LibreTube: Alternative YouTube front end for Android built with Piped | Hacker News Reader

LibreTube: Alternative YouTube front end for Android built with Piped

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128 pointsmarcodiego46 comments

How does it compare to NewPipe, feature-wise? Also, can someone describe "piped" briefly? A DDG search yields too many irrelevant results (e.g. https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=piped)

https://github.com/TeamPiped/Piped is the code :)

I love all of the activity around this, but I just moved to Newpipe after Youtube Vanced went down. You know what I would love is a set top box for PeerTube/Odysee/Bitchute/Whatever with a simple remote control. And a way to "cast" from my privacy ROM. Sorry if off topic.

Maybe something like this?

https://github.com/yuliskov/SmartTubeNext

That does look interesting and I was unaware of it so thanks for the link. I'm thinking more like a privacy first, linux based Apple TV / Android TV / Fire TV replacement. Sort of like the FreeTube linux app, but designed for the TV, and with other apps for other services.

it sounds like you want kodi

It's been a while since I used it, lord knows I hate the interface but if it does all of that, I'll try it again soon.

Works really well together with the stock YouTube app.

It would be nice if one of the alternative apps would be able to cast to SmartTubeNext as well.

I agree with that sentiment, but even if we can't get a set top box, the least what I'd want to have is a PeerTube app for Android TV. Newpipe is half fine, but its focus on privacy and not allowing you to log in into your own PeerTube instance makes it unusable for me.

I want to be able to log in to my PeerTube account on the TV and see and use it like I can do it on my computer or mobile phone. That means being able to see my subscriptions and also to see my private videos and watch them.

> but I just moved to Newpipe after Youtube Vanced went down

How is it down ? I use it right now and it should work for at least a year if not way more. They can't block it without blocking breaking their own API which would break the regular Youtube app for those who don't update. If you have the APK, I see no reason to change to another app.

They can shove ads into it now that won't be blocked anymore.

I don't see any . Also for a long time I used a vanced version that was years old without issue so don't worry about it

Could you provide a source for that ?

Own experience. I think 2-3 vanced versions ago, Google added ad videos into the search results and I could not get rid of them till vanced updated.

Would Kodi/Libreelec fill the requirements?

could google interfere w/ the API's that are used to make this work?

sure, absolutely. ultimately though their clients generally are pretty reversible & we can keep doing whatever they do, but better and improved.

which is what makes humanity & society great- iteration & refinement & self-determinism. try as the sad pathetic squalid soulless ghouls might, the attempts to suppress soul & dignity are themselves usually temporary & brief regainings of control/destructions of human will.

Anytime a breaking API change happens in the API used by YouTubes frontend apps like piped[0] (the YouTube interface for this project) or NewPipe[1] tend to break too. This is mostly due the majority of these players not employing the Google YouTube API but instead accessing and/ or scraping the publicly available routes exposed for/ by the YouTube fronted. (You may also find most of the streaming aspect is similiar/ the same as youtube-dl)

[0]: https://github.com/TeamPiped/Piped [1]: https://newpipe.net/

Note that the YouTube API does not provide access to the media streams for videos. And while Google does provide a number of black-box-style widgets for embedding in apps or webpages, they are not suitable for all use cases. For example: every VR app that wants to include support for YouTube playback has to use a scraping tool of some kind because none of the embedding options can be rendered in 3D.

EDIT: I'd love to be proven wrong here. But I've dug into the code of several open source VR apps that include YouTube playback and they all end in including youtube-dl or yt-dlp.

Though any breaking API changes would also break past versions of youtube's own apps?

I know from my old devices that the youtube app at some point requires you to update it and doesn't allow old versions. They probably have some kind of deprecation mechanism for the YouTube app.

This is missing too many features to be useful for me.

- no live chat on streams

- no personalized recommendation feed

- no community posts

- no membership videos / community posts

- no notifications for streams / uploads / community posts / replies / reminders for upcoming streams

- no shorts on the home page

- no comment section

- no picture in picture mode

- no saving where I left off in a video

- no "My Mix"

- no way to make clips

- no way to watch clips

It has one very useful feature though, that it's not made by Google.

That is meaningless to me if the app can't do what I need it to do. I don't need every feature of the YouTube app, but there is some key functionality that I need.

Sounds like this solution is not for you then.

I see this snooty clap back every time someone dares give any criticism of youtube alternatives. "Lacking Google" is not a feature, nor does it make up for lacking features most users would call fundamentally necessary.

Lacking Google is indeed a feature. You may not find it valuable yourself, but that alone is the reason many people use NewPipe.

Lacking Google is the raison d'être of all of these apps and most of that list there is useless crap I am never going to use. The only things I would need out of that is saving my place in videos and picture in picture (maybe).

Plus half that is list is just copy cat implementations of other more well used sites.

Who is going to youtube for copies of tiktoks and twitch streaming?

For some people it is a feature. For you its not. You're one data point. You appear to have the same attitude as the people who leave drive-by feature demands on open source projects, then get hostile when they're ignored. The app isn't for you, and you're not entitled to features in a free, open source project. Its not a "snooty clap back", they're actually correct. This project isn't for you, and writing a manifesto of features they need to implement to add one user is pretty absurd.

Imagine downloading a free textbook and emailing the creator demanding additional content or else you'd stop using their free textbook? This sort of thing just reeks of entitlement and a misunderstanding of open source more than anything else.

I seems that you want all the features the official YouTube app has. Why not use it?

If you don't want to see ads, pay for YouTube Premium if it's available in your region. Otherwise you can certainly create a fork and add those features and nobody will be angry with you.

Everyone likes different things. It's remarkable you've enumerated quite a long list of things none of which I want in my place-people-upload-video-to. Browser extensions exist to strip things like this out, and New Pipe follows a similar vein but as an app.

But, it's got my one 'killer' feature YouTube doesn't have: Background play. And that's enough for me.

Also, I have numerous YT alternative apps installed, plus official YT app, so if I need any of the missing features, then I use one of the other apps that has it. And begrudgingly fall back to official YT when all else fails.

Youtube has it, as long as you're willing to pay. They go out of their way to disable background playback on their mobile website as well.

It's not a missing feature, it's a paywalled feature...

That's why I point it out as a missing feature: It's so basic, and yet it's "premium". I'm also intentionally separating YouTube from YouTube Premium* in terms of features, in which context YouTube is missing the background play feature.

*It may be the same app that you open, but the features are distinctly different, so I treat them as separate apps in my mental model. I would do the same for Spotify, for example.

> It's not a missing feature, it's a paywalled feature...

Diner: "Waiter, this soup is missing salt!"

Waiter: "I am very sorry, salt is only part of the Soup+ package, but you ordered the Soup Essentials package. Would you like to upgrade to Soup+?"

> - no personalized recommendation feed > - no "My Mix"

Sounds awesome

The recommendation feed is essential for finding new videos / sorts / streams to watch.

My mix is useful if you just want to put some music on.

I don't see how lacking these features improves the experience. It just makes it harder to find videos.

Maybe recommendations work great for you. For me, the recommendations are worse than useless. I can't remember the last time it recommended something I actually wanted to watch. For instance: today the top 50 recs are all either things I've seen before or are videos that are from my subscriptions and I have decided I'm not interested in watching. Apart from that there are only two actual organic recommendations:

1) How to survivie outside in -25C weather. - I have no interest whatsoever in bushcraft and bouldering but youtube has decided I should be and keeps pushing these since someone in my house is into these topics which shows there is IP-based topic targetting going on

2) Why the Dutch government has the best graphic design - I don't even know where to begin with this one

My mix I actively hate and literally remove every single time I see it. I wish there was a flag to turn it off. When I put music on I want to put a specific thing on - I don't want youtube to decide for me. Doubly so since it is so profoundly and consistently wrong in its video recommendations.

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