than it used to be.

On top of all this, being logged in is not enough. I just checked right now. You have to verify yourself using either a credit card, or submitting an image of a valid ID, such as your driver's license or passport (I have neither, FWIW).

NO THANKS.

I cannot tell you just how much I hate this kind of bullshit. This is becoming increasingly common. Call me old and grumpy, but I would much prefer to go back 10-20 years. The web was a symbol of freedom, decentralization, and so forth. Now we have major websites that you can count on one hand that makes up the Internet. Along with their fucking shitty, severely restricting or limiting systems.

On the other hand, they might be successful in reducing my Internet consumption. :)

Twitter won't let you browse more than a handful of tweets before blocking the service demanding you login.

I was trying to read an article about gpt-3 and the author had decided to embed tweets with pictures of text on, so not only could I not read the text without right-clicking the image to view on its own then zooming and panning but after a while Twitter would just prevent me from reading any further without logging in.

Twitter won't let you create an account without a phone number and, like most services that want to harvest your data like a Dementor from Harry Potter, they want to push you towards an app.

Tiktok is pretty hostile towards desktop users too. I refuse to install it on my mobile and why should I anyway?

And then there's the many iot devices that don't give you an interface at all if you don't have a phone. Ridiculous.

https://old.reddit.com/r/uBlockOrigin/comments/sew1rn/twitte...

For now, this removes the login pop-ups. For mobile use, there's Fritter.

There is also Nitter as a frontend. I love it!

There's also [0] and [1], which are more mobile-friendly but present less information.

[0]: https://i.reddit.com/r/uBlockOrigin/comments/sew1rn/twitterc... [1]: https://reddit.com/r/uBlockOrigin/comments/sew1rn/twittercom... (.compact does the exact same thing)

https://drewdevault.com/2021/09/23/Nitter-and-other-internet...

Use nitter, libreddit, invidious, bibliogram (is that one dead?) and others.

It's a shame that these big companies seem to suck at making usable websites. They probably chase "conversion" to new accounts at all costs. And that probably works (A/B tested).

They don't "suck" at it. It's not in their interest.

> It's a shame that these big companies seem to suck at making usable websites.

The Reddit and Twitter web apps are actually great on mobile, but they lock you out after a few minutes. I used to use both all the time until three or so years ago when the constant app pushing made both unusable.

The websites are extremely slow to load on my phone (galaxy s4 with lineageos 17.1). Using midori in a private tab:

- Time to load a twitter link: 14s (20s to display a preview of the picture).

- Same link on a nitter instance: 5s, page fully loaded, with replies.

Also, less than half the page is dedicated to content, I have:

- a search bar

- log in/sign up

- Cookies notice

- "Twitter is better on the app" "Not Now/Switch to the app" (that one takes a lot of space).

All of the above keeps floating above the content, so I can only scroll through a tiny window. The content is lazy-loaded, which makes scrolling annoying. A lot of space is wasted with buttons that are only useful if you're logged in.

The experience is terrible on mobile, and it's mostly the same for reddit.

They blocked my account and refused to unblock until I verified myself through phone. I got my account unblocked because I found a workaround for it. It was not supposed to unblock me or let me off the hook, but it did. Screw them. :D I rarely use it anyways.

do you mind sharing how did you unlock it without sharing phone number? i am in same situation

FWIW, I feel like this--age verification for age restricted videos--is probably caused by either a regulation that already happened or a regulation that was threatened and which Google felt safer to define the boundaries of for themselves (not that I think that often leads to sane outcomes).

It is, it's a requirement of the Audiovisual Media Services Directive in the EU, and in particular the UK and Irish regulators implementations of it. Especially the Irish one, since YouTube EMEA is based in Ireland and effectively make the regulatory decisions for the entire EU under the AVMS.

I feel like we all desperately took our eye off the ball when that was passed.

You are right. They are too big, and are at the crosshair of the Government. They must obey. I am pretty much against both in these cases, to be honest.

> Call me old and grumpy, but I would much prefer to go back 10-20 years. The web was a symbol of freedom, decentralization, and so forth.

Strange that no one has brought up hosting a peertube instance

These seem to be requirements in certain jurisdictions and not universal. I have never been asked to verify myself for YouTube, or for my phone number, and yet I am an admin for four channels. Maybe it's because Google already has those for my other accounts (Playstore, Gmail, and Pay).

COPPA is responsible for this, not Google. Google are just following the law after being fined for not following it.

call your elected representatives and complain if you're in the US.

I am not in the US. These comments are good. I do believe most of the bullshit is regulation-related, coming from the Government.

> Now we have major websites that you can count on one hand that makes up the Internet.

No they don't make up the Internet. We have a couble big sites backed by megacorporations that have taken over the majority mindshare, but there are still plenty of smaller sites left. Don't give in and pretend that Google et al have won. Find traditional forums for your interests and participate in them. Start one if needed. Subscribe to individual blogs via RSS. Consider hosting your own. Want to share your creations? Create a website for them instead of just putting them on the most convenient social media platform. The independent web is not lost until we all agree that it is.

Unless things changed in the past year or so, i remember creating a google account without a phone number.However you might be right, because they recently stated they want to start forcing people info 2FA.What is more interesting(especially for people who don't understand how google operates behind the scenes) is that the markers they use for requiring phone numbers/id verification/etc is to train their bot detection.I remember about 2 years ago,on a 10yrs+ old google account, I had recently been required to verify my age(through an ID) for a video which did not require my age verification on a dummy account which was about 2 years old(so very new by comparison).

They might have introduced now mandatory age verification on per-video instead of per-account basis, but the stages they use are very questionable.Besides, YT is such an unusable platform these days one has to use NP/Vanced to have the same experience of youtube pre-2012, and still: back then there was less spam and phishing going on.

> Unless things changed in the past year or so, i remember creating a google account without a phone number.

I believe you can create a Google account without a phone number by setting it up on Android's (stock ROM) setup screen. This won't bypass YouTube's nagging though, sadly.

Piped can bypass age restriction (eg https://piped.kavin.rocks instance), it's the new Invidious YouTube FOSS frontend alternative.

I don't log in into YouTube, even on phone, so NewPipe was an improvement for me. I can bookmark videos and subscribe channels in the app. I could do that with bookmarks in the browser but this is more convenient.

Instead of using bookmarks, you could subscribe via RSS. Sometimes the link is not easily found, except if you use a reader that will "auto-find" the URI for you (I use Brook [1]).

[1]: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/brook-feed-re...

You must be devastated

If you drag'n'drop the URI in mpv [1], you can bypass the age restriction. Not convenient, but if you need it it's very useful.

[1]: https://mpv.io/

Or use an extension to make this more convenient: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/send-to-mpv-p...

Personally, I much prefer playing all videos in an external mpv window anyway.

*The whole thing makes YouTube a lot less useful than it used to be

Their loss. What kind of videos are age-restricted anyway?

Videos with nudity, violence, or excessive foul language, or videos that have self-flagged as such.

You forgot that invidious still lets you watch videos age blocked fine. Gokunaru for instance just made a q & a a few days ago and I watched it on invidious

NewPipe can play age-restricted videos. I just tested it myself and played an age-restricted video on NewPipe.

I haven't done the age verification in my youtube account, so I avoid those videos too and I don't think there are so many of them fortunately. The more established channels will avoid it to not lose viewers.

Are you sure? The yt-dlp package uses the Android API on YouTube and it can download age restricted videos.

Google, Apple, Microsoft, et al, keep trying to convince us to stop using their services.

Actually there is a toggle in the settings (under content) to bypass this, seems like this is an issue that Piped avoids as well which I wholehearted recommend for desktop or browser use.

How does age restriction work? I wanted to watch a video (I forgot which one and no, it was a normal video.) But I got an age verification in my face. I'm 27 years old.

Freetube can play age restricted videos (it has worked for me so far). I'm not sure how they do it, I suspect it has to do with the Invidious API somehow.

NewPipe has no support for resuming interrputed downloads. Overrite only. This makes NewPipe inferior to downloading from the command line.

Does this or Vanced help with the problem I have: my kids are being brainwashed via Google's algorithms?

More specifically, I hate that when they watch YouTube it is pushing really shitty content on them.

Is there a way with either of these apps to filter out things I don't want them to watch, or perhaps even have a list of things I only want them to watch?

I don't think my kids would notice if they couldn't get Ninja Kidz and their spammy Walmart plastic crap they are always shilling to my kids.

What about just removing the youtube app from the tablet you give your child?

There are good things on YouTube. And, their friends watch YouTube.

If they're so young they get sucked into those weird meme videos they're probably too young for the device, if they're older than that try impressing upon the importance of viewing useful content.

And take it away if you catch them watching pointless stuff.

I do agree there are good things on YouTube, but there are also horrific, definitely not age appropriate things, and there is not enough control to keep one flowing into the other. We watch YouTube as a family, but we're fortunate in that we all like the same content. But in my opinion, supervision is the only true way to make sure they're only seeing appropriate things.

Also, "their friends are doing it" is a terrible reason to let them do it, IMHO.

You can just download those and show them instead of having them browse around Youtube.

But I guess it takes time and effort to do that

I wish my parents had let the "my friends are doing it" excuse work. You're easy.

Even more "radical" would be not giving the child a tablet at all.

Proactively this is the only thing that worked: get yt premium, download YouTube videos you preselected, and disconnect the child's device.

What does getting YouTube Premium add to that plan? Wouldn't it work just as well without that step?

You need YouTube Premium to be able to download videos to watch offline (plus see no ads)

…or you can just use NewPipe.

All you need is Vanced or NewPipe.

Or youtube-dl. Though I've been getting bandwidth-limited lately...

There is a fork, yt-dlp[0], that I've enjoyed using recently that has some mitigations for this issue[1] (see --throttling-rate)t

[0]: https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp

[1]: https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/issues/985

No part of what you just said is true.

WTH, you don't, just use youtube-dl

Never heard of it. Does that work on a child’s iPad and expose videos via an interface that they can navigate?

It's just a command-line tool to download audio/video from youtube (and many other sites). You'd need to setup the iPad thing yourself, maybe using something like Plex?

Consider Jellyfin instead of Plex (doesn't Plex try to push "free" content in addition to what you add to the server?)

Plex has shifted over time to present their content more prominently. It got to the point that your own media isn't even displayed on the default landing screen. Had to re-teach the kids how to find their movies and whatnot.

I haven't had it running in about a year though, couldn't be bothered after a move.

Jellyfin looks nice. I'll have to give it a go. I am dreading having to set everything up again if I move off of plex, rather than just grab my docker-compose file and get going.

I strongly recommend checking out yt-dlp. Forked from youtube-dl but has much quicker downloads.

Newpipe can also download. No need for bloated YouTube-App, Premium subscription or ti hassle with a command line tool (in case CLI's are not your thing).

As also mentioned by others, youtube-dl seems kinda dead. However there is a good fork/successor called "yt-dlp" which, in addition to other nice improvements, also somehow manages to work around the enforced heavy bandwidth limit by YT.

* YouTube Kids with allowlist.

* App Timer of zero minutes on YouTube app.

In your comment, is allowlist a list of videos only they can watch? (not a list of 'age ranges' or 'channels', but actually being able to select individual videos). I was never able to get something like this out of youtube kids when I've tried it in the past.

All these services curate for kids and I want to choose what my kids watch, so they are all failing me. (I'm with the others who go with YT premium, youtube-dl, kids watch with vlc or something on a tablet).

Have you tried YouTube Kids? I allow my daughter using only YouTube Kids (in kid mode) on my Android phone. The suggested content was good enough. Google also allowed you to supervise the content [1].

[1]: https://support.google.com/youtubekids/answer/7178746#block_...

I tried YouTube Kids, but found it was suggesting a lot of surprise egg and colorful slime videos. I blocked those channels, but more showed up, so I deleted the app.

Its only usable (in my opinion) in the allow list channel mode. Otherwise its never ending reaction blocking.

On newpipe you can disable a lot of YouTube features, it might get you part of the way. For example you can disable related/suggested videos and the 'popular' tab, then you can only see things through search or links.

I have a 5 month old daughter, so I obviously haven't tried it yet, but I'm pretty keen on and have been setting up a Jellyfin on a Raspberry Pi, so that when it's time for her to watch some videos, I want it to be a closed environment. No ads, no pushing of shit but specially, no endless stream of videos. I think what makes it worse is having the world in their hands and just be able to watch 2 minutes and skip. I see kids doing that all the time and it makes me feel uneasy. If it completely changed my ability to concentrate as am adult I can't fathom how that "power" affects the mind of a child.

I believe you're a good father since you're concerned. As time goes you'll teach them focus and they'll teach themselves. Focus is a general problem and it has to be solved as such. More and more distractions will be born as years go by so you need a general solution. That's my suggestion.

~I have all of that, except instead of Kodi, Jellyfin. Also no nzbget because I just found out about that and AFAIK you need some kind of invite to enter a Usenet? I dunno! I get by with torrents :)~

Sorry, wrong thread!

That is precisely the same idea I ended up on, that feels like the best option. Basically, as a caretaker, nowadays it is most important to curate 100% the kind of media your kids have access to, as otherwise it is impossible for them not to be consumed by the algorithm and end up with a lot of psichological damage. Kudos for taking on such a hard job, hope you find a way to share your projects and results in the end, hope they work out well.

Have you considered to not let the baby see any videos at all? Apparently there is some research that claims that upbringing like that might still create a bad video addiction. The baby should be focussing on you or other people that are around for socialization, not a screen. I understand if there is no time. Hell, I don't have time. But apparently that's what some psychologists are saying.

you seem to have misread the parent commment in regards to his childs media consumption.

that said, we found that putting up a short video to capture the attention of small children is very effective at calming them down while changing diapers for example.

You seem to have misread my comment. There is research claiming that videos are bad for babies. (!) Then it makes no difference if they're calmed down during diaper change. Valium is also calming, but most people are recommended to stay off it.

my apologies then.

i'm sure there is such research, haven't read into it thou. ime no problem if you limit the exposure to video to a few minutes a day. it's basically the modern version of a sockpuppet.

I'm not going to give her any video before she's 2 years old. And after that we'll try to not do it for as long as we can and it makes sense. Because in the end, I watch movies and series and whatever. But she'll want to watch stuff as we're part of the society. And when that time comes, I'll be prepared with a Jellyfin instance to at least curb some of the attention grabbing feed and ads of current systems :)

I have a Raspberry pi 4, with Kodi, Sonarr, Radarr, Transmission and nzbget for that. I recently added heimdall as a panel to have all links in one place.

I have all of that, except instead of Kodi, Jellyfin. Also no nzbget because I just found out about that and AFAIK you need some kind of invite to enter a Usenet? I dunno! I get by with torrents :)

The good thing of Usenet, apart from the speed, is that you are downloading only, not sharing, and in some jurisdictions that matters.

Anyway, most free Usenet providers place limits on how much and what you can download. I use Eweka, which is a paid provider. But there are a lot more. Eweka is a normal Usenet provider (I use it to access normal Usenet too) but it gives access to the entire Usenet, and it's fast.

Then nowadays all the pirated content in Usenet is scrambled, so you'll need an indexer, which is a search engine for content on Usenet. I'm not sure if I can share which one I use here, but you can check the Usenet subreddit, if you want to use one.

All in all, the setup works well. I give preference to Usenet content, because it's fast. If the *arr apps can't find the content in Usenet (because it's too old, for example), they switch to torrent.

This would be my approach. My Plex only shows content that I myself hand picked to be on there.

This is a good solution and pretty much what I've done. When you need screen time on the go, putting those videos on an SD card and sticking it in a cheap Kindle Fire with VLC installed also works well.

My kids have done quite well without watching any YouTube.

> Does this or Vanced help with the problem I have: my kids are being brainwashed via Google's algorithms?

Actually yes, kind of? At least a little bit.

NewPipe doesn't have parental controls, so if you don't trust your kids to keep these things on, NewPipe can't help you. However, if you do trust kids and you just want a way to remove some of the influences, NewPipe (and NewPipexSponsorblock[0], if you're comfortable using a fork) have some really compelling features:

- You can turn off comments

- You can turn off recommended videos (including "next/similar" sections alongside videos you're watching)

- NewPipexSponsorblock will skip (many) advertisements within videos

- You can turn off search suggestions as you're searching for new videos

- There are some nice feed options that allow you to have much more curated update feeds, so you spend less time searching for videos in the first place.

----

However:

- Again, no parental controls. You either trust your kids to use it or you don't, because your kids can go into the settings and just flip all this stuff back on.

- No way to block videos/channels from appearing in search results, which is something I would love.

- No way to do things like get rid of search and only use a feed.

There is talk on the NewPipe issue tracker about adding a blocklist feature, which I think would be a great improvement, but I have no idea what the priority is[1] or when it would happen.

----

I'll speak anecdotally here, but I think that even just Sponsorblock makes a huge difference in the Youtube experience, and I advise any parent with kids to use either NewPipe or the NewPipexSponsorblock fork, and I advise them to install Sponsorblock on their desktop browser. I think that getting rid of recommended videos improved my experience dramatically, I think that having better feeds means I spend less time on Youtube in the first place. I have ADD, these are some of the ways I improve my focus and eliminate distractions.

In regards to Sponsorblock, we can get into debates about whether blocking embedded ads inside of videos is moral; I have my own opinions about that but I understand that it can make people uncomfortable. However, I think the gloves come off when we're talking about kids. I don't think there's a moral argument to be made that kids need to sit through sponsored segments and over-long intros and get crud shoveled at them against their will to support Google.

But basically, even though blocking isn't in yet you can still get rid of a lot of Google recommendations and you can get rid of really cruddy surrounding parts to videos like comments/watch-next/etc, and I think that's really helpful for kids.

----

[0]: https://github.com/polymorphicshade/NewPipe

[1]: https://github.com/TeamNewPipe/NewPipe/projects/13#card-3163...

Here's an idea: don't let your underage kids on the Internet without supervision.

Short answer: no.

Long answer: I use NewPipe exclusively to watch development videos and it keeps recommending antivaax & alt-right propaganda as related videos.

Depends how old your kids are, but that's what I use it for. You can set the home screen to your subscription list, and it doesn't show related videos unless you go to a separate tab. Those two things have saved me from much screaming about not getting to watch the colorful slime videos that regular YouTube always suggests.

Brave browser let’s you make a playlist of YouTube videos which are downloaded to the device. Curate a playlist and then disconnect wifi and voila? Hope that helps

When my kids want to watch something on a topic, I use yt-dlp to download a bunch of videos.

I have that older synced with my Synology, and my kids have that folder syncing with Synology on their iPad.

I've found this to be a good balance for managing it easily for me, giving them what they want to see without giving youtube access.

NewPipe is great but it breaks quite frequently due to the use of unofficial YouTube APIs. I tried to get my girlfriend on it because she was annoyed by all the ads but it kept breaking every month. Vanced is nice but a weakness for both is that they can't support casting on a non-jailbroken device (and I suspect the issue won't be solved by jailbreaking).

Me and all of my friends and family have Vanced, I've never heard anyone of them mentioning a casting issue

Yes, I too use Vanced frequently and casting works fine. It also detects and casts to the smartyoutubetv app on my firetv.

I'm not the only person with this issue. The maintainer of Vanced said it'll likely never be fixed. [0]

[0] https://github.com/YTVanced/Vanced/issues/688#issuecomment-9...

A more reliable option might be to use Firefox for Android with ublock origin. The site UX is not as good, though.

"NewPipe is great but it breaks quite frequently..."

Despite that, NewPipe is incredibly useful, especially if you don't want to Google to violate your privacy.

Given that it violates Google's TOS and that Google is liable to break it by changing YouTube parameters, etc., then it seems to me that we should be tolerant of its foibles.

Given the situation I'm surprised that it works well as it does.

Even when using NewPipe's F-Droid repository?

https://newpipe.net/FAQ/tutorials/install-add-fdroid-repo/

Not OP but yeah, it tends to take a day or two after the API break for the devs to put out a new release.

Of course this is understandable though! YouTube is the one breaking the API and the devs react really quickly which is great.

I use the version from the github page. They are updated much faster. So when I realized something broke there is usually already a fixed version up on github.

And the GitHub version warn when there is a new version

Yes. I'm not sure what I've done wrong but I tried three times or so the last year and never got off the ground with using newpipe, always broken.

I have been using it for more than a year, and I have updated it like 3-4 times. Maybe you just got unlucky?

That's Google's fault, not NewPipe's.

It is FOSS, so you can contribute to the project in principle... After all, it is free, so I cannot complain.

I have an Samsung S7 and it works just fine with my non-jailbroken phone. I use it through F-Droid who keeps it updated. I don't use it constantly, though, and I mostly dl contents that I watch offline later when I'm out and about, so that might also affect some differences in usage patterns.

This is not true, it broke in the last year only once and they fixed it in a week. Not bad for a free app!

That may have been your experience, but it certainly was not mine.

Firefox + ublock origin on android is currently an ad-free experience of youtube. Using it in the website, not the app.

Doesn't allow me to cast though, which is the feature I miss most about using these alternative apps.

The only feature i use is unfortunaly play on Kodi, which works on both through the share (link) feature. Cast.might too.

I am glad that I found it yesterday.

I have been using YouTube Vanced[0] app for some time now. After ads got out of hands and especially after the decision that YouTube would put ads to unmonetized video as well[1].

But with that app, after a recent YouTube update, it was impossible to download a video beyond 320p.

So, I was downloading 1080p/2k video manually with youtube-dl and loading them on my phone manually. For trips and such. Now I won't have to do that!

(I support individual, indie-type YouTubers by buying Patreon memberships, and buying merch if they are cool.)

[0]: https://vancedapp.com/

[1]: https://9to5google.com/2020/11/20/youtube-to-begin-putting-a...

I like this app as well as this is an effective hindrance to not get sucked into the recommendations and losing time with endless amount of content youtube rates as interesting for me (and it often really is, unfortunately). Nevertheless, I like some channels and their visibilty and success depends on views, likes and interactions. If it is just about monetization, there are alternatives beyond youtube, but pure visibility and growth if the chanel isn't already established to its full potential? I'm wondering in how far I'm weakening those channels / creators when accessing their content through this tool.

One of the biggest strengths of Vanced over NewPipe when i tried them both was SponsorBlock [0]

Is there a similar feature available in Newpipe now?

[0]: https://sponsor.ajay.app/

yep. https://github.com/polymorphicshade/NewPipe/

a fork of newpipe for sponsorblock specific functionality. i use this now

I will say, at first I was skeptical Sponsorblock would work, but after trying it, I'm really surprised by how good it is. Even videos from smaller channels generally have annotations. I also really enjoy the other types of annotations, such as "highlight" which is often used to annotate when the important part of a video is. For example, during the 3 hour long launch broadcast for JWST, it was used to mark where the countdown starts.

NewPipe does not see themselves as a project focused on blocking ads but as a privacy first project.

See their reasoning for rejecting the sponsor block PR here: https://github.com/TeamNewPipe/NewPipe/pull/3205

One can disagree with their decision but I can understand why they did this and since somebody offers builds, I don't understand why people are often angry towards the NewPipe maintainers.

Also this https://github.com/TeamNewPipe/NewPipe/issues/2554

There's a NewPipe fork with SponsorBlock support

https://github.com/polymorphicshade/NewPipe

A few YouTubers are circumventing SponsorBlock by namedropping their favorite VPN sporadically throughout their content. Not long before creators end up sounding like the Secretary of State from Idiocracy.

Brought to you by Carl's Jr.

Still possible to fix with SponsorBlock, but just makes the skips feel more awkward unfortunately. There is also mute segments to help make these more seemless

https://apt.izzysoft.de/fdroid/index/apk/org.polymorphicshad...

Not trying to make accusations but why would anyone block these segments? Isn't that how the content creator is making a living? I just skip them by hand if they go on and on or I've already seen it or whatever.

why would you ask someone why they do something and then immediately explain that you literally do the exact same thing? the only difference is you do it manually and they found a way to automate it.

the reason they skip them is the exact same reason people use ad block on youtube or download movies. they don't care and it's more convenient that way.

I explained why I skipped it in some circumstances, I think I probably watch 90% of them. Or does this sponsor block thing let you choose when to skip? It didn't look like it but that would be great if so.

For the Sponsorblock browser addons you can configure them to only show you a button to skip the segments if you like. I'm not sure if that option is available in Vanced or the NewPipe Sponsorblock fork.

Only used it on desktop - it skips by default and you can tap enter to unskip. There's quite a few configurable options.

The creator does not get money from you watching these ads, they get money from you buying the products or services advertized - if you're not going to buy any of these things anyhow then why subject yourself to it ? Skipping an ad for a VPN provider if your are not going to buy VPN services literally has zero effect.

This even holds for ads where views are counted - if I'm not going to buy the wares you are screaming at me about and I chose to not watch this ad, thereby reducing the view count, what I have actually done is make the advertizement more targeted.

I should be thanked and compensated for my free non-labour that I have given to the advertizement industry instead of vilified. Isn't this what they all want? Targeted ads ?

I am not going to buy any of these godawful services and products in the first place, so why bother bothering me.

They're reasonable points, and I'm not trying to start a war. Specifically for youtube I guess I find it weird because the people I watch on there at least are regular folks, not big faceless marketing machines, I want to support them. Or at least shaft them by hand rather than automatically :P. As to why I think you're supporting them by watching the sponsored bits:

1. As I mentioned in another comment, if nobody's watching then the sponsors won't sponsor. You can argue that this isn't tracked, or whatever, but that's a bit like the free rider problem - "ok" if a few people do it but if everyone did it the system doesn't work.

2. Like it or not, ads aren't just about you buying things. They're about making consumers aware. Six months later you won't even know how you knew it when you mention it to someone. I hate this so I don't watch ads; I give one of my most-hated companies money so I don't see ads. I don't watch free to air tv, either.

3. Maybe you will buy the thing! Can't always tell, if you have a modicum of trust for the creator you might pay attention to how they describe the features and use their links. Bit optimistic but eh.

Just my opinion obviously :)

I'm not going to buy anything based on the sponsor segment, so skipping it doesn't deprive the creator of any money.

That's true in the short term, but sponsors don't pay for people to shill their products if nobody's watching.

Of course someone is watching — the kinds of people who would never use NewPipe in the first place.

It's entirely different than using uBlock for youtube ads which reduces the amount of ad views for the youtuber which definitely reduces their revenue.

I presume these sponsorships are just part of the creator's video, no different than the regular content, and not like those 'real' advertisements where your video gets paused and the ad is embedded into different video player.

This is literally skipping by hand but just automated, I don't see a difference.

The reason the sponsors pay for this stuff is because people watch it. Systems which encourage widespread automated skipping of sponsored segments discourages their use in the first place and either eliminates a source of revenue for creators or escalates the arms race to embed sponsorships more and more thoroughly into primary content.

AFAIK they get paid by including the sponsored segment in their videos, not by how many viewers specifically watched that segments.

I tried it and found it was way too aggressive in its default settings by blocking things like intros, recaps, things they think are off topic, and the timings were often not exact so it would jump back in mid sentence. I'm sure there are ways to adjust these to my liking but it was just easier to uninstall it.

Are these kinds of "Youtube Client's" against the terms of service of Youtube? I can't imagine they would like appreciate these features:

   Play in background
   No proprietary Google APIs

There's a reason it's not in the play store...

It does break YT/Google TOS. Which is why it isn't allowed on the play store.

A lot of YouTube contents is just talking heads or commentary, but for some reason they don't dual-upload so you can get their stuff as a podcast as well... Some do it, but most don't. That's a major pain for me since I'm travelling a lot. I don't want to waste bandwidth or time on actually watching their stuff, when all I want to do is to listen. But NewPipe solves this rather neatly. Just set up a list of "subs" and then download the contents as audio only so I can also listen to it offline. I use the paid version of Smart AudioBook Player to listen to the dl's so I can speed up the playback. Also it's neat because you can bookmark and so on.

I wish more talking-head Youtubers would write articles to accompany their videos. I'd much rather quickly skim through an article than have to sit through a 10 minute video.

I guess that's your one reason to stay on YouTube, since they have an automated transcription service. You may know this already, but in case you don't, just click the three dots below the video to the right, and then click "Open transcript." AFAIK not all videos are transcribed, though, so this might be a little hit-or-miss.

I've wondered why so much content that used to be in a user friendly web page is now on YT, even if it is more cumbersome to consume. I can only conclude that people think they're going to get rich from YT ads, it's easier to record a YT video than to set up and post to something like Blogger (depending on the production quality, of course), and/or people think YT videos are a valuable portfolio/practice for speaking/being on screen (and see YT as a stepping stone to another job).

YouTube videos have a much easier time reaching more people. Not only is video easier to consume than sitting down and reading for a lot of people, but YouTube also has a discovery system making your content easier to discover. I also believe it is probably easier to keep a lot of people watching a 10-20+ minute video rather than having them spend that amount of time reading too. The HN crowd might not fall into any of these categories though.

If the content is also just a stream of thoughts, it can be easier for some people to just talk to a camera, edit it down, and put it up as a video. For some people that is easier than having to think about wording, grammar, formatting, etc.

Hosting on YouTube is also free as opposed to hosting your own written website, but of course free hosting for written content exists too.

Seems to me that not a lot of people here understood deeply the purpose of the app, and maybe the app itself don't understand youtube deeply either. The app is aiming for privacy and most comments are about ad removal.

What maybe both the comments and app creators might be missing, is that youtube is not only about hosting videos and content creator channels, it is also about content discovery, and that is key for both its success and for the users to make use of the service to its full potential.

I am a Youtube Premium user, I pay via credid card, so I am KYC'd already. But I wish I had something similar on iOS. Not because of ads, but because the Youtube experience is really suffering from having too many developers and focus on kiiling the competion instead of keeping youtube identity. The app is really bloated with experiments like "shorts", which is copying TikTok, and same can be said from the AppleTV or LG TV apps, which now put subscriptions to the botton to force you to click on gaming (twitch clone) and news.

It is really a shame that Youtube, as most rent seeking big companies, can't be satisfied in being the best in one thing, rather trying to be predatory to similar but not quite the same competitors.

been using newpipe exclusively on android for the past around 3 years. i have basically never used the stock youtube app, before it was ios and then newpipe. i cant stand "ads".

been using sponsorblock newpipe since the original team got scared after youtube-dl dmca and they refused to accept MR of the sponsorblock developer. the fork is basically perfect. sure it has bugs but i can live with that as opposed to "a word from our sponsor"

For Android TV, SmartTubeNext (<https://github.com/yuliskov/SmartTubeNext>) is excellent.

If you’re using an Android TV, I’d totally recommend SmartTubeNext over NewPipe. I tried both and the experience is way better. STN also embeds SponsorBlock by default. And it supports YouTube accounts so you can still subscribe to channels properly. You can even cast to SmartTubeNext from your smartphone, from the official YouTube application !

Yes, I add my recommendation too for SmartTubeNext for Android TV. Awesome app with frequent updates.

On desktop: https://freetubeapp.io/

I love the feature that you can have subscribe to channels without an account. However, there is a bug with a screen not going full screen having to pause and unpause video playback in order to go full screen. A bug that's been around for quite some time that is annoying.

I keep a OneNote page on how to block YouTube Ads:

  Desktop: Firefox + uBlock Origin
  iOS: Cercube
  Android: NewPipe, Vanced

I would like to know a good non-jailbreak method of blocking YouTube ads on iOS if anyone knows how.

Using an Invidious instance probably solves the issue. That's what I use on my Linux laptop now. SponsorBlock is also compatible with it.

I now have my own install of Invidious on which I manage my subscriptions (without any Google account) but there are quite a few readily available Invidious instances.

Tangentially, apps like this are why I’d like to have sideloading on iOS. We need to be able to access these platforms with something other than a plain browser or the official platform app.

I really can't watch the 'popular' content of the internet, not personalized to me.

I don't want to manually subscribe to channels. It's a lot of manual work intially and later in new content discovery.

Is there a 3rd party open source recommendation engine where you might plug in content browser such as NewPipe that would register my clicks, searches, watch time, and could filter content for me and pick suitable channels or other content groupings (like searches, or feeds from my yt accounts) to present me with my personalized feed?

I don't use YouTube as a discovery platform. I go search for very specific things, or watch linked videos. I don't subscribe to channels either, if it's something I like I'll go and have a look when I have free time for some videos.

I don't know if this is common use pattern or not, but NewPipe is close to perfect for me.

Just curious. What do you use as a discovery platform?

I don't particularly want to increase my YouTube time and I don't have a need to find new videos actively, but often some comment for example here in HN suggests a video/channel I do like. Is that what you were asking?

>> what do you use as a discovery platform

> I randomly happen upon them

It answers the question but likely not the answer they were looking for.

Personally I find that YouTube recommends decent content to me based on what I like to watch.

But it’ll recommend garbage to my kids. The problem is that the kids like the garbage.

Beyond that often YouTubers in a certain niche will mention / promote others doing similar stuff.

I do subscribe to premium just to avoid the Prager U and other ads that have no business being targeted at kids in the first place.

Great. But there are way more people like me than like you. Which popularity of youtube and tiktok proves.

For those that aren't aware, there is a fork of Newpipe that implements SponsorBlock, which blocks several annoying segments in youtube videos. I honestly can't believe how much of a quality of life difference it makes for YouTube

https://github.com/polymorphicshade/NewPipe

I enjoy using Vanced, which blocks ads and in a recent update started blocking sponsor segments.

I recommend https://vancedapp.com/

Yeah, last time I tried NewPipe has no login (probably obviously).

I use YTB almost exclusively to watch my subscriptions. Without that it's kinda useless (I'm aware you can import a channel list somehow in NewPipe, but it's very inconvenient if you constantly sub/unsub stuff.)

Just manage your subscriptions in NewPipe. Don't give any data to Google.

Unfortunately they stopped supporting older versions of Android and don't even update legacy version :(

My experience with NewPipe is twofold: on the phone its great; on Android TV the UX is maddening.

Use SmartTubeNext on Android TV, the integration is incredibly better than NewPipe.

Thanks for the suggestion. Does it support subscriptions? I can't tell from the README...

Yes, it supports connecting with your (or multiple) YouTube account(s). That means it supports subscriptions, history, likes, etc. It just doesn’t handle comments in any way (which is a feature if you ask me :D)

Ah. One-time export or does it actually impersonate YouTube? Not having to use a YouTube account and log in is the best thing about NewPipe on the phone and FreeTube on the desktop IMO.

Nope it’s a full YouTube account integration. I actually prefer it because this way I can subscribe to new channels on the go from the official YouTube app, and it synchronizes directly with my Android Tv.

What’s wrong with using a YouTube account? Is it just the ca t that it’s a Google account (which I could understand)? Or is there something more?

Yeah, I'm de-googling my life as much as I can. "Only" Android left now...

This is one of two apps I miss on my iPhone (the other is an app to play Tamil music). Wish there is something that is as easy to use on iphone.

For those who are facing frequent breakages, using the newpipe from their website (rather than F-Droid) gives faster updates.

other than breaking Google/YT terms ...

is there any other downside or risk to installing YT Vanced on your daily driver phone?

does it break any other apps like banking/payments? how about devices on which we also have a work profile managed by employer.

It doesn't breaks anything.

you seem to think it's some sort of malware. this is actually safer than the official youtube app, because it's opensource

BTW with Firefox for android and ublock origin as well as background video extension installed I can play YouTube videos in the background without ads, very convenient.

An alternative to this is to just use youtube in the Brave Browser on mobile. No ads, you can't play in the background but you can play picture-in-picture mode.

Where can I find 'brave browser' in Fdroid please?

Install FFUpdater, then you can use that to install Brave.

Newpipe allows you to subscribe, create playlists etc with no account, download videos, audio, shuffle playlists, create groups of channels. And much more. All features I regularly use in newpipe. Not a true alternative

Proactively this is the only thing that worked: get yt premium, download YouTube videos you preselected, and disconnect the child's device.

> Proactively this is the only thing that worked: get yt premium, download YouTube videos you preselected, and disconnect the child's device.

YT Premium only makes the problem worse by still allowing native ads and requiring you to log in using an account that is tied to your real world identity (for payment processing).

You just end up giving more data points to Google to track and don't get rid of all ads.

Slightly off topic is 'VancedTube' (currently in the Android play store), an unofficial clone of 'Vanced' the app?

Good app. Never found if it can/how to play video with screen off though.

It can, you put the video in background mode

click on the headset icon

What about Windows? Is there anything like NewPipe also for Win?

I would use Firefox + uBlock Origin. It can block YouTube ads.

You can paste a YouTube video page URL into VLC and it will stream the video (without ads etc).

For the video downloading feature, you can use youtube-dl or one of its forks (command-line, but maybe there is a nice GUI somewhere?)

Freetube. Breaks every now and then (just like NewPipe when YouTube changes stuff) but it is really useful to track subscriptions and categorize them, and you can have feeds of each category (NewPipe has categorization but you can't set up feeds per category). It's still in beta so a it has still a way to go.

Please somebody implement playlist download in NewPipe

If you read HN you will know Youtube and Google randomly shuts down people's accounts. It's not safe to use Youtube. Please use Twitch instead.

I associate twitch with gaming (which I don't do). Is it really a YT alternative?

Better than Vanced

I was thinking of installing vanced, but then realised I do banking on my phone, and thought, yeah, I must be crazy to think about installing something not on the App store. The only thing I would install not on the app store would be something opensource like NewPipe.

YouTube is an incredible service to the world, economy and creators. Just spend a minute off lazy ass time to customize it and you should be fine.

If you don't want ads buy a premium, "you will feel much better".

All pirated content just drain economic value, that's what causes inflation and shit and unemployment.

Without capital there won't be innovation and new discoveries and the privileges you take for granted won't exist. Think.

Way to miss the mark. This is about privacy, not ads.

These solutions all offer ways to block ads, even sponsored ads.

So please, don't be disingenuous, this is certainly about ads in one form or another.

NewPipe not having essential features like the home tab (recommended videos) or My Mix make the app almost useless to me. Not supporting livestream chat or being able to watch member streams (or videos) is also another big deal breaker for me. NewPipe also can't show community posts or give me notifications when a creator uploads a video or makes a community post.

I keep the app installed as a quick way to watch videos in incognito mode.

NewPipe is specifically designed to be privacy first. This means no account, no client-side tracking, as few web requests as possible, and everything (e.g. watch history and subscriptions) is saved offline. Thus it is impossible to show non-generically recommended videos or to enable chat.

Without an account you lose the ability to support many useful features that YouTube offers. In my ideal FLOSS YouTube client I would prefer if it could at least support the main features of the proprietary client.

"... as few web requests as possible..."

That depends on what we agree should be the minimum functionality. On computers with physical keyboards I have always searched YouTube and downloaded from the command line. No youtube-dl, no scripting languages, just a couple of tiny Bourne shell scripts. YouTbe has always made this very easy. The functionality I need is (a) search (b) retrieve textual video information and (c) retrieve video. The only domains required to do that, IME, are (1) www.youtube.com for (a) and (b), and (2) googlevideo.com subdomains for (c). It is possible to use these tiny scripts on an Android phone with Termux. It was surprising to see NewPipe, installed from F-Droid, trying to make requests to the following unnecessary domains:

  speech.googlepapis.com
  clients3.google.com
  clients4.google.com
  app-measurement.com
  growth-pa.googleapis.com
  deviceintegritytokens.growth-pa.googleapis.com
  firebaseinstallations.googleapis.com
  android.googleapis.com
  www.googleapis.com
  play.googleapis.com
  android.apis.google.com
  youtubeei.googleapis.com
  suggestqueries.google.com

NB. I block all these and the app still works fine.

I have never tried to use a YouTube app. Perhaps NewPipe is meant to be compared to a YouTube app not to use of the YouTube website. The scripts I write for YouTube are in response to the annoyances of using the YouTube website, including all the gratuitous requests to unnecessary domains.

"[A]s few web requests as possible" depends on what functionality the user wants. For example, if the user must have thumbnails then we must make requests to ytimg.com subdomains. Otherwise there is no need to make requests to ytimg.com subdomains. Because I only want to search, read JSON and download video, I do not need to make requests to the above domains that NewPipe tries to reach.

s/youtubeei/youtubei/

Do folks know that 55% of ad revenue goes directly to the creators whose content you are watching? Apps like this sound great, but ultimately damage ecosystems. YT Premium is like $11.99/mo and you never see an ad again. If you think you're getting $12/mo USD value out of YT, then I question why you'd want to go through the hassle of this over just paying not to see ads (ps: premium income also goes to the creators!) - how much is your time worth?

We internet users don’t want to pay for anything, we don’t want to watch ads, we get upset when free products aren’t free anymore, and when we are the product…

I sometimes think we get what we deserve.

People can pay the content creators through Patron or other platforms without having Google watching and tracking every online action. Google is pushing tag manager and other options because of ad revenue. Killing ads at every possible opportunity is a noble act and moral responsibility of every tech sophisticated user.

Then they can watch the content through Patreon too, no need for YouTube at all.

What piece of the pie does Patreon take and why do we want to pay their slice?

Not every creator has a Patreon or other forms to receive payment.

They can take it or they can leave it, because they must adapt or die.

You can pay for YouTube premium for no ads. You already get to choose between free, with ads or paid without.

The "adaptation" you're calling for is what exactly? YouTube hosting and serving video content as a charity?

I used to allow ads, but they've made their ads unbearable.

If they work out how to stop me from blocking ads, I won't watch.

It's that simple.

My original comment was downvoted and is too old for me to edit. But I'm still curious. What do the people who disagree with me think YouTube should do? Is the issue that the ads are too intrusive? Are you uncomfortable with the tracking, but would be happy with the current 'pay to not see ads' if it wasn't for the tracking?

When you just screech about YouTube being unnacceptable without actually explaining your issues in detail it just sounds to me like you want google to host a (very expensive for them) video sharing service without monetizing it at all, which is obviously an unrealistic demand (also, you should promote peertube - p2p seems like the way to make this happen).

> YouTube should do?

Go the way of Digg or disappear entirely, because if you need ads to survive, then you don't have a very good website. The competitors like Rumble or BitChute or Odysee or PeerTube will fill in the gaps.

So, on one side we have advertisers in cooperation with youtube to push an obscure amounts of ads to a video, sometimes even more (in length) than the video itself + the youtubers themselvs having sponsored segments...

...on the other side we have something we have to pay to skip those ads (only the youtube ones, not the in-video ones), but youtube and google still tracks us, still shows us ads on other sites (eg. slow cooker ads, after watching clow cooker reviews on youtube...

...and on the "alternative" side, we have a free solution, that stops all the youtube ads, skips all the in-video ads, and blocks all the ads on other sites, makes our internet faster, makes our batteries last longer, and pay less when we have limited data plans.

> then I question why you'd want to go through the hassle of this over just paying not to see ads

Can I set the YouTube app to open directly to my list of subscriptions rather than the YouTube home page?

Can I hide the thumbnails from all videos on the YouTube app?

Can I skip annoying sponsored segments? (I usually end up blocking the entire channel which has annoying sposnored segments on my browser with BlockTube)

Can I turn off comments?

Can I turn off suggestions for videos to watch?

If the answer to any of these questions is no, I don't wanna use the official YouTube app, even if there are no ads after paying for Premium.

No matter how much I can pay, why should I when I am getting a vastly superior experience with these options? This is just downloading and installing an app, wayy less of a "hassle" than setting up payment and exposing yourself to Youtube's abhorrent feed on the front page. These ideals don't work in the free market; if I can take something for free I'll take it as I see fit, as will all rational consumers across the world if they can.

The YouTube algorithm is the problem. Any feature that was designed to maximise engagement will eventually destroy the product itself. You can only avoid the algorithm if you don’t use the YouTube app.

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