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NewPipe – ad-free, open-source Android YouTube client

864 points by Nginx487 6y ago

Nextgrid 6y ago
Related: https://invidio.us https://invidio.us
- torresjrjr 6y ago
  Barely related: Twitter frontend for privacy. Disables Javascript. https://nitter.net/ https://nitter.net/
  - chewzerita 6y ago
    If you want to auto redirect to these sites (and I think there is one for instagram as well), check out the Privacy Redirect addon[0]. [0] https://github.com/SimonBrazell/privacy-redirect https://github.com/SimonBrazell/privacy-redirect
rtcoms 6y ago
Somewhere I read that using such apps may get your account blocked by google. not sure how much truth in that, but I've avoided using such apps because of that.
- ffpip 6y ago
  I've used this from the start. Btw you don't need to give your google account to use this in any way. It is a fully functional (better) youtube client.
  - cperrine 6y ago
    Yeah, you don't have to log in, you just download a subscription list file from YT and stick it in the client.
- speedgoose 6y ago
  It was a fake story in a Github issue.
- dafoex 6y ago
  Been using it for a while now and there's no need to log in with your account - in fact, you can't! You have to import subscriptions over, and easy to follow instructions to do this are provided. The only thing you can't to is comment, but for the few times I actually want to comment, its no hassle to go to the mobile website. My only major complaint is that the colour of the seek bar is hard to see on black backgrounds.
- keb_ 6y ago
  I've been using it on my Android phone for over 3 years, while always being signed into Google. Never had any issues.
sniperjzp 6y ago
Watching youtube videos using Google's bandwidth, without watching any ads or paying for sub, I don't see how this could be legit in the long term.
- ornornor 6y ago
  It’s been around a while.
- zeta0134 6y ago
  To be fair, I do pay for subscriptions for a few YouTubers. Wintergatan in particular is excellent. Of course, many creatives are using Patreon and other external revenue sources and frankly that's wise, given YouTube's track record with unusual copyright strikes and other platform nonsense. Even if I were to pay for Youtube Red, this application has a feature that I cannot get with the official app: a lack of dependence on the Google Play store and services. Since I run a build of Android that does not include those services, this app is wonderful to bridge the gap, as it performs much better than playing the videos directly in Firefox. That it happens to include a bunch of extra features the official app does not is just a bonus really.
  - izacus 6y ago
    Those "bunch of extra features" are paid features for the service though. For which you're not paying.
    - valvar 6y ago
      And which they are unable to use even if they were to pay for them, as they depend on Google Play Services.
      - gary-kim 6y ago
        This is actually the situation I'm in. Google Play Services are disabled on my device so I cannot use any YouTube premium features anyways. If there was a way to pay for YouTube premium and make the money go to the creators I watch while using a FOSS client like NewPipe, I'd be willing to pay several more times the current price of YouTube premium for that.
drewg123 6y ago
This is the best youtube client, bar none. It keeps local history and "subscriptions" without requiring you to log in to google. I use it on an Amazon Fire Tablet. There seems to be no iOS equivalent, which is one of the things preventing me from upgrading to an iPad. Has anybody used it recently on AndroidTV / FireTV? I've tried it several times in the past, and its always been wonky there. I use SmartYouTubeTV (https://smartyoutubetv.github.io/ https://smartyoutubetv.github.io/) on AndroidTV right now, and the logged out experience is terrible.
- dmos62 6y ago
  I've had it on my phone for some time, but 75% of the time it fails to play the video, complaining that it failed to parse the video page, or something similar. With youtube-dl, you have to keep it updated for it to not crash with similar errors, so might be a question of updates not being regular enough (I use F-Droid to update it). Also, suggestion capabilities of Youtube are very high. I'll always be coming back for that until there is an alternative. Unfortunately, that also means that using non-official players is counterproductive (I want to feed the recommendation engine).
  - glenstein 6y ago
    >but 75% of the time it fails to play the video I would quibble with that. It's really all or nothing. Youtube changes something, NewPipe breaks entirely. Then NewPipe is updated, and it works perfectly again. I like NewPipe, but in practice this means you just have to accept that there will be stretches, a few days or a week long, where it just doesn't work at all.
    - dmos62 6y ago
      Actually, that's the funny thing. I noticed that I could find videos that work, while others didn't.
      - ferzul 6y ago
        i think monotised videos die easier than non-monotised ones. leave it long enough and they all die.
Abishek_Muthian 6y ago
To those who are looking for few convincing features over YouTube app - It has background playback, download, pop out player all without having to sign-in to any account.
- FrenchyJiby 6y ago
  All lovely features, the killer for me is support for playback speed adjustment (percent), pitch adjustment, and skipping silence in audio! Perfect for podcasts: run playlist in background at x2 with "skip silences" on.
dirtyid 6y ago
Somewhat related: Is anyone familiar with youtube.videodeck.net / pockettube? Aggregates channels into subscription columns like RSS. Like old youtube collections. I've been using the service for years and have yet to see anyone else replicate the feature.
- mqus 6y ago
  I'm not familiar with your examples, but NewPipe allows you to group your subscriptions and then show the latest videos from each group, sorted by upload date/time (or something similar). What it misses from a usual RSS reader is the notifications (idk maybe they exist and you only have to turn them on) and the "read"/"viewed" marker.
piyush_soni 6y ago
Isn't it against Google's terms and conditions to run such an app that plays YouTube videos without playing the ads too? I remember reading about that.
- sjroot 6y ago
  Most likely. I understand the appeal of these types of applications but it really just comes off as entitled IMO. Just watch the ads to support the content creators you care about - it isn’t that hard. I imagine this will be an unpopular opinion here though.
  - jedimastert 6y ago
    That's why I'm on YouTube Premium. I definitely watch enough youtube to get $10 out of it.
    - sjroot 6y ago
      I think most people get enough benefit out of YouTube to warrant the fee. But advertisements allow the platform to be available to anyone with an internet connection. Fair trade off I’d say.
      - izacus 6y ago
        Except for all the entitled people in this very topic who demand this service to work for free, refuse to pay for subscription and still don't want ads either.
        shirshak55 6y ago
        I agree with your statement but there are other sides too. Regarding ads: Showing ads like "Girl Mobile Video Talk" with description "Girl Mobile Number Live Video Call" with "Install Link" in a youtube ads is unacceptable. And the worst thing is you cannot even turn off that ads without being turning on ads personalization. Regarding Money: 10$ may be a cup of coffee for you but in other side of world people are earning 200$ of salary so they just can't afford it. So many people don't have privilege like average Americans have? Regarding supporting creators. Sure ads pay creator but showing ads every 10minute , beginning of video and end of video is total BS. And even creator are already using their own ads like "This video is sponsored by Brilliant.org" so I don't mind blocking ads.
Flollop 6y ago
Youtube Vanced is another ad-free client (albeit not open source) that you can login with your Google account: https://vanced.app/ https://vanced.app/
realpanzer 6y ago
There are some more options available if it happens that you don't like Newpipe: https://www.layluh.com/ https://www.layluh.com/ https://freetubeapp.io/ https://freetubeapp.io/ http://omega.gg/MotionBox/ http://omega.gg/MotionBox/ http://www.viewpure.com http://www.viewpure.com https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/df-tube-distraction-free/mjdepdfccjgcndkmemponafgioodelna https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/df-tube-distractio... https://toogl.es https://toogl.es
- MaxBarraclough 6y ago
  I don't think ViewPure counts as a YouTube client. It just embeds a YouTube video, which is enough to strip away the YouTube clutter, but it's not reimplementing the YouTube player's JavaScript code the way invidio.us does, for instance. I could be mistaken but I don't think YouTube officially permits third-party clients of any sort. Perhaps that's a good litmus test.
Press2forEN 6y ago
This is the only app we allow our kids to watch YouTube on. It dispenses with the ads and 90% of the tricks they use to keep you watching (no overlays at the end and no autoplay).
- nforest 6y ago
  You can now enable auto-play in the settings.
  - hyperdimension 6y ago
    Well, it sounds to me that the parent comment viewed a lack of autoplay as a feature, but it's nice to know it's actually an option at any rate.
    - MayeulC 6y ago
      It's nice for listening to music, but a bit cumberstone to use. I wish: * the playlist was easily accessible from the left pane drawer * autoplay was easily toggleable from the playlist view * the automatically added title wouldn't be a regular title in the playlist before it's played (a bit lower and grayed, and adding items would do so above that title) * the playlist would show various options for the next automatic title.
      - power78 6y ago
        Go contribute it into NewPipe
        MayeulC 6y ago
        I've looked into that. I guess I bit more than I could chew (peertube integration, though now with libtorrent supporting webtorrents, it could be easier). But nowadays, I don't really want to invest time in the Android ecosystem, especially as I think I'll switch my daily driver to a PinePhone soon enough. The desktop equivalent is freetube, I think.
coayer 6y ago
Probably my favourite part about Newpipe is the option to skip silences. If you're watching/listening to a speech-only video, it (at least feels) like such an improvement.
- Krasnol 6y ago
  TIL! Thank you.
- on_and_off 6y ago
  oh wow, I need to go look at how this works. The people that created pocketcast implemented the same feature and as I remember it it is pretty wild implementation wise.
firefwing24 6y ago
I've been following this app for a while, and for a long time I was using a PR version of the app that kept the subscription list in order of time (which didn't exist for a really long time). But they finally merged it a while back, so the published app finally became usable for me.
keb_ 6y ago
I really wonder why so many innocuous, on-topic comments about NewPipe are being downvoted in this thread. Are YouTube employees raiding HN or something? /s NewPipe is a great app, lighter on system resources than the official YouTube app, free & open-source, and a joy to use especially if you're overwhelmed by the serious UI "bloat" that YouTube has been suffering from in recent years. In addition to being ad-free, in many other ways is it a superior video-viewing experience.
- ta17711771 6y ago
  Because the better these apps get, the more likely the jackals will DRM the video streams.
  - Nextgrid 6y ago
    The DRM will get broken if there's enough effort dedicated to it just like every latest movie or TV show somehow ends up on torrent sites despite pretty advanced DRM.
    - catalogia 6y ago
      Netflix shows end up on torrent sites in short order, yet youtube-dl doesn't support netflix (contrary to what the name suggests, it supports hundreds of sites besides youtube: https://ytdl-org.github.io/youtube-dl/supportedsites.html https://ytdl-org.github.io/youtube-dl/supportedsites.html)
- black_puppydog 6y ago
  not to mention the "play in background" functionality that google anti-featured away.
  - nimajneb 6y ago
    You need Youtube Premium for that. I have a legacy Google Play Music subscription and sometimes I feel like my experience vastly different than people without Youtube Premium. I use Youtube enough I'm ok paying to not see ads and play videos with my phone screen off.
ab_testing 6y ago
What does ad-free mean? Arent ads embedded in the youtube videos itself such that when you play a long video, multiple ads show up in the beginning, middle and end of the video ?
- mawalu 6y ago
  No. The ads are separate video files that get played after each other by the browser or youtube app. Since this app is complete independent it just choose to not play the video ads
  - dubya 6y ago
    I hadn't seen a Youtube ad in years, but now Youtube gives "An error occurred. Please try again later." on first load in Safari on a Mac with Wipr. Reloading without blockers gives ads before and every few minutes and some overlays. Miserable. It's still easy to work around, but maybe Google's getting more aggressive about blockers.
    - dimitrios1 6y ago
      A tinfoil hat theory I heard is that's the reason they want to push QUIC -- to give them more signals for blocking people with ad blockers. Not that I believe it, but fighting ad blockers in general is a losing battle in my opinion, eventually you will just end up blocking too many eyeballs, and your ad revenue will drop.
    - ornornor 6y ago
      Never had an issue with Firefox and ublock origin.
    - catalogia 6y ago
      uBlock Origin in Firefox still successfully blocks all ads. Also, youtube-dl continues to work and doesn't download the ads, so media players like mpv can play youtube videos and will never show an ad.
- npteljes 6y ago
vsviridov 6y ago
An excellent app. Plays stuff in the background and has a built-in downloader, for those big podcasts on the go.
- ffpip 6y ago
  It is also integrating SponsorBlock in the app. It skips sponsors, patreons and LTT plugins within a video Free and Open Source - https://sponsor.ajay.app/ https://sponsor.ajay.app/
  - ornornor 6y ago
    Wow thanks that’s pretty neat and I had no idea it existed.
  - StavrosK 6y ago
    It does? Damn, that's enough to make me switch from Vanced, thanks!
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  - j1elo 6y ago
    Wait, did it? The Pull Request is still open and it doesn't really look like it will get to be accepted any time soon: https://github.com/TeamNewPipe/NewPipe/pull/3205 https://github.com/TeamNewPipe/NewPipe/pull/3205
krtkush 6y ago
Excellent app. I implemented the update notification for the GitHub APKs few years back.
noarchy 6y ago
This remains a killer app for me on Android. I don't know if anything equivalent exists on iOS, to enable background playing and video downloads (and you can choose whether to download them as audio files).
- alex_free 6y ago
  With iOS Safari you can change the YouTube website setting to always request the desktop site. Then if you press the home button while a video is playing, pull up control center within 5 seconds and press play you have background playback. There is also a ton of ad blockers for Safari which block YouTube ads.
- sgloutnikov 6y ago
  Musi[1] is what I use for playing in the background on iOS. [1] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/musi-simple-music-streaming/id591560124 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/musi-simple-music-streaming/id...
  - noarchy 6y ago
    I'm not sure that Apple would ban it. Do they really care if people bypass YouTube's intended restrictions? Obviously Google cares, so you won't be seeing NewPipe on the Play Store.
    - Nextgrid 6y ago
      Apple is in bed with major scummy companies like Google when it comes to the Apple Store and has removed alternative clients in the past.
  - zodiakzz 6y ago
    > #5 in Music > Stream any song from YouTube Wow and it's been up for years! Do they scrape YouTube like NewPipe? How come Google didn't go nuts about taking it down?
  - lilsoso 6y ago
    Musi does work well for playing music in the background on iOS. A downside to Musi is that after playing a video a full screen ad will often pop up in a way that feels invasive and can be difficult to avoid inadvertently clicking. The behavior feels like malware, which leaves me concerned that the developers behind the app might hold flexible ethics and engage in practices such as covertly monetizing user data.
fireattack 6y ago
I have tried NewPipe, but I guess I'm not its target user. I use YouTube frequently, but I almost always just watch my subscriptions. By not having a login system, it is basically rendered useless despite how nice it is to be ad-free and having a much cleaner UI (I knew you can import subscription, but I sub and unsub channels constantly so it becomes a pain very quickly.) I'm currently using YouTube Vanced instead.
- nonbirithm 6y ago
  Well, I've been there with having to implement Google's login outside Google, and I can say that it is most definitely non-trivial. To get the official Google token, you must go through a massive wad of obfuscated JavaScript in a browser VM. It uses a thing called "BotGuard" for which barely any information is available online to prevent automated logins, and apparently the code changes on every request to the login form. I know this from poking around at the page source and seeing a blurb advertising their credential security division slipped in at the top, like they just know that the only way you're getting that token is if it's exactly how Google and that security division wanted you to, and they felt the need to inform everyone attempting to reverse engineer the thing by looking at the source what they think of their effort. This is the reason why we don't have Google login in another unofficial YouTube frontend called invidious[1] and youtube-dl[2]. That's right, not even youtube-dl can handle logging in to YouTube since about April 2019. That was about the time that Google apparently got around to patching their auth endpoint so you have to run their obfuscated JavaScript if you want in. Since then scores of issues reporting 400 responses from trying to download Watch Later or private playlists were posted on youtube-dl's tracker, collected in the issue I mentioned. Their response? Close it as a duplicate without, well, any other response. None as of present writing, eight months later. Exactly the same response as nearly every other issue reporting the same error. That is a misstep on youtube-dl's part, and has greatly affected my impression of the project's leadership, but part of me also thinks that they don't want to admit that it's nearly impossible to get past a system Google specifically designed to be impossible for third-party clients to get past. [1] https://github.com/iv-org/invidious/issues/754 https://github.com/iv-org/invidious/issues/754 [2] https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/issues/23860 https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/issues/23860
ciarannolan 6y ago
The only thing that's stopping me from using these Youtube alternative apps is fear of my Google account being banned.
- art4ur 6y ago
  Good news. There is no login. It's not tied to your Google account.
  - ta17711771 6y ago
    Almost like things were before the big conglomerates.
  - ciarannolan 6y ago
    Google can see that I'm running an app that bypasses their ads while downloading their content, and they know my Google account. Using NewPipe is just crossing your fingers and hoping they never decide to make use of those two pieces of information.
unixhero 6y ago
Will check it out. The last 3 years I've been very happy with "YouTube Vanced", in particular because of: background play, native adblocking, fully native logged in experience if desired, AND it switches to audio only encode if background play is enabled so it saves data. Get it here: https://vanced.app/ https://vanced.app/
- jron 6y ago
  NewPipe also has background play that only uses the audio feed. I thought I would miss the logged in experience but if you take a few minutes to subscribe through the app, the UX is actually better or at least on par with the native youtube app.
rfwhyte 6y ago
Cause fuck content creators right? Who do those jerks think they are putting all that time, energy and money into creating content and then expecting to earn a living from it? They should just give it all to me for free!
- anoncake 6y ago
  > They should just give it all to me for free! They do. No one keeps them from charging for their work.
2bitencryption 6y ago
something I've always wondered: why hasn't anyone built a fully-featured desktop Youtube front-end experience? With, like, borderless floating video (a la Firefox's floating video feature), dimming the desktop, a search experience that doesn't bombard you with clickbait garbage, etc? it seems like Youtube.com is really just a fancy mp4 player, targeting static video content. does Youtube actively do anything to prevent such clients from existing? What's their stance on them? Will they one day change the service so the video stream urls are generated randomly, or obfuscated, and break every 3rd party client?
- jedimastert 6y ago
  > With, like, borderless floating video (a la Firefox's floating video feature) If your referring to Picture in Picture, it was implemented for Chrome via an official extension https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/picture-in-picture-extens/hkgfoiooedgoejojocmhlaklaeopbecg https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/picture-in-picture...
  - hombre_fatal 6y ago
    Problem with PiP is that just grabs the <video> stream and not the subtitles overlay. It's why I use a Netflix desktop client.
    - jedimastert 6y ago
      A good point and also something I'm not a fan of
- rasjkehrsekrth 6y ago
  https://freetubeapp.io/ https://freetubeapp.io/
- user234683 6y ago
  > does Youtube actively do anything to prevent such clients from existing? Not really, no. Though they took some kind of legal action against Hooktube I remember. > Will they one day change the service so the video stream urls are generated randomly, or obfuscated, and break every 3rd party client? They already do this to some extent for videos with copyrighted content, but it's not very aggressive and has long been reverse-engineered and dealt with. They use a series of three string transformations like reversal, replacing a single letter, etc. on an alphanumeric signature parameter. The sequence of transformations varies per video but can be extracted from the Javascript source using regular expressions. Here are some available clients I know of. I do not know if there any that use floating videos or dim the desktop as you say: mps-youtube (terminal-only): https://github.com/mps-youtube/mps-youtube https://github.com/mps-youtube/mps-youtube youtube-viewer: https://github.com/trizen/youtube-viewer https://github.com/trizen/youtube-viewer FreeTube (which uses the invidious API): https://github.com/FreeTubeApp/FreeTube https://github.com/FreeTubeApp/FreeTube Invidious: https://invidio.us/ https://invidio.us/, https://github.com/iv-org/invidious https://github.com/iv-org/invidious youtube-local (my project): https://github.com/user234683/youtube-local https://github.com/user234683/youtube-local smtube: https://www.smtube.org/ https://www.smtube.org/ Minitube: https://flavio.tordini.org/minitube https://flavio.tordini.org/minitube, https://github.com/flaviotordini/minitube https://github.com/flaviotordini/minitube
ibdf 6y ago
Youtube might be the only place I actually don't mind ads. Some creators on youtube are extremely good at providing valuable content in short form - I use it primarily as a learning platform, whether I am doing wood work, learning how to fix something at home, or learning about a new topic. I would rather continue to support these creators by watching ads on their own channel than paying for a subscription that covers everything. It's an invaluable resource and until there's something better taking the ads away takes part of their income away.
- stronglikedan 6y ago
  I don't mind the ads either, but I do like to play music mixes without having to keep my phone on, so I may use this just for that.
- NullPrefix 6y ago
  Most of these creators accept actual money
  - izacus 6y ago
    Which doesn't cover the cost of video hosting, transcoding and streaming. Or the cost of other software development of YouTube. If you'd ever work on anything close to video streaming industry you'd find out that the costs of delivering video to the world is massive. And paying for those services is how you make them sustainable (and add competition).
- haecceity 6y ago
  You should buy youtube premium.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
monokh 6y ago
Incredible. The idea that YouTube artificially limits the function to get you to do stuff is really annoying. I love that you can send the audio to the background. I've wanted that for years.
- manjalyc 6y ago
  IIRC they used to let you do that a decade ago, then slowly made it harder and harder until it was impossible. Its a 'feature' now of youtube premium so take that as you will.
NullPrefix 6y ago
The app is great, but wasn't google recently banning user accounts for it? Youtube account and google account is same thing, so this app is useful only for othwerwise ungoogled users
- netsharc 6y ago
  Afaik it was 1 person claiming it, with no screenshots if the emails he claimed he got (although if he did lose access to his GMail, it'd be hard to see the emails). Besides, does Google/YT even specify the reason for bans? Don't they just write something vague?
- dasb 6y ago
  AFAIK you can't log into your Google account from Newpipe, or at least it's not required.
  - input_sh 6y ago
    It directs you to a link on YouTube where you can download your subscriptions (in XML I believe), and then it allows you to import that file. Pretty neat workaround.
- causality0 6y ago
  Like all third-party youtube apps and downloaders, you should use a dummy account that's subscribed to all the same channels as your real one.
  - djeiasbsbo 6y ago
    I don't think that NewPipe even allows logging in... I think it is an alternative to that because it allows one to subscribe to channels without an account. What he probably meant is that people who are logged into the Google Services with their google account got im trouble for using NewPipe, which to me seems unlikely. I doubt that Google got away with something like that!
    - 6y ago
JulianWasTaken 6y ago
NewPipe is fantastic, but worth mentioning since I don't see it so far, that the one killer downside is "no support for Chromecasting/DLNA" [1] [2], which means I continue to keep the official YouTube app around for occasional use when I want a bigger screen. [1]: https://github.com/TeamNewPipe/NewPipe/issues/105 https://github.com/TeamNewPipe/NewPipe/issues/105 [2]: https://github.com/TeamNewPipe/NewPipe/issues/668 https://github.com/TeamNewPipe/NewPipe/issues/668
- hunter2_ 6y ago
  PipeCast [0] is pretty recently active, and the first sentence of the readme has a certain... certainty... to it, so there's hope! [0]: https://github.com/TeamNewPipe/PipeCast https://github.com/TeamNewPipe/PipeCast
- MayeulC 6y ago
  It does include a built-in "play to kodi" feature, though, which fits my use-case better, personally. But I agree that more options would be beter (Chromecast though I despise it, nymphcast).
- jiggunjer 6y ago
  But chromecast lets you mirror your screen. Why not do that?
  - JulianWasTaken 6y ago
    Screen mirroring nearly completely defeats the purpose of a chromecast to me. It has way poorer framerate, requires streaming to two places instead of one (from source to phone and then phone to cast device), requires the phone to stay awake thereby needing more power and wasting the phone display which I'll not look at, has a way worse interface for whatever app you're looking at, because what you see is a scaled up phone interface instead of one more suitable for a larger screen, ... I essentially never use it when I can avoid it, and even when I need mirroring if I have a cable I'll use that instead.
slim 6y ago
I hope the developers are here. I'm so grateful for this app and especially the support : Everytime YouTube obfuscates their API to take them down, they quickly publish an updated app that works. please donate : https://newpipe.schabi.org/donate/ https://newpipe.schabi.org/donate/
- product50 6y ago
  I hope you realize that apps like these kill the ecosystem for content creators who are paid based on ads. If you don't like YT ads, pay for the premium version. But suggesting that this app is great is not right. Anyways, I trust if this becomes big, YT will kill them anyways. YT API requires keys and they know exactly what is going on here and can shut it down in a heartbeat if they want to. This is exactly what happened to apps built on top of Twitter APIs back in the day.
  - bargl 6y ago
    I would hope we can find a way for apps like this to exist while still paying youtube and content creators. Something like and API subscription for a third party algorithm tool like this that pay youtube part of the subscription.
  - valvar 6y ago
    If I want to support a content creator, I do so by donating to them directly, not by allowing a massive and (in my personal opinion) evil company to profit both of my and their backs. Not to mention that both seeing ads and using the official YouTube app is quite unpleasant. I am very grateful to the developers of NewPipe for providing me with a painless way to experience the content produced by creators that I like, and which also respects my freedoms and my privacy. It is unfortunate that YouTube has an effective monopoly on its market, and that a lot of the content is not available elsewhere -- I'd much rather watch content served by a platform which respects its users, but unfortunately that is not really possible today. So in the meanwhile, I am happy that I don't have to support a nasty company with a nasty business model.
    - 6y ago
causality0 6y ago
I'm quite enjoying NewPipe but it cries out for one killer feature: being able to swipe videos off your What's New feed to whittle it down.
djeiasbsbo 6y ago
I absolutely love NewPipe but I do think that it progresses very slowly and that might be why it is often ignored for the other popular pip youtube client, youtube vanced. Maybe it is just the rate at which binaries get released... For example, it has had comments support for some time now but only for top level comments. However, iirc the pull request that introduced this also had an example implementation of fully working comment support. So why is this not yet implemented? I recognise that I should probably just build from master or some dev branch which has more features myself...
avipars 6y ago
Worthwhile checking YouTube Vanced too. It looks and acts more like youtube, but newpipe has it's benefits too
- dastx 6y ago
  Vanced is a modded YouTube official app. Some premium features enabled and removed ads.
de6u99er 6y ago
YouTube is one of the worst Android apps in regards of usability, accidental clicks, and anoying ads. It would be great if there was a way installing the app without allowing third party sources. Haven't developed on Android since years. Does anyone know if I can build it and upload it via ADB without enabling apps from 3rd party sources.
- microcolonel 6y ago
  As a YouTube Premium user it's a lot less annoying, but what's frustrating for me is it not being simple to go back to a video after accidentally exiting it (where in a browser you would just go back to that tab, or press back or whatever). Also the application crashes all the time, especially when switching to play in the background (locking the screen, switching apps, etc.); and as of Android 10 on my device it introduces a delay when switching to background play, which interrupts the audio (it didn't do this on Android 9).
  - cyberbanjo 6y ago
    About half the time I get a new error on NewPipe I just go to their FDroid.org page and download the new mi or version bump and its been sorted out.
  - arrakeen 6y ago
    what's maddening for me as a premium user is that i can't turn off their Movie recommendation ads
  - greenshackle2 6y ago
    Oh yeah the back button UX is bad. If you do multiple searches in a row, the back button doesn't exit the search screen, it goes back through your searches. But if you're watching a video and accidentally click on a different video, the back button doesn't take you the the previous video, it goes to the home screen. This is the opposite of what I want, the search bar has a scroll menu with the most recent searches anyway, I really have no need to traverse my search history.
  - jayd16 6y ago
factorialboy 6y ago
This is why, despite all its shortcomings, Android still is a more open platform compared to iOS. Big thanks to F-Droid and the open source Android community.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- benhurmarcel 6y ago
  Would it be forbidden by Apple to publish a similar app for iOS?
  - SebastianKra 6y ago
    Yes: https://jonasgessner.com/protube2-statement.html https://jonasgessner.com/protube2-statement.html
    - benhurmarcel 6y ago
      Interesting, thanks. I wonder how such an app would go if it only supported ad-free viewing for Youtube Premium accounts. So that the point would be additional features, not blocking ads.
  - samtheprogram 6y ago
    I had another comment refuting the GP (as you are), but the more I thought about it, I decided to delete the comment. At the end of the day, you have to pay $99/year to publish on the Apple App Store, and on Android, although Google has had some shady practices around automatically flagging/removing apps from it's store, you have more options in terms of app distribution, such as F-Droid. To my (now deleted) comment's point though, I don't see much of a relation between F-Droid and NewPipe, besides that F-Droid hosts it. EDIT: other comment on this thread answers that last point I made and your question, and sums up what NewPipe has to do with the "openness" of the platforms [1]. However, I now wonder, what is stopping Google/YouTube from going after NewPipe & F-Droid? 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23874943 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23874943
andretti1977 6y ago
I'm completely against Google usage of personal informations and hate annoying and bad ux on official YouTube app but, to be honest, ads support creators with revenue so when you "avoid ads", you are harming creators too, not only Google. I think that if you don't like YT app and advertising, you simply shouldn't use YouTube.
- JulianWasTaken 6y ago
  This argument is as old as time, and the counterpoint is simply "it's revenue they were not getting regardless". Those of us who don't want to see ads ever, for any reason aren't stealing or harming anyone, we simply don't want to see ads -- saying "well don't use the service" is not all of a sudden getting the creators back any revenue, and no, if there's interesting stuff on YouTube, I'm going to use it, and do so without seeing ads. I'll support the creators I want to support elsewise.
  - dotBen 6y ago
    While I support the sentiment, you know that's not how all advertising works? CPM ads mean the publisher makes money because you saw the ad, regardless of whether you clicked on it (CPC). Even if you never click an ad or buy anything from an ad, you are still helping the publisher make money.
    - dheifidjeh 6y ago
      Wrong. It means the ad played not that it was actually viewed. Most people don't sit through ads and just ignore them. If you ignore ads but don't block them you're helping the publisher steal from the client. Personally I think that's wrong.
    - glenstein 6y ago
      I didn't read them as saying anything about refraining from clicking ads. I took them to be saying they will avoid ads entirely, not viewing them but not clicking.
    - 6y ago
swyx 6y ago
noob question here - i dont know what F-droid is. Is this meant to be installed from the Play Store or do i have to "jailbreak" my android?
- thefiregecko 6y ago
  F-droid is an alternative app store consisting of open source projects. No need for jailbreaking, more information here https://f-droid.org/ https://f-droid.org/
  - swyx 6y ago
    cool, thank you very much.
- j1elo 6y ago
  F-droid is an alternative App Store, dedicated to open source software. You have to enable installing apps from "unknown sources" (an option available in the Android menus, no root required), then install the Fdroid application, and from now on you can revert back the "unknown sources" setting, and use Fdroid to search and install FOSS apps, including NewPipe.
  - noisem4ker 6y ago
    On newer Android versions (8+), you have to allow the specific app from which the install is launched (browser, file manager, third party store, ...). In practice, not that different. https://developer.android.com/distribute/marketing-tools/alternative-distribution#unknown-sources https://developer.android.com/distribute/marketing-tools/alt...
  - swyx 6y ago
    thanks for the very kind explanation.
EGreg 6y ago
Wait what, how does YouTube just serve its video streams to any client?
- noisem4ker 6y ago
  They serve their website to any browser, and NewPipe presents itself as one.
osamagirl69 6y ago
I absolutely love newpipe, and use it exclusively over the youtube app on android. On a similar note - I also have found invidious [1] to be so much better than the normal youtube web frontend, and use it almost exclusively for my desktop youtube usage. It might be an unfair comparison because I am not a google user and the youtube website is terrible for non-logged-in users, but for us it is an absolute godsend. I am not sure how it works as far as views and add revenue and all that, and certainly the ability to thumbs-up and comment is disabled unless you click through to the youube link and log in, but I generally try to support the channels I follow through other means so I do not feel too bad about it. [1]https://github.com/iv-org/invidious https://github.com/iv-org/invidious
- glenstein 6y ago
  Invidious is grand. I think the missing killer feature that I want is to long into invidious via NewPipe.
  - djeiasbsbo 6y ago
    I know that logging in isn't possible yet but invidious links can actually be opened with NewPipe I think. Also other great substitutes for Twitter and Instagram are Nitter[0] and Bibliogram[1]. [0]https://nitter.net https://nitter.net [1]https://bibliogram.art https://bibliogram.art
bitwize 6y ago
Remember, "your contract with the network when you get the show is you're going to watch the spots." If Google catches you attempting to circumvent ads, they are within their rights to consider you a thief and treat you accordingly.
- userbinator 6y ago
  I bet if they can catch you closing your eyes or turning away or thinking of something else, they would. They are absolute scum.
starlig-ht 6y ago
How are they able to legally not have ads? How is that not theft?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- Sephr 6y ago
  This is legally equivalent to a custom browser with pre-installed ad-blocker extensions.
- anoncake 6y ago
  In the same way juggling isn't theft. It doesn't fulfill the definition.
fahrradflucht 6y ago
I read a lot of people's experiences here in the thread and I think a lot of you really should give YouTube Premium a try. It solves most of the problems you are describing, while also paying the creators
- marvion 6y ago
  This. If your problem are ads, background-playing and download - then just go with premium. I do understand that some apps provide extra features etc. but premium removes ads cross-platform... and since GoogleMusic is included, it replaces Spotify as well(yes, it's different..).
  - zbrozek 6y ago
    I think this app caters to a different set of needs. Personally I find the official YouTube app noisy and pushy and offensive. Autoplay and PIP are anti-features I want to avoid. Recommendations are also unwanted. This alternative looks great to me, on paper at least. I'll give it a go.
    - harshitaneja 6y ago
      Autoplay and PIP can be turned off in settings. PIP is one of the reasons I got premium initially but the ad free experience on all devices is what made me stay.
      - zbrozek 6y ago
        Defaults matter. I have a lot of devices and I can't be bothered to make every app less awful on every one of them every few months. It's far easier to opt out of the app entirely.
        halflings 6y ago
        It's likely that most uses actually enjoy autoplay and PIP (I certainly do). You're saying that you don't pay for Premium and use an unofficial client that does not pay content creators just because it's too much of a hassle to change the two settings that bother you.
lala26in 6y ago
lol
dennisy 6y ago
There are people whose living is made from YouTube and it’s advertising component. Whilst I would personally prefer videos with no ads, is this not stealing? I would be very interested to hear this groups view on why this is morally ok. Also what alternatives there should be to an ad revenue model for YouTube type sites.
- thetinguy 6y ago
  Surprised by how little people are talking about this. Those ads are the only source of income for some creators.
  - ehsankia 6y ago
    And if you want to support the creator and not get ads, there's Youtube Premium. I often hear "I'd rather pay a small amount and not get ads", but when provided with that, they then resort to some other excuse to still use ad-block.
    - userbinator 6y ago
      Or you can pay the creator directly.
      - dingaling 6y ago
        And does the creator then pay YouTube for the delivery service? If not then there's still a shortfall.
- umvi 6y ago
  > Whilst I would personally prefer videos with no ads, is this not stealing? The usual response you'll get is "is it stealing if I go to the bathroom during a TV ad break?" or "that's why content creators have in-video paid sponsorship blurbs" I personally think those are flimsy justifications though. I think it's stealing to bypass ads when the company hosting the service has a clear avenue for paid ad-free viewing. It would be like creating an app that streams the free-tier of Crunchyroll ad-free while still using Crunchyroll's bandwidth. Dishonest.
smashah 6y ago
Awesome! This type of app will always lead to greater conversions for Youtube Premium. I had Youtube vanced and could not live without those features but I also wanted to support creators so I got Youtube Premium and never looked back
tracker1 6y ago
Don't seem to be able to snag it via F-Droid, the app seems to be 2yo without updates... May look again later.
- itsnotlupus 6y ago
  It's definitely there, and updated often: NewPipe (Lightweight YouTube frontend) - https://f-droid.org/app/org.schabi.newpipe https://f-droid.org/app/org.schabi.newpipe
  - tracker1 6y ago
    When I'd click on the link, I get download failed... and the version I'm seeing on F-Droid was 2yo... I did download and install via the github repo.... may play with it a bit more later. F-Droid definitely wasn't a recent one when I tried (in the comment above) it now seems to be showing more recent ones on my phone... I don't use f-droid often, so may have been a syncing/update issue or something else.
barbs 6y ago
This is my most missed app since moving to iOS.
godot 6y ago
I used this a bit on a previous Android phone I had. (I still use Android, but am on a newer one now) It sounds good in theory but had a lot of rough edges that made me just go back to regular Youtube. I remember running into a lot of hiccups going full screen and not full screen, or rotating screens, or moving forward or backward on a video. Nothing was completely breaking but it was all minor issues like switching between full screen and not either stops a video or throws you back etc. Maybe I never got used to it. And most of all, and this is weird to admit on HN, I kind of enjoy Youtube's algorithm of recommending videos -- it actually presents content that I would be interested in. Every time I opened Newpipe it was just a random mishmash of stuff, maybe it's what's on the default Youtube homepage or something, but it's never something I'm interested in. It's nice for when I want to explicitly search for something to watch, but not if I want to just open up the app and tap some random video to start watching. I'll just add a side note that I don't watch political videos or anything and it's not about echo chamber or bubbles. I just watch videos about old video games (think AVGN etc.) or listen to music by artists I enjoy, and those are the videos that show up on my Youtube which is nice.
- djeiasbsbo 6y ago
  There is a setting to automatically switch to the Picture-in-Picture player when one switches to other apps or presses the back button. So i've never had those issues, because videos simply never stopped playing!
inson 6y ago
There is another one called Youtube Vanced
odiroot 6y ago
Oh they finally fixed the audio desync bug (https://github.com/TeamNewPipe/NewPipe/issues/3550 https://github.com/TeamNewPipe/NewPipe/issues/3550) It was a big pain for me. Made the app unusable.
xbkingx 6y ago
Looks nice, but no ability to set default playback speed means I'll stick with (the rarely updated) Vanced. I never watch YT content at <1.25x speed unless it's to hear a music track. It also looks like it doesn't have the option to login and sync, so I'd be seeing already watched stuff on between desktop and mobile. I understand why some people wouldn't want that, but I use the feature all the time and would like the option. I might try it as a kind of backup app for things I want to track, but don't want suggestions for (mostly technical videos).
pengaru 6y ago
Anybody know why YouTube doesn't plug the ad-bypassing loophole of fetching the content directly youtube-dl style? I presume this NewPipe client is doing something similar...
- userbinator 6y ago
  Could they? I suppose they could concatenate ads into the video files directly, sort of like an old TV "stream"... ...except I have a decades-old VCR that can skip those too, so the technology today could probably deal with that pretty easily. "ad-bypassing" is essentially choosing not to consume content; while most if not all DRM and other protections are for preventing people from consuming content, preventing them from not consuming content is nearly impossible unless you essentially have control over their minds.
webscalist 6y ago
This even runs without play services
neycoda 6y ago
This is gonna get shut down so quick.
m45t3r 6y ago
Nice. Just discovered that you can open videos from the official YouTube client by using the "Share" menu and selecting NewPipe. It has multiple options, including download/open/open as popup. This make it much more useful for me, I can still have access to my YouTube account but I can open the actual videos in NewPipe and skip ads/have more control of the playback options. Also, this bug from official YouTube app does not happen in NewPipe, making it much more useful to me since I use a custom caption settings because Amazon Prime Video (but they look horrible in official YouTube app because there is no outline): https://www.reddit.com/r/youtube/comments/e935yz/bug_captions_in_youtube_android_app_has_no/ https://www.reddit.com/r/youtube/comments/e935yz/bug_caption...
modzu 6y ago
will this ever be on Google play? most peoppe should not be in the habit of sideloading apps...
KaoruAoiShiho 6y ago
Can someone do a comparison to Vanced? Been using vanced for a long time, what's here that's worth switching.
- BlameKaneda 6y ago
  I use Vanced and if I recall correctly, NewPipe doesn't port your YouTube playlists over. I save music to playlists so not having that feature would've been a huge pain.
- k__ 6y ago
  To quote the Vanced website: "Please don't ask for a video download feature" Also, Vanced doesn't run on my FireHD tablet.
bilekas 6y ago
The app sounds good from the comments, but can you drill a bit more as to how you're filtering out the adds ? Is it a remote proxy to filter ? Local lists of blaclist etc. Some more info would be cool Edit : The comments are so good I'm more suspicious! :D
627467 6y ago
I both pay for yt premium and use newpipe on older (degoogled) devices where using latest youtube.apk is not an option anymore. Also, where I live yt premium is a fraction of the cost of many developed countries, cheap for me but not for many in this country. In some countries yt premium is not even available. I read a lot 'entitled' opinions in this thread pretending that the whole world should ignore their circumstances and just do whatever works for them (ie. Pay for yt premium). The internet is global: why would you think that using open source software to access bits off of global internet is unethical/illegitimate?
- elwell 6y ago
  > why would you think that using open source software to access bits off of global internet is unethical/illegitimate? "It's just bits." That's a slippery slope. One might argue that circumventing the intended purpose of a platform in this way uses technological advantage to take advantage of content creators who are vulnerable. The kid who takes all the candy from the "Please take one." jack-o-lantern on Halloween is only taking a bit of atoms from their neighbor's porch. Now let me get off my high horse and turn my ad blocker back on.
  - realusername 6y ago
    > One might argue that circumventing the intended purpose of a platform in this way uses technological advantage to take advantage of content creators who are vulnerable. Youtube does not even run on a standard Android anymore (without Google proprietary bits) so that's not like some people have a choice anyways. If you want to use Youtube on a standard Android, you either have to use a modded version of Youtube or a third-party app. I'd argue that modifying manually the official version sounds worse.
  - 627467 6y ago
    But it's not really a slippery slope anymore: the world has gone down that slippery slope since the web has been created and operated and it's been great for everyone so far. Overall, the benefits of the "free bits" have enabled anyone to be a creator and create a audience for free, has enabled companies to become global in an instant reach potentially everyone with access to TCP/IP and DNS servers. But creators and operators are trying to shoehorn the global world into a handful of brands (YouTube, ig, fb...) and a handful of business models. If you were content creators before this age you had to suck it up to several layers of middle men, to get your content on tv, on cinema, on a CD. Now, the free bits lets you operate single handly from your bedroom. But is has a cost: you rely on gatekeepers to distribute your content and track your audience in the name of ad optimization and those users who they are trying to track - who are sovereign over their devices and software - can and will decide how they engage with the bits that reach their hardware and software. There are alternatives: aol used to operate a walled garden. Many countries try to operate their own walled gardens. I'm not making a judgment call, I know where I prefer to spend my time on. But people do have to climb down their high horses pretending the power dynamic on the open web is only favouring consumers and users
sn41 6y ago
Of all things I am grateful to NewPipe for, the best is that I am able to turn off the screen of my mobile while listening to Podcasts hosted on YouTube, and also to run it in the background. Thank you, developers!!!
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- tgtweak 6y ago
  :/ how are you green tag?
eutropia 6y ago
This is a side note, but: I tried to install newpipe (by first installing F Droid), and Google prevented my pixel 3 from doing so because I am a user of Advanced Protection Program. The OS has application permissions for apps: why is a feature designed to protect my account (and only my account) preventing me from independently installing free and open source software?
on_and_off 6y ago
I wonder how long this is going to stay up ? Google can't be too happy that people access their service without paying either with eyeball time for advertisers or money for Youtube Red or whatever it is called today
mnming 6y ago
it seems to be a great app. gonna be a big conscience challenge for me though. I always feel that my guilt of blocking ads on desktop can be compensated by allowing ads on mobile... (i know it's hypocrisy to most ppls opinion)
antpls 6y ago
I only keep youtube app for the livestreams. Livestreams on NewPipe don't allow you to replay back several hours behind.
Femme 6y ago
Tout dépendra de la zone de couverture que ce soit en mode www.magazine-declic.com ou autre que ça. En tout cas l'objectif est le même.
deostroll 6y ago
So why can't people alternatively create a website on the similar theme: YouTube with no ads. Is this against Youtube's TOS?
Giorgi 6y ago
It looks good but rarely works as intended, way to buggy.
mraza007 6y ago
I wish this existed for iPhone too
betamaxthetape 6y ago
Another major advantage (for me) of NewPipe over any official app is that it supports other services (such as SoundCloud). I find the ability to seamlessly switch between services, and create playlists containing both YouTube videos and SoundCloud audio, to be a complete game-changer. I doubt I could easily go back to the official YouTube app now.
halflings 6y ago
Serious question: What is the ethical argument for watching videos ad-free this way vs paying for YouTube Premium? (as long as it's available in your country, and you can afford it) By removing ads, you're viewing content without paying back in any meaningful way. You might say that you give donations to the content creators you really like, but I don't find that very convincing (you cannot donate to every small YouTuber you ever encounter while browsing, not all content creators churn out 100s of videos). Besides, it probably costs a ton of money to store/process billions of videos each month, and stream billions of 1080p (or even 4K) of videos to all devices. I understand people are fundamentally against ads (I also find them life-sucking and extremely obnoxious), but there is an option that does just that while fairly contributing back into the ecosystem that produces your content.

864 points by Nginx487 6y ago

Nextgrid 6y ago

Related: https://invidio.us https://invidio.us

torresjrjr 6y ago
Barely related: Twitter frontend for privacy. Disables Javascript. https://nitter.net/ https://nitter.net/
- chewzerita 6y ago
  If you want to auto redirect to these sites (and I think there is one for instagram as well), check out the Privacy Redirect addon[0]. [0] https://github.com/SimonBrazell/privacy-redirect https://github.com/SimonBrazell/privacy-redirect

rtcoms 6y ago

Somewhere I read that using such apps may get your account blocked by google. not sure how much truth in that, but I've avoided using such apps because of that.

ffpip 6y ago
I've used this from the start. Btw you don't need to give your google account to use this in any way. It is a fully functional (better) youtube client.
- cperrine 6y ago
  Yeah, you don't have to log in, you just download a subscription list file from YT and stick it in the client.
speedgoose 6y ago
It was a fake story in a Github issue.
dafoex 6y ago
Been using it for a while now and there's no need to log in with your account - in fact, you can't! You have to import subscriptions over, and easy to follow instructions to do this are provided. The only thing you can't to is comment, but for the few times I actually want to comment, its no hassle to go to the mobile website. My only major complaint is that the colour of the seek bar is hard to see on black backgrounds.
keb_ 6y ago
I've been using it on my Android phone for over 3 years, while always being signed into Google. Never had any issues.

sniperjzp 6y ago

Watching youtube videos using Google's bandwidth, without watching any ads or paying for sub, I don't see how this could be legit in the long term.

ornornor 6y ago
It’s been around a while.
zeta0134 6y ago
To be fair, I do pay for subscriptions for a few YouTubers. Wintergatan in particular is excellent. Of course, many creatives are using Patreon and other external revenue sources and frankly that's wise, given YouTube's track record with unusual copyright strikes and other platform nonsense. Even if I were to pay for Youtube Red, this application has a feature that I cannot get with the official app: a lack of dependence on the Google Play store and services. Since I run a build of Android that does not include those services, this app is wonderful to bridge the gap, as it performs much better than playing the videos directly in Firefox. That it happens to include a bunch of extra features the official app does not is just a bonus really.
- izacus 6y ago
  Those "bunch of extra features" are paid features for the service though. For which you're not paying.
  - valvar 6y ago
    And which they are unable to use even if they were to pay for them, as they depend on Google Play Services.
    - gary-kim 6y ago
      This is actually the situation I'm in. Google Play Services are disabled on my device so I cannot use any YouTube premium features anyways. If there was a way to pay for YouTube premium and make the money go to the creators I watch while using a FOSS client like NewPipe, I'd be willing to pay several more times the current price of YouTube premium for that.

drewg123 6y ago

This is the best youtube client, bar none. It keeps local history and "subscriptions" without requiring you to log in to google. I use it on an Amazon Fire Tablet. There seems to be no iOS equivalent, which is one of the things preventing me from upgrading to an iPad. Has anybody used it recently on AndroidTV / FireTV? I've tried it several times in the past, and its always been wonky there. I use SmartYouTubeTV (https://smartyoutubetv.github.io/ https://smartyoutubetv.github.io/) on AndroidTV right now, and the logged out experience is terrible.

dmos62 6y ago
I've had it on my phone for some time, but 75% of the time it fails to play the video, complaining that it failed to parse the video page, or something similar. With youtube-dl, you have to keep it updated for it to not crash with similar errors, so might be a question of updates not being regular enough (I use F-Droid to update it). Also, suggestion capabilities of Youtube are very high. I'll always be coming back for that until there is an alternative. Unfortunately, that also means that using non-official players is counterproductive (I want to feed the recommendation engine).
- glenstein 6y ago
  >but 75% of the time it fails to play the video I would quibble with that. It's really all or nothing. Youtube changes something, NewPipe breaks entirely. Then NewPipe is updated, and it works perfectly again. I like NewPipe, but in practice this means you just have to accept that there will be stretches, a few days or a week long, where it just doesn't work at all.
  - dmos62 6y ago
    Actually, that's the funny thing. I noticed that I could find videos that work, while others didn't.
    - ferzul 6y ago
      i think monotised videos die easier than non-monotised ones. leave it long enough and they all die.

Abishek_Muthian 6y ago

To those who are looking for few convincing features over YouTube app - It has background playback, download, pop out player all without having to sign-in to any account.

FrenchyJiby 6y ago
All lovely features, the killer for me is support for playback speed adjustment (percent), pitch adjustment, and skipping silence in audio! Perfect for podcasts: run playlist in background at x2 with "skip silences" on.

dirtyid 6y ago

Somewhat related: Is anyone familiar with youtube.videodeck.net / pockettube? Aggregates channels into subscription columns like RSS. Like old youtube collections. I've been using the service for years and have yet to see anyone else replicate the feature.

mqus 6y ago
I'm not familiar with your examples, but NewPipe allows you to group your subscriptions and then show the latest videos from each group, sorted by upload date/time (or something similar). What it misses from a usual RSS reader is the notifications (idk maybe they exist and you only have to turn them on) and the "read"/"viewed" marker.

piyush_soni 6y ago

Isn't it against Google's terms and conditions to run such an app that plays YouTube videos without playing the ads too? I remember reading about that.

sjroot 6y ago
Most likely. I understand the appeal of these types of applications but it really just comes off as entitled IMO. Just watch the ads to support the content creators you care about - it isn’t that hard. I imagine this will be an unpopular opinion here though.
- jedimastert 6y ago
  That's why I'm on YouTube Premium. I definitely watch enough youtube to get $10 out of it.
  - sjroot 6y ago
    I think most people get enough benefit out of YouTube to warrant the fee. But advertisements allow the platform to be available to anyone with an internet connection. Fair trade off I’d say.
    - izacus 6y ago
      Except for all the entitled people in this very topic who demand this service to work for free, refuse to pay for subscription and still don't want ads either.
      - shirshak55 6y ago
        I agree with your statement but there are other sides too. Regarding ads: Showing ads like "Girl Mobile Video Talk" with description "Girl Mobile Number Live Video Call" with "Install Link" in a youtube ads is unacceptable. And the worst thing is you cannot even turn off that ads without being turning on ads personalization. Regarding Money: 10$ may be a cup of coffee for you but in other side of world people are earning 200$ of salary so they just can't afford it. So many people don't have privilege like average Americans have? Regarding supporting creators. Sure ads pay creator but showing ads every 10minute , beginning of video and end of video is total BS. And even creator are already using their own ads like "This video is sponsored by Brilliant.org" so I don't mind blocking ads.

Flollop 6y ago

Youtube Vanced is another ad-free client (albeit not open source) that you can login with your Google account: https://vanced.app/ https://vanced.app/

realpanzer 6y ago

There are some more options available if it happens that you don't like Newpipe: https://www.layluh.com/ https://www.layluh.com/ https://freetubeapp.io/ https://freetubeapp.io/ http://omega.gg/MotionBox/ http://omega.gg/MotionBox/ http://www.viewpure.com http://www.viewpure.com https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/df-tube-distraction-free/mjdepdfccjgcndkmemponafgioodelna https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/df-tube-distractio... https://toogl.es https://toogl.es

MaxBarraclough 6y ago
I don't think ViewPure counts as a YouTube client. It just embeds a YouTube video, which is enough to strip away the YouTube clutter, but it's not reimplementing the YouTube player's JavaScript code the way invidio.us does, for instance. I could be mistaken but I don't think YouTube officially permits third-party clients of any sort. Perhaps that's a good litmus test.

Press2forEN 6y ago

This is the only app we allow our kids to watch YouTube on. It dispenses with the ads and 90% of the tricks they use to keep you watching (no overlays at the end and no autoplay).

nforest 6y ago
You can now enable auto-play in the settings.
- hyperdimension 6y ago
  Well, it sounds to me that the parent comment viewed a lack of autoplay as a feature, but it's nice to know it's actually an option at any rate.
  - MayeulC 6y ago
    It's nice for listening to music, but a bit cumberstone to use. I wish: * the playlist was easily accessible from the left pane drawer * autoplay was easily toggleable from the playlist view * the automatically added title wouldn't be a regular title in the playlist before it's played (a bit lower and grayed, and adding items would do so above that title) * the playlist would show various options for the next automatic title.
    - power78 6y ago
      Go contribute it into NewPipe
      - MayeulC 6y ago
        I've looked into that. I guess I bit more than I could chew (peertube integration, though now with libtorrent supporting webtorrents, it could be easier). But nowadays, I don't really want to invest time in the Android ecosystem, especially as I think I'll switch my daily driver to a PinePhone soon enough. The desktop equivalent is freetube, I think.

coayer 6y ago

Probably my favourite part about Newpipe is the option to skip silences. If you're watching/listening to a speech-only video, it (at least feels) like such an improvement.

Krasnol 6y ago
TIL! Thank you.
on_and_off 6y ago
oh wow, I need to go look at how this works. The people that created pocketcast implemented the same feature and as I remember it it is pretty wild implementation wise.

firefwing24 6y ago

I've been following this app for a while, and for a long time I was using a PR version of the app that kept the subscription list in order of time (which didn't exist for a really long time). But they finally merged it a while back, so the published app finally became usable for me.

keb_ 6y ago

I really wonder why so many innocuous, on-topic comments about NewPipe are being downvoted in this thread. Are YouTube employees raiding HN or something? /s NewPipe is a great app, lighter on system resources than the official YouTube app, free & open-source, and a joy to use especially if you're overwhelmed by the serious UI "bloat" that YouTube has been suffering from in recent years. In addition to being ad-free, in many other ways is it a superior video-viewing experience.

ta17711771 6y ago
Because the better these apps get, the more likely the jackals will DRM the video streams.
- Nextgrid 6y ago
  The DRM will get broken if there's enough effort dedicated to it just like every latest movie or TV show somehow ends up on torrent sites despite pretty advanced DRM.
  - catalogia 6y ago
    Netflix shows end up on torrent sites in short order, yet youtube-dl doesn't support netflix (contrary to what the name suggests, it supports hundreds of sites besides youtube: https://ytdl-org.github.io/youtube-dl/supportedsites.html https://ytdl-org.github.io/youtube-dl/supportedsites.html)
black_puppydog 6y ago
not to mention the "play in background" functionality that google anti-featured away.
- nimajneb 6y ago
  You need Youtube Premium for that. I have a legacy Google Play Music subscription and sometimes I feel like my experience vastly different than people without Youtube Premium. I use Youtube enough I'm ok paying to not see ads and play videos with my phone screen off.

ab_testing 6y ago

What does ad-free mean? Arent ads embedded in the youtube videos itself such that when you play a long video, multiple ads show up in the beginning, middle and end of the video ?

mawalu 6y ago
No. The ads are separate video files that get played after each other by the browser or youtube app. Since this app is complete independent it just choose to not play the video ads
- dubya 6y ago
  I hadn't seen a Youtube ad in years, but now Youtube gives "An error occurred. Please try again later." on first load in Safari on a Mac with Wipr. Reloading without blockers gives ads before and every few minutes and some overlays. Miserable. It's still easy to work around, but maybe Google's getting more aggressive about blockers.
  - dimitrios1 6y ago
    A tinfoil hat theory I heard is that's the reason they want to push QUIC -- to give them more signals for blocking people with ad blockers. Not that I believe it, but fighting ad blockers in general is a losing battle in my opinion, eventually you will just end up blocking too many eyeballs, and your ad revenue will drop.
  - ornornor 6y ago
    Never had an issue with Firefox and ublock origin.
  - catalogia 6y ago
    uBlock Origin in Firefox still successfully blocks all ads. Also, youtube-dl continues to work and doesn't download the ads, so media players like mpv can play youtube videos and will never show an ad.
npteljes 6y ago

vsviridov 6y ago

An excellent app. Plays stuff in the background and has a built-in downloader, for those big podcasts on the go.

ffpip 6y ago
It is also integrating SponsorBlock in the app. It skips sponsors, patreons and LTT plugins within a video Free and Open Source - https://sponsor.ajay.app/ https://sponsor.ajay.app/
- ornornor 6y ago
  Wow thanks that’s pretty neat and I had no idea it existed.
- StavrosK 6y ago
  It does? Damn, that's enough to make me switch from Vanced, thanks!
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- j1elo 6y ago
  Wait, did it? The Pull Request is still open and it doesn't really look like it will get to be accepted any time soon: https://github.com/TeamNewPipe/NewPipe/pull/3205 https://github.com/TeamNewPipe/NewPipe/pull/3205

krtkush 6y ago

Excellent app. I implemented the update notification for the GitHub APKs few years back.

noarchy 6y ago

This remains a killer app for me on Android. I don't know if anything equivalent exists on iOS, to enable background playing and video downloads (and you can choose whether to download them as audio files).

alex_free 6y ago
With iOS Safari you can change the YouTube website setting to always request the desktop site. Then if you press the home button while a video is playing, pull up control center within 5 seconds and press play you have background playback. There is also a ton of ad blockers for Safari which block YouTube ads.
sgloutnikov 6y ago
Musi[1] is what I use for playing in the background on iOS. [1] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/musi-simple-music-streaming/id591560124 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/musi-simple-music-streaming/id...
- noarchy 6y ago
  I'm not sure that Apple would ban it. Do they really care if people bypass YouTube's intended restrictions? Obviously Google cares, so you won't be seeing NewPipe on the Play Store.
  - Nextgrid 6y ago
    Apple is in bed with major scummy companies like Google when it comes to the Apple Store and has removed alternative clients in the past.
- zodiakzz 6y ago
  > #5 in Music > Stream any song from YouTube Wow and it's been up for years! Do they scrape YouTube like NewPipe? How come Google didn't go nuts about taking it down?
- lilsoso 6y ago
  Musi does work well for playing music in the background on iOS. A downside to Musi is that after playing a video a full screen ad will often pop up in a way that feels invasive and can be difficult to avoid inadvertently clicking. The behavior feels like malware, which leaves me concerned that the developers behind the app might hold flexible ethics and engage in practices such as covertly monetizing user data.

fireattack 6y ago

I have tried NewPipe, but I guess I'm not its target user. I use YouTube frequently, but I almost always just watch my subscriptions. By not having a login system, it is basically rendered useless despite how nice it is to be ad-free and having a much cleaner UI (I knew you can import subscription, but I sub and unsub channels constantly so it becomes a pain very quickly.) I'm currently using YouTube Vanced instead.

nonbirithm 6y ago
Well, I've been there with having to implement Google's login outside Google, and I can say that it is most definitely non-trivial. To get the official Google token, you must go through a massive wad of obfuscated JavaScript in a browser VM. It uses a thing called "BotGuard" for which barely any information is available online to prevent automated logins, and apparently the code changes on every request to the login form. I know this from poking around at the page source and seeing a blurb advertising their credential security division slipped in at the top, like they just know that the only way you're getting that token is if it's exactly how Google and that security division wanted you to, and they felt the need to inform everyone attempting to reverse engineer the thing by looking at the source what they think of their effort. This is the reason why we don't have Google login in another unofficial YouTube frontend called invidious[1] and youtube-dl[2]. That's right, not even youtube-dl can handle logging in to YouTube since about April 2019. That was about the time that Google apparently got around to patching their auth endpoint so you have to run their obfuscated JavaScript if you want in. Since then scores of issues reporting 400 responses from trying to download Watch Later or private playlists were posted on youtube-dl's tracker, collected in the issue I mentioned. Their response? Close it as a duplicate without, well, any other response. None as of present writing, eight months later. Exactly the same response as nearly every other issue reporting the same error. That is a misstep on youtube-dl's part, and has greatly affected my impression of the project's leadership, but part of me also thinks that they don't want to admit that it's nearly impossible to get past a system Google specifically designed to be impossible for third-party clients to get past. [1] https://github.com/iv-org/invidious/issues/754 https://github.com/iv-org/invidious/issues/754 [2] https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/issues/23860 https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/issues/23860

ciarannolan 6y ago

The only thing that's stopping me from using these Youtube alternative apps is fear of my Google account being banned.

art4ur 6y ago
Good news. There is no login. It's not tied to your Google account.
- ta17711771 6y ago
  Almost like things were before the big conglomerates.
- ciarannolan 6y ago
  Google can see that I'm running an app that bypasses their ads while downloading their content, and they know my Google account. Using NewPipe is just crossing your fingers and hoping they never decide to make use of those two pieces of information.

unixhero 6y ago

Will check it out. The last 3 years I've been very happy with "YouTube Vanced", in particular because of: background play, native adblocking, fully native logged in experience if desired, AND it switches to audio only encode if background play is enabled so it saves data. Get it here: https://vanced.app/ https://vanced.app/

jron 6y ago
NewPipe also has background play that only uses the audio feed. I thought I would miss the logged in experience but if you take a few minutes to subscribe through the app, the UX is actually better or at least on par with the native youtube app.

rfwhyte 6y ago

Cause fuck content creators right? Who do those jerks think they are putting all that time, energy and money into creating content and then expecting to earn a living from it? They should just give it all to me for free!

anoncake 6y ago
> They should just give it all to me for free! They do. No one keeps them from charging for their work.

2bitencryption 6y ago

something I've always wondered: why hasn't anyone built a fully-featured desktop Youtube front-end experience? With, like, borderless floating video (a la Firefox's floating video feature), dimming the desktop, a search experience that doesn't bombard you with clickbait garbage, etc? it seems like Youtube.com is really just a fancy mp4 player, targeting static video content. does Youtube actively do anything to prevent such clients from existing? What's their stance on them? Will they one day change the service so the video stream urls are generated randomly, or obfuscated, and break every 3rd party client?

jedimastert 6y ago
> With, like, borderless floating video (a la Firefox's floating video feature) If your referring to Picture in Picture, it was implemented for Chrome via an official extension https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/picture-in-picture-extens/hkgfoiooedgoejojocmhlaklaeopbecg https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/picture-in-picture...
- hombre_fatal 6y ago
  Problem with PiP is that just grabs the <video> stream and not the subtitles overlay. It's why I use a Netflix desktop client.
  - jedimastert 6y ago
    A good point and also something I'm not a fan of
rasjkehrsekrth 6y ago
https://freetubeapp.io/ https://freetubeapp.io/
user234683 6y ago
> does Youtube actively do anything to prevent such clients from existing? Not really, no. Though they took some kind of legal action against Hooktube I remember. > Will they one day change the service so the video stream urls are generated randomly, or obfuscated, and break every 3rd party client? They already do this to some extent for videos with copyrighted content, but it's not very aggressive and has long been reverse-engineered and dealt with. They use a series of three string transformations like reversal, replacing a single letter, etc. on an alphanumeric signature parameter. The sequence of transformations varies per video but can be extracted from the Javascript source using regular expressions. Here are some available clients I know of. I do not know if there any that use floating videos or dim the desktop as you say: mps-youtube (terminal-only): https://github.com/mps-youtube/mps-youtube https://github.com/mps-youtube/mps-youtube youtube-viewer: https://github.com/trizen/youtube-viewer https://github.com/trizen/youtube-viewer FreeTube (which uses the invidious API): https://github.com/FreeTubeApp/FreeTube https://github.com/FreeTubeApp/FreeTube Invidious: https://invidio.us/ https://invidio.us/, https://github.com/iv-org/invidious https://github.com/iv-org/invidious youtube-local (my project): https://github.com/user234683/youtube-local https://github.com/user234683/youtube-local smtube: https://www.smtube.org/ https://www.smtube.org/ Minitube: https://flavio.tordini.org/minitube https://flavio.tordini.org/minitube, https://github.com/flaviotordini/minitube https://github.com/flaviotordini/minitube

ibdf 6y ago

Youtube might be the only place I actually don't mind ads. Some creators on youtube are extremely good at providing valuable content in short form - I use it primarily as a learning platform, whether I am doing wood work, learning how to fix something at home, or learning about a new topic. I would rather continue to support these creators by watching ads on their own channel than paying for a subscription that covers everything. It's an invaluable resource and until there's something better taking the ads away takes part of their income away.

stronglikedan 6y ago
I don't mind the ads either, but I do like to play music mixes without having to keep my phone on, so I may use this just for that.
NullPrefix 6y ago
Most of these creators accept actual money
- izacus 6y ago
  Which doesn't cover the cost of video hosting, transcoding and streaming. Or the cost of other software development of YouTube. If you'd ever work on anything close to video streaming industry you'd find out that the costs of delivering video to the world is massive. And paying for those services is how you make them sustainable (and add competition).
haecceity 6y ago
You should buy youtube premium.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

monokh 6y ago

Incredible. The idea that YouTube artificially limits the function to get you to do stuff is really annoying. I love that you can send the audio to the background. I've wanted that for years.

manjalyc 6y ago
IIRC they used to let you do that a decade ago, then slowly made it harder and harder until it was impossible. Its a 'feature' now of youtube premium so take that as you will.

NullPrefix 6y ago

The app is great, but wasn't google recently banning user accounts for it? Youtube account and google account is same thing, so this app is useful only for othwerwise ungoogled users

netsharc 6y ago
Afaik it was 1 person claiming it, with no screenshots if the emails he claimed he got (although if he did lose access to his GMail, it'd be hard to see the emails). Besides, does Google/YT even specify the reason for bans? Don't they just write something vague?
dasb 6y ago
AFAIK you can't log into your Google account from Newpipe, or at least it's not required.
- input_sh 6y ago
  It directs you to a link on YouTube where you can download your subscriptions (in XML I believe), and then it allows you to import that file. Pretty neat workaround.
causality0 6y ago
Like all third-party youtube apps and downloaders, you should use a dummy account that's subscribed to all the same channels as your real one.
- djeiasbsbo 6y ago
  I don't think that NewPipe even allows logging in... I think it is an alternative to that because it allows one to subscribe to channels without an account. What he probably meant is that people who are logged into the Google Services with their google account got im trouble for using NewPipe, which to me seems unlikely. I doubt that Google got away with something like that!
  - 6y ago

JulianWasTaken 6y ago

NewPipe is fantastic, but worth mentioning since I don't see it so far, that the one killer downside is "no support for Chromecasting/DLNA" [1] [2], which means I continue to keep the official YouTube app around for occasional use when I want a bigger screen. [1]: https://github.com/TeamNewPipe/NewPipe/issues/105 https://github.com/TeamNewPipe/NewPipe/issues/105 [2]: https://github.com/TeamNewPipe/NewPipe/issues/668 https://github.com/TeamNewPipe/NewPipe/issues/668

hunter2_ 6y ago
PipeCast [0] is pretty recently active, and the first sentence of the readme has a certain... certainty... to it, so there's hope! [0]: https://github.com/TeamNewPipe/PipeCast https://github.com/TeamNewPipe/PipeCast
MayeulC 6y ago
It does include a built-in "play to kodi" feature, though, which fits my use-case better, personally. But I agree that more options would be beter (Chromecast though I despise it, nymphcast).
jiggunjer 6y ago
But chromecast lets you mirror your screen. Why not do that?
- JulianWasTaken 6y ago
  Screen mirroring nearly completely defeats the purpose of a chromecast to me. It has way poorer framerate, requires streaming to two places instead of one (from source to phone and then phone to cast device), requires the phone to stay awake thereby needing more power and wasting the phone display which I'll not look at, has a way worse interface for whatever app you're looking at, because what you see is a scaled up phone interface instead of one more suitable for a larger screen, ... I essentially never use it when I can avoid it, and even when I need mirroring if I have a cable I'll use that instead.

slim 6y ago

I hope the developers are here. I'm so grateful for this app and especially the support : Everytime YouTube obfuscates their API to take them down, they quickly publish an updated app that works. please donate : https://newpipe.schabi.org/donate/ https://newpipe.schabi.org/donate/

product50 6y ago
I hope you realize that apps like these kill the ecosystem for content creators who are paid based on ads. If you don't like YT ads, pay for the premium version. But suggesting that this app is great is not right. Anyways, I trust if this becomes big, YT will kill them anyways. YT API requires keys and they know exactly what is going on here and can shut it down in a heartbeat if they want to. This is exactly what happened to apps built on top of Twitter APIs back in the day.
- bargl 6y ago
  I would hope we can find a way for apps like this to exist while still paying youtube and content creators. Something like and API subscription for a third party algorithm tool like this that pay youtube part of the subscription.
- valvar 6y ago
  If I want to support a content creator, I do so by donating to them directly, not by allowing a massive and (in my personal opinion) evil company to profit both of my and their backs. Not to mention that both seeing ads and using the official YouTube app is quite unpleasant. I am very grateful to the developers of NewPipe for providing me with a painless way to experience the content produced by creators that I like, and which also respects my freedoms and my privacy. It is unfortunate that YouTube has an effective monopoly on its market, and that a lot of the content is not available elsewhere -- I'd much rather watch content served by a platform which respects its users, but unfortunately that is not really possible today. So in the meanwhile, I am happy that I don't have to support a nasty company with a nasty business model.
  - 6y ago

causality0 6y ago

I'm quite enjoying NewPipe but it cries out for one killer feature: being able to swipe videos off your What's New feed to whittle it down.

djeiasbsbo 6y ago

I absolutely love NewPipe but I do think that it progresses very slowly and that might be why it is often ignored for the other popular pip youtube client, youtube vanced. Maybe it is just the rate at which binaries get released... For example, it has had comments support for some time now but only for top level comments. However, iirc the pull request that introduced this also had an example implementation of fully working comment support. So why is this not yet implemented? I recognise that I should probably just build from master or some dev branch which has more features myself...

avipars 6y ago

Worthwhile checking YouTube Vanced too. It looks and acts more like youtube, but newpipe has it's benefits too

dastx 6y ago
Vanced is a modded YouTube official app. Some premium features enabled and removed ads.

de6u99er 6y ago

YouTube is one of the worst Android apps in regards of usability, accidental clicks, and anoying ads. It would be great if there was a way installing the app without allowing third party sources. Haven't developed on Android since years. Does anyone know if I can build it and upload it via ADB without enabling apps from 3rd party sources.

microcolonel 6y ago
As a YouTube Premium user it's a lot less annoying, but what's frustrating for me is it not being simple to go back to a video after accidentally exiting it (where in a browser you would just go back to that tab, or press back or whatever). Also the application crashes all the time, especially when switching to play in the background (locking the screen, switching apps, etc.); and as of Android 10 on my device it introduces a delay when switching to background play, which interrupts the audio (it didn't do this on Android 9).
- cyberbanjo 6y ago
  About half the time I get a new error on NewPipe I just go to their FDroid.org page and download the new mi or version bump and its been sorted out.
- arrakeen 6y ago
  what's maddening for me as a premium user is that i can't turn off their Movie recommendation ads
- greenshackle2 6y ago
  Oh yeah the back button UX is bad. If you do multiple searches in a row, the back button doesn't exit the search screen, it goes back through your searches. But if you're watching a video and accidentally click on a different video, the back button doesn't take you the the previous video, it goes to the home screen. This is the opposite of what I want, the search bar has a scroll menu with the most recent searches anyway, I really have no need to traverse my search history.
- jayd16 6y ago

factorialboy 6y ago

This is why, despite all its shortcomings, Android still is a more open platform compared to iOS. Big thanks to F-Droid and the open source Android community.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
benhurmarcel 6y ago
Would it be forbidden by Apple to publish a similar app for iOS?
- SebastianKra 6y ago
  Yes: https://jonasgessner.com/protube2-statement.html https://jonasgessner.com/protube2-statement.html
  - benhurmarcel 6y ago
    Interesting, thanks. I wonder how such an app would go if it only supported ad-free viewing for Youtube Premium accounts. So that the point would be additional features, not blocking ads.
- samtheprogram 6y ago
  I had another comment refuting the GP (as you are), but the more I thought about it, I decided to delete the comment. At the end of the day, you have to pay $99/year to publish on the Apple App Store, and on Android, although Google has had some shady practices around automatically flagging/removing apps from it's store, you have more options in terms of app distribution, such as F-Droid. To my (now deleted) comment's point though, I don't see much of a relation between F-Droid and NewPipe, besides that F-Droid hosts it. EDIT: other comment on this thread answers that last point I made and your question, and sums up what NewPipe has to do with the "openness" of the platforms [1]. However, I now wonder, what is stopping Google/YouTube from going after NewPipe & F-Droid? 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23874943 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23874943

andretti1977 6y ago

I'm completely against Google usage of personal informations and hate annoying and bad ux on official YouTube app but, to be honest, ads support creators with revenue so when you "avoid ads", you are harming creators too, not only Google. I think that if you don't like YT app and advertising, you simply shouldn't use YouTube.

JulianWasTaken 6y ago
This argument is as old as time, and the counterpoint is simply "it's revenue they were not getting regardless". Those of us who don't want to see ads ever, for any reason aren't stealing or harming anyone, we simply don't want to see ads -- saying "well don't use the service" is not all of a sudden getting the creators back any revenue, and no, if there's interesting stuff on YouTube, I'm going to use it, and do so without seeing ads. I'll support the creators I want to support elsewise.
- dotBen 6y ago
  While I support the sentiment, you know that's not how all advertising works? CPM ads mean the publisher makes money because you saw the ad, regardless of whether you clicked on it (CPC). Even if you never click an ad or buy anything from an ad, you are still helping the publisher make money.
  - dheifidjeh 6y ago
    Wrong. It means the ad played not that it was actually viewed. Most people don't sit through ads and just ignore them. If you ignore ads but don't block them you're helping the publisher steal from the client. Personally I think that's wrong.
  - glenstein 6y ago
    I didn't read them as saying anything about refraining from clicking ads. I took them to be saying they will avoid ads entirely, not viewing them but not clicking.
  - 6y ago

swyx 6y ago

noob question here - i dont know what F-droid is. Is this meant to be installed from the Play Store or do i have to "jailbreak" my android?

thefiregecko 6y ago
F-droid is an alternative app store consisting of open source projects. No need for jailbreaking, more information here https://f-droid.org/ https://f-droid.org/
- swyx 6y ago
  cool, thank you very much.
j1elo 6y ago
F-droid is an alternative App Store, dedicated to open source software. You have to enable installing apps from "unknown sources" (an option available in the Android menus, no root required), then install the Fdroid application, and from now on you can revert back the "unknown sources" setting, and use Fdroid to search and install FOSS apps, including NewPipe.
- noisem4ker 6y ago
  On newer Android versions (8+), you have to allow the specific app from which the install is launched (browser, file manager, third party store, ...). In practice, not that different. https://developer.android.com/distribute/marketing-tools/alternative-distribution#unknown-sources https://developer.android.com/distribute/marketing-tools/alt...
- swyx 6y ago
  thanks for the very kind explanation.

EGreg 6y ago

Wait what, how does YouTube just serve its video streams to any client?

noisem4ker 6y ago
They serve their website to any browser, and NewPipe presents itself as one.

osamagirl69 6y ago

I absolutely love newpipe, and use it exclusively over the youtube app on android. On a similar note - I also have found invidious [1] to be so much better than the normal youtube web frontend, and use it almost exclusively for my desktop youtube usage. It might be an unfair comparison because I am not a google user and the youtube website is terrible for non-logged-in users, but for us it is an absolute godsend. I am not sure how it works as far as views and add revenue and all that, and certainly the ability to thumbs-up and comment is disabled unless you click through to the youube link and log in, but I generally try to support the channels I follow through other means so I do not feel too bad about it. [1]https://github.com/iv-org/invidious https://github.com/iv-org/invidious

glenstein 6y ago
Invidious is grand. I think the missing killer feature that I want is to long into invidious via NewPipe.
- djeiasbsbo 6y ago
  I know that logging in isn't possible yet but invidious links can actually be opened with NewPipe I think. Also other great substitutes for Twitter and Instagram are Nitter[0] and Bibliogram[1]. [0]https://nitter.net https://nitter.net [1]https://bibliogram.art https://bibliogram.art

bitwize 6y ago

Remember, "your contract with the network when you get the show is you're going to watch the spots." If Google catches you attempting to circumvent ads, they are within their rights to consider you a thief and treat you accordingly.

userbinator 6y ago
I bet if they can catch you closing your eyes or turning away or thinking of something else, they would. They are absolute scum.

starlig-ht 6y ago

How are they able to legally not have ads? How is that not theft?

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
Sephr 6y ago
This is legally equivalent to a custom browser with pre-installed ad-blocker extensions.
anoncake 6y ago
In the same way juggling isn't theft. It doesn't fulfill the definition.

fahrradflucht 6y ago

I read a lot of people's experiences here in the thread and I think a lot of you really should give YouTube Premium a try. It solves most of the problems you are describing, while also paying the creators

marvion 6y ago
This. If your problem are ads, background-playing and download - then just go with premium. I do understand that some apps provide extra features etc. but premium removes ads cross-platform... and since GoogleMusic is included, it replaces Spotify as well(yes, it's different..).
- zbrozek 6y ago
  I think this app caters to a different set of needs. Personally I find the official YouTube app noisy and pushy and offensive. Autoplay and PIP are anti-features I want to avoid. Recommendations are also unwanted. This alternative looks great to me, on paper at least. I'll give it a go.
  - harshitaneja 6y ago
    Autoplay and PIP can be turned off in settings. PIP is one of the reasons I got premium initially but the ad free experience on all devices is what made me stay.
    - zbrozek 6y ago
      Defaults matter. I have a lot of devices and I can't be bothered to make every app less awful on every one of them every few months. It's far easier to opt out of the app entirely.
      - halflings 6y ago
        It's likely that most uses actually enjoy autoplay and PIP (I certainly do). You're saying that you don't pay for Premium and use an unofficial client that does not pay content creators just because it's too much of a hassle to change the two settings that bother you.

lala26in 6y ago

lol

dennisy 6y ago

There are people whose living is made from YouTube and it’s advertising component. Whilst I would personally prefer videos with no ads, is this not stealing? I would be very interested to hear this groups view on why this is morally ok. Also what alternatives there should be to an ad revenue model for YouTube type sites.

thetinguy 6y ago
Surprised by how little people are talking about this. Those ads are the only source of income for some creators.
- ehsankia 6y ago
  And if you want to support the creator and not get ads, there's Youtube Premium. I often hear "I'd rather pay a small amount and not get ads", but when provided with that, they then resort to some other excuse to still use ad-block.
  - userbinator 6y ago
    Or you can pay the creator directly.
    - dingaling 6y ago
      And does the creator then pay YouTube for the delivery service? If not then there's still a shortfall.
umvi 6y ago
> Whilst I would personally prefer videos with no ads, is this not stealing? The usual response you'll get is "is it stealing if I go to the bathroom during a TV ad break?" or "that's why content creators have in-video paid sponsorship blurbs" I personally think those are flimsy justifications though. I think it's stealing to bypass ads when the company hosting the service has a clear avenue for paid ad-free viewing. It would be like creating an app that streams the free-tier of Crunchyroll ad-free while still using Crunchyroll's bandwidth. Dishonest.

smashah 6y ago

Awesome! This type of app will always lead to greater conversions for Youtube Premium. I had Youtube vanced and could not live without those features but I also wanted to support creators so I got Youtube Premium and never looked back

tracker1 6y ago

Don't seem to be able to snag it via F-Droid, the app seems to be 2yo without updates... May look again later.

itsnotlupus 6y ago
It's definitely there, and updated often: NewPipe (Lightweight YouTube frontend) - https://f-droid.org/app/org.schabi.newpipe https://f-droid.org/app/org.schabi.newpipe
- tracker1 6y ago
  When I'd click on the link, I get download failed... and the version I'm seeing on F-Droid was 2yo... I did download and install via the github repo.... may play with it a bit more later. F-Droid definitely wasn't a recent one when I tried (in the comment above) it now seems to be showing more recent ones on my phone... I don't use f-droid often, so may have been a syncing/update issue or something else.

barbs 6y ago

This is my most missed app since moving to iOS.

godot 6y ago

I used this a bit on a previous Android phone I had. (I still use Android, but am on a newer one now) It sounds good in theory but had a lot of rough edges that made me just go back to regular Youtube. I remember running into a lot of hiccups going full screen and not full screen, or rotating screens, or moving forward or backward on a video. Nothing was completely breaking but it was all minor issues like switching between full screen and not either stops a video or throws you back etc. Maybe I never got used to it. And most of all, and this is weird to admit on HN, I kind of enjoy Youtube's algorithm of recommending videos -- it actually presents content that I would be interested in. Every time I opened Newpipe it was just a random mishmash of stuff, maybe it's what's on the default Youtube homepage or something, but it's never something I'm interested in. It's nice for when I want to explicitly search for something to watch, but not if I want to just open up the app and tap some random video to start watching. I'll just add a side note that I don't watch political videos or anything and it's not about echo chamber or bubbles. I just watch videos about old video games (think AVGN etc.) or listen to music by artists I enjoy, and those are the videos that show up on my Youtube which is nice.

djeiasbsbo 6y ago
There is a setting to automatically switch to the Picture-in-Picture player when one switches to other apps or presses the back button. So i've never had those issues, because videos simply never stopped playing!

inson 6y ago

There is another one called Youtube Vanced

odiroot 6y ago

Oh they finally fixed the audio desync bug (https://github.com/TeamNewPipe/NewPipe/issues/3550 https://github.com/TeamNewPipe/NewPipe/issues/3550) It was a big pain for me. Made the app unusable.

xbkingx 6y ago

Looks nice, but no ability to set default playback speed means I'll stick with (the rarely updated) Vanced. I never watch YT content at <1.25x speed unless it's to hear a music track. It also looks like it doesn't have the option to login and sync, so I'd be seeing already watched stuff on between desktop and mobile. I understand why some people wouldn't want that, but I use the feature all the time and would like the option. I might try it as a kind of backup app for things I want to track, but don't want suggestions for (mostly technical videos).

pengaru 6y ago

Anybody know why YouTube doesn't plug the ad-bypassing loophole of fetching the content directly youtube-dl style? I presume this NewPipe client is doing something similar...

userbinator 6y ago
Could they? I suppose they could concatenate ads into the video files directly, sort of like an old TV "stream"... ...except I have a decades-old VCR that can skip those too, so the technology today could probably deal with that pretty easily. "ad-bypassing" is essentially choosing not to consume content; while most if not all DRM and other protections are for preventing people from consuming content, preventing them from not consuming content is nearly impossible unless you essentially have control over their minds.

webscalist 6y ago

This even runs without play services

neycoda 6y ago

This is gonna get shut down so quick.

m45t3r 6y ago

Nice. Just discovered that you can open videos from the official YouTube client by using the "Share" menu and selecting NewPipe. It has multiple options, including download/open/open as popup. This make it much more useful for me, I can still have access to my YouTube account but I can open the actual videos in NewPipe and skip ads/have more control of the playback options. Also, this bug from official YouTube app does not happen in NewPipe, making it much more useful to me since I use a custom caption settings because Amazon Prime Video (but they look horrible in official YouTube app because there is no outline): https://www.reddit.com/r/youtube/comments/e935yz/bug_captions_in_youtube_android_app_has_no/ https://www.reddit.com/r/youtube/comments/e935yz/bug_caption...

modzu 6y ago

will this ever be on Google play? most peoppe should not be in the habit of sideloading apps...

KaoruAoiShiho 6y ago

Can someone do a comparison to Vanced? Been using vanced for a long time, what's here that's worth switching.

BlameKaneda 6y ago
I use Vanced and if I recall correctly, NewPipe doesn't port your YouTube playlists over. I save music to playlists so not having that feature would've been a huge pain.
k__ 6y ago
To quote the Vanced website: "Please don't ask for a video download feature" Also, Vanced doesn't run on my FireHD tablet.

bilekas 6y ago

The app sounds good from the comments, but can you drill a bit more as to how you're filtering out the adds ? Is it a remote proxy to filter ? Local lists of blaclist etc. Some more info would be cool Edit : The comments are so good I'm more suspicious! :D

627467 6y ago

I both pay for yt premium and use newpipe on older (degoogled) devices where using latest youtube.apk is not an option anymore. Also, where I live yt premium is a fraction of the cost of many developed countries, cheap for me but not for many in this country. In some countries yt premium is not even available. I read a lot 'entitled' opinions in this thread pretending that the whole world should ignore their circumstances and just do whatever works for them (ie. Pay for yt premium). The internet is global: why would you think that using open source software to access bits off of global internet is unethical/illegitimate?

elwell 6y ago
> why would you think that using open source software to access bits off of global internet is unethical/illegitimate? "It's just bits." That's a slippery slope. One might argue that circumventing the intended purpose of a platform in this way uses technological advantage to take advantage of content creators who are vulnerable. The kid who takes all the candy from the "Please take one." jack-o-lantern on Halloween is only taking a bit of atoms from their neighbor's porch. Now let me get off my high horse and turn my ad blocker back on.
- realusername 6y ago
  > One might argue that circumventing the intended purpose of a platform in this way uses technological advantage to take advantage of content creators who are vulnerable. Youtube does not even run on a standard Android anymore (without Google proprietary bits) so that's not like some people have a choice anyways. If you want to use Youtube on a standard Android, you either have to use a modded version of Youtube or a third-party app. I'd argue that modifying manually the official version sounds worse.
- 627467 6y ago
  But it's not really a slippery slope anymore: the world has gone down that slippery slope since the web has been created and operated and it's been great for everyone so far. Overall, the benefits of the "free bits" have enabled anyone to be a creator and create a audience for free, has enabled companies to become global in an instant reach potentially everyone with access to TCP/IP and DNS servers. But creators and operators are trying to shoehorn the global world into a handful of brands (YouTube, ig, fb...) and a handful of business models. If you were content creators before this age you had to suck it up to several layers of middle men, to get your content on tv, on cinema, on a CD. Now, the free bits lets you operate single handly from your bedroom. But is has a cost: you rely on gatekeepers to distribute your content and track your audience in the name of ad optimization and those users who they are trying to track - who are sovereign over their devices and software - can and will decide how they engage with the bits that reach their hardware and software. There are alternatives: aol used to operate a walled garden. Many countries try to operate their own walled gardens. I'm not making a judgment call, I know where I prefer to spend my time on. But people do have to climb down their high horses pretending the power dynamic on the open web is only favouring consumers and users

sn41 6y ago

Of all things I am grateful to NewPipe for, the best is that I am able to turn off the screen of my mobile while listening to Podcasts hosted on YouTube, and also to run it in the background. Thank you, developers!!!

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tgtweak 6y ago
:/ how are you green tag?

eutropia 6y ago

This is a side note, but: I tried to install newpipe (by first installing F Droid), and Google prevented my pixel 3 from doing so because I am a user of Advanced Protection Program. The OS has application permissions for apps: why is a feature designed to protect my account (and only my account) preventing me from independently installing free and open source software?

on_and_off 6y ago

I wonder how long this is going to stay up ? Google can't be too happy that people access their service without paying either with eyeball time for advertisers or money for Youtube Red or whatever it is called today

mnming 6y ago

it seems to be a great app. gonna be a big conscience challenge for me though. I always feel that my guilt of blocking ads on desktop can be compensated by allowing ads on mobile... (i know it's hypocrisy to most ppls opinion)

antpls 6y ago

I only keep youtube app for the livestreams. Livestreams on NewPipe don't allow you to replay back several hours behind.

Femme 6y ago

Tout dépendra de la zone de couverture que ce soit en mode www.magazine-declic.com ou autre que ça. En tout cas l'objectif est le même.

deostroll 6y ago

So why can't people alternatively create a website on the similar theme: YouTube with no ads. Is this against Youtube's TOS?

Giorgi 6y ago

It looks good but rarely works as intended, way to buggy.

mraza007 6y ago

I wish this existed for iPhone too

betamaxthetape 6y ago

Another major advantage (for me) of NewPipe over any official app is that it supports other services (such as SoundCloud). I find the ability to seamlessly switch between services, and create playlists containing both YouTube videos and SoundCloud audio, to be a complete game-changer. I doubt I could easily go back to the official YouTube app now.

halflings 6y ago

Serious question: What is the ethical argument for watching videos ad-free this way vs paying for YouTube Premium? (as long as it's available in your country, and you can afford it) By removing ads, you're viewing content without paying back in any meaningful way. You might say that you give donations to the content creators you really like, but I don't find that very convincing (you cannot donate to every small YouTuber you ever encounter while browsing, not all content creators churn out 100s of videos). Besides, it probably costs a ton of money to store/process billions of videos each month, and stream billions of 1080p (or even 4K) of videos to all devices. I understand people are fundamentally against ads (I also find them life-sucking and extremely obnoxious), but there is an option that does just that while fairly contributing back into the ecosystem that produces your content.