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Comment by Shared404 | Hacker News Reader

> Sorry to shit on this, but NewPipe sucks. In my experience it's a waste of time to try and use it as a YT client replacement.

Hard disagree. NewPipe is the only way I use youtube on mobile.

> It barely works, if at all. Casting definitely never ever worked for me, not even once.

Because casting requires usage of Google API's and NewPipe is privacy oriented.

It's not broken, it's as intended.

> The user experience is unfamiliar and seems significantly worse than Vanced.

I prefer it to default youtube . It's no nonsense, and gets the job done.

Haven't used vanced, so can't judge there.

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If the casting isn't meant to actually work, it'd be great if the devs would get rid of the button...

Sorry, but until such things are rectified, New Pipe is a hell no for me; -10/10, worse than vanced, cannot recommend sharp-edged user-unfriendly software. Even when it's OSS and privacy friendly.

For a similar case, see gnuPGP. We all know how that one ended up not saving the world :(

I should specify I was talking about chromecast specifically - I think it may support other protocols.

That being said, I can't find the cast button you're talking about.

I also can't find the sharp edges you mention[0] could you give other examples? In my experience I've just had it do what it says on the box with no fuss.

[0] though I'll admit my tastes are minimalistic and I avoid cloud tools as much as possible - either or both of those may color my views.

For example, I see not having access to Youtube account information as a positive.

Others have already covered the sharp edges elsewhere in this thread.

My specific (brief) experiences include: Instead of playing the video..

- Wait forever while it spins.

- Crashes randomly. Repeatedly.

- No way to reference previously watched or liked videos.

- Atrocious, non-functional search.

Have all these bugs have been fixed in the past 6 months?

Bar about a day when youtube-the-site made an update that broke newpipe's parsing, I've never seen the first two.

There's a history tab, I don't really use ot but looking over it now it looks decent, and can sort by most and last played.

The only issue I've had with search is that it doesn't return playlists, but my typical flow is to go to the profile page and follow a link from there so it hasn't bothered me.

Just as another data point, I use and enjoy NewPipe, but definitely experience the first two points listed above- I get crashes and failures to load not infrequently.

Perhaps a hardware issue, or NewPipe handles spotty connections poorly or something.

> Because casting requires usage of Google API's and NewPipe is privacy oriented.

Do you happen to have a link to a GitHub issue or some other background? I'd like to learn more about this, I was under the impression cast-type devices (including Chromecast) usually implement DLNA which should be interface-able without any proprietary APIs. This is just from vague readings and recollections though.

I read a somewhat long discussion on it a while ago on Github, I'll edit when I find it.

Found it! The discussion was regarding Chromecast specifically,so I don't know about other cast setups.

Also is from Nov 2021, so possibly out of date at this point?

I've linked to the concluding comment here, I found the whole chain worth reading however:

https://github.com/TeamNewPipe/NewPipe/issues/668#issuecomme...

Thanks for digging that up Shared404 (btw, cool HN profile, though I can't figure out what is "PFY"?)

Is the biggest challenge really in providing an AppID? I must be missing something because that doesn't seem like a big privacy concern or technical hurdle, which brings us back to no traceable logical problem other than "it's hard to do and I don't get paid for this" (which would be a fair position for an OSS maintainer to take).

Maybe the should look at how VLC streams to Chromecasts, because at least in the case of VLC, it's FOSS and sort of works.

Many thanks!

The PFY is a reference to a character (the "Pimply Faced Youth") from The Bastard Operator from Hell [0]! I'm just starting out my career, so it felt appropriate.

My understanding is that they mostly didn't want to do anything more involved with Google than scrape a webpage and write an Android app - though I'm not on the team and haven't participated and couldn't say for sure.

I think they have looked at VLC - there's a lengthy workaround lower in the thread via VLC, but I've not read that part in depth.

Actually, just double checked. Looks like theres a mention here: https://github.com/TeamNewPipe/NewPipe/issues/668#issuecomme... of that being a possibility, but no ones commented on it or made any progress yet afaict.

[0] Originals here: http://bofharchive.com/BOFH.html, and I think The Register has new ones.

The newPipe app did identify the usual cast targets on my local network, but everything went downhill from there. It's a shame that this sort of nonsense has wasted the time of many a user and not contributed to a happy new eco system.

Maybe now that Vanced is toast, someone will step up and lay the pipe into newPipe to get it working properly? Is this just wishful thinking? We need a hero..

Chromecast uses DIAL and CASTV2 as protocols.

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