Hacker News Reader

Comment by kayson | Hacker News Reader

I'm really sad I missed the boat on Vanced by one day. I'd heard about it for a long time and randomly decided to finally start using it only to find all the download links had been removed the day before. Youtube ads have become horrendously annoying.

Does anyone know if the apks can be found on any archive site?

View on HN

YouTube premium is 12 dollars a month.

For me, this is worth it to remove ads and add background play and picture-in-picture.

That's a valid argument, but Vanced also had sponsorblock which auto-skipped all those tedious intros, "please install this adware mobile game and smash that subscribe button" and boring outros.

I will be very eagerly monitoring the situation with hope a successor will arise.

On the YouTube iOS app, where I consume most of my YouTube content, you can tap on the right side of the video for 10 second skips - 6 taps, 60seconds of skip. Or something like that anyway, I just tap until I see/hear what I want.

This is how I skip any content that bores me, which is a category that does include mobile game sponsorships but goes beyond what sponsorblock offers.

The problem with skipping is you have to be active with fingers. And, its perfunctory to keeping tapping forward and backward. Many creators put multiple ads, with bombastic approach like you should install this vpn to protect yourself, really? It isn't just ads, but sponsor blocked saves time by skipping unnecessary portion

I personally stopped my subscription after their decision to remove the dislike counter. Ultimately does not change anything for them, but I just couldn't justify it.

If you use an Indian VPN to subscribe, you can get it for about 2 usd a month.

YouTube Premium includes a music streaming subscription, something I already have with someone else, so something I’m not looking to pay for twice just to not see adverts on YouTube.

Because I don’t watch YouTube much, I would be willing to pay maybe $2-3 per month to get of rid of adverts. I heard they are in some countries exploring such an option, hopefully they roll it out to my country eventually.

In the meantime I avoid the YouTube tvOS and iOS apps due to the obscene amount of adverts. The iOS app is particularly obnoxious as it prompts for a free premium trial every time I open it.

Privacy is the main problem - though I'm not sure how Vanced fared on that front (did their modifications also neuter any spyware and malicious features from the app?).

I do not have a Google account and do not want one - Google has no place in my life other than being a malicious website I sometimes have to visit when other search engines fail.

I want to support creators and do the right thing, but this means I'd have to let an undesirable creep into my private life and provide them with valid personal details so that they can process the payment. That's not something I want to do, so alternative clients (Invidious in my case) and ad-blockers are the way to go.

I'd pay for Youtube Premium if they'd let me use SponsorBlock with their Android app.

That's way too much, they're not making 12 dollars per month from me seeing the same 3 ads over and over.

At the rate my time and aggravation is worth, I would be spending way more than 12 dollars a month watching the proverbial "same 3 ads" over and over.

There are some people going around selling a year worth of YT Premium for $20, it works pretty well.

You can find them on Reddit.

Are they just not selling accounts purchased wtih stolen credit cards?

As another poster mentioned, YouTube Premium in India costs roughly $2 USD/month. And Premium Family (shareable with 5 accounts) is about $2.50 USD/month.

So subscribing via an Indian VPN can get you Premium for roughly $20 a year. Or get a Family plan for less than $30/year, and re-selling the extra slots on Reddit for about $20 a pop will net you ~$50 USD in profit.

Do you subscribe to anything on the internet? Perhaps Spotify, your internet connection, Netflix? Have you considered their premium offering, or do you think YT should be free and without ads?

How does your comment help?

YT premium still doesn't give all the Vance's features. I can buy premium and still use Vanced for features that YouTube does not offer.

Or maybe I don't support YouTube adding ads to unmonetized videos? Or is it my way to fight back, how they roll over small creators to trolls?

I'd never heard of Vanced before today. What features did they offer that YT Premium doesn't?

Dislikes are a pretty big feature.

Also sponsorblock which is a must for some people.

And picture-in-picture mode was great. I could watch the news while seeing how close an uber was to me without having to switch apps.

The sponsorblock seems pretty hypocritical: “I don’t want to give money to Google”… “Actually I don’t want to give money to creators either”

It does not seems hypocritical, because the original rationale is not "I don't want to give money to Google" but "I don't want to be subjected to ads"

Whether the ads profit to Google or creators is irrelevant.

There's about 10 sponsors that go over and over in the channels I watch. I've seen them all and am a customer of one (from long ago - so nothing to do with their YT sponsorship) already. Nobody benefits from wasting my time showing me products/brands I already know about and already made a decision to buy or not to buy.

10 feels generous already.

There was already the option to scrub past it, this is just an automated system which does that for you.

Really I think the sponsors know this, and put their money on targetting the market of people who are, for example, watching while eating.

btw the regular YouTube app has picture in picture. Without premium you can't use it on "music videos."

Only from US IP addresses

SponsorBlock would be one where it automagically skip ad segments that are a part of the videos. It also adds back the dislike counter.

The article mentions custom swipe controls, swipe controls, and "codec features" which I'm not familiar with.

An actual pure black dark mode that’s perfect for OLEDs.

Getting rid of tiktock-est YouTube shorts or whatever they call it. Hated having that on my YouTube homepage and the official app doesn't let you remove it. YouTube Vanced does. I also pay for YouTube premium.

Personally, I avoid paying for things that could instead be provided by some appropriate software, as doing so encourages further proprietaryism. This includes services that corral communication into centralized silos. When proprietary middlemen attempt to force their desired paradigms onto us, the answer isn't to just give in and pay their Danegeld. Rather the solution is to build better software and communication infrastructure that won't get shut down by legal nastygrams.

Most other services I subscribe to don't have the incentive and/or resources to be creepy and stalk me everywhere. They're happy to take my money, give me the product/service and leave it at that.

YouTube's parent company both has the incentive and the resources. Giving them your real personal info (as required for payment processing) and some money on a silver platter is not an idea I'm comfortable with.

Yes.

Sent from a stolen laptop on my neighbors Wi-Fi

I’m sure he’s considered it, but like many of us here, he refuses to voluntarily give Google a dime, for reasons that are obvious to most.

Youtube in Firefox with ublock origin has no ads. Youtube premium exists as well.

I mean, you could just pay to remove the ads...

That doesn't return dislikes or skip over sponsored segments.

Follow this guide: https://old.reddit.com/r/Vanced/comments/tdzmgw/other_how_to...

In the future the ReVanced project will success it.

Where are you getting info about "ReVanced"?

Seems legit but I haven't checked: https://www.apkmirror.com/apk/team-vanced/

You'll need to install both youtube vanced and vanced microg in order to make google login within vanced works.

I think this is it: https://apkpure.com/youtube-vanced/com.vanced.android.youtub...

I have not done any level of verification.

There are archives of them including checksums to ensure the files are not tampered with. I'd rather not post it here as I don't think it's allowed here, but the Vanced subreddit will have quite links.

There is PureTuber as well. Haven't tried it yet, but from what I read it has a similar experience to Vanced.

Try NewPipe

NewPipe is garbage. Vanced has that original YouTube app feel, but works even better.

Yeah. Newpipe is admirable but in practice the UX is almost sad in comparison to the real thing. Maybe in the future it will be better.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com