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Comment by chrysoprace | Hacker News Reader

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).

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"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.

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

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

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...

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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