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Comment by brabel | Hacker News Reader

> My strong belief is they want apps because they can spam you with notifications to get your attention.

I believe the same about the Youtube App, I just can't see why else it exists and I hate the video links try to open in the app if you're not careful!

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Casting from the web doesn’t work (on iOS at least) but that’s all I can think of.

Chromecast from desktop chromium works, so there's no reason they couldn't make the universal turing machine in my pocket do the same.

Desktop Chromium is Chrome. iOS Chrome is just Safari with a different interface.

Apple doesn't let other browsers use their own engine on iOS (unless you are located in the EU).

> iOS Chrome is just Safari with a different interface

uhh wow. How did Microsoft face antitrust lawsuits for merely bundling IE when Apple is literally forcing their browser?

Due to EU regulation, you can use a different browser engine in the EU (and I think Japan too), but thus far none have been developed (it's too much work to maintain two versions of the browser).

i've often wondered how Apple gets away with things like this, I guess its because they never gained the marketshare that Microsoft had

AirPlay should work for every native video element, or do you mean something like chromecast?

YouTube obfuscates the native video by removing the controls.

Vinegar is a Safari extension that fixes that on iOS and macOS. May exist for other browsers as well.

uninstall the app. my life is much better since i uninstalled most apps and I just use the web pages these days. To take ONE benefit from not using the youtube app, and instead using a browser: I can open more than one video at once.

> can open more than one video at once.

And a nice side-effect of that is that YouTube doesn't throw away the list of other videos on the page you came from!

Apps are also more difficult to intercept and modify on most devices. Companies like them because it means you can't use ad blockers or other privacy tools. It's also why they flip out so outrageously when Apple adds privacy tools at the operating system level, because tracking and abuse are most of the reason why apps are useful to them in the first place.

NewPipe mostly works except when Google breaks it.

There's nothing sinister there. Google is merely trying to break their own app in new user hostile ways and everything else breaking is collateral damage. :)

> I hate the video links try to open in the app if you're not careful!

Uninstall (disable) the app, YouTube on Firefox mobile is fine.

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