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NewPipe: A lightweight YouTube experience for Android
- johndfsgdgdfg 5y agoIf you read HN you will know Youtube and Google randomly shuts down people's accounts. It's not safe to use Youtube. Please use Twitch instead.
- lkxijlewlf 5y agoI associate twitch with gaming (which I don't do). Is it really a YT alternative?
- executive 5y agoGood app. Never found if it can/how to play video with screen off though.
- trickjarrett 5y agoIt can, you put the video in background mode
- slim 5y agoclick on the headset icon
- FloatArtifact 5y agoI love the feature that you can have subscribe to channels without an account. However, there is a bug with a screen not going full screen having to pause and unpause video playback in order to go full screen. A bug that's been around for quite some time that is annoying.
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- rg111 5y agoI am glad that I found it yesterday. I have been using YouTube Vanced[0] app for some time now. After ads got out of hands and especially after the decision that YouTube would put ads to unmonetized video as well[1]. But with that app, after a recent YouTube update, it was impossible to download a video beyond 320p. So, I was downloading 1080p/2k video manually with youtube-dl and loading them on my phone manually. For trips and such. Now I won't have to do that! (I support individual, indie-type YouTubers by buying Patreon memberships, and buying merch if they are cool.) [0]: https://vancedapp.com/ https://vancedapp.com/ [1]: https://9to5google.com/2020/11/20/youtube-to-begin-putting-ads-on-non-monetized-channels-but-wont-pay-creators/ https://9to5google.com/2020/11/20/youtube-to-begin-putting-a...
- vincengomes 5y agoOne of the biggest strengths of Vanced over NewPipe when i tried them both was SponsorBlock [0] Is there a similar feature available in Newpipe now? [0]: https://sponsor.ajay.app/ https://sponsor.ajay.app/
- 2Gkashmiri 5y agoyep. https://github.com/polymorphicshade/NewPipe/ https://github.com/polymorphicshade/NewPipe/ a fork of newpipe for sponsorblock specific functionality. i use this now
- ehsankia 5y agoI will say, at first I was skeptical Sponsorblock would work, but after trying it, I'm really surprised by how good it is. Even videos from smaller channels generally have annotations. I also really enjoy the other types of annotations, such as "highlight" which is often used to annotate when the important part of a video is. For example, during the 3 hour long launch broadcast for JWST, it was used to mark where the countdown starts.
- foepys 5y agoNewPipe does not see themselves as a project focused on blocking ads but as a privacy first project. See their reasoning for rejecting the sponsor block PR here: https://github.com/TeamNewPipe/NewPipe/pull/3205 https://github.com/TeamNewPipe/NewPipe/pull/3205 One can disagree with their decision but I can understand why they did this and since somebody offers builds, I don't understand why people are often angry towards the NewPipe maintainers.
- 2Gkashmiri 5y agobeen using newpipe exclusively on android for the past around 3 years. i have basically never used the stock youtube app, before it was ios and then newpipe. i cant stand "ads". been using sponsorblock newpipe since the original team got scared after youtube-dl dmca and they refused to accept MR of the sponsorblock developer. the fork is basically perfect. sure it has bugs but i can live with that as opposed to "a word from our sponsor"
- charcircuit 5y agoNewPipe not having essential features like the home tab (recommended videos) or My Mix make the app almost useless to me. Not supporting livestream chat or being able to watch member streams (or videos) is also another big deal breaker for me. NewPipe also can't show community posts or give me notifications when a creator uploads a video or makes a community post. I keep the app installed as a quick way to watch videos in incognito mode.
- foepys 5y agoNewPipe is specifically designed to be privacy first. This means no account, no client-side tracking, as few web requests as possible, and everything (e.g. watch history and subscriptions) is saved offline. Thus it is impossible to show non-generically recommended videos or to enable chat.
- charcircuit 5y agoWithout an account you lose the ability to support many useful features that YouTube offers. In my ideal FLOSS YouTube client I would prefer if it could at least support the main features of the proprietary client.
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- 1vuio0pswjnm7 5y ago"... as few web requests as possible..." That depends on what we agree should be the minimum functionality. On computers with physical keyboards I have always searched YouTube and downloaded from the command line. No youtube-dl, no scripting languages, just a couple of tiny Bourne shell scripts. YouTbe has always made this very easy. The functionality I need is (a) search (b) retrieve textual video information and (c) retrieve video. The only domains required to do that, IME, are (1) www.youtube.com for (a) and (b), and (2) googlevideo.com subdomains for (c). It is possible to use these tiny scripts on an Android phone with Termux. It was surprising to see NewPipe, installed from F-Droid, trying to make requests to the following unnecessary domains: speech.googlepapis.com clients3.google.com clients4.google.com app-measurement.com growth-pa.googleapis.com deviceintegritytokens.growth-pa.googleapis.com firebaseinstallations.googleapis.com android.googleapis.com www.googleapis.com play.googleapis.com android.apis.google.com youtubeei.googleapis.com suggestqueries.google.com NB. I block all these and the app still works fine. I have never tried to use a YouTube app. Perhaps NewPipe is meant to be compared to a YouTube app not to use of the YouTube website. The scripts I write for YouTube are in response to the annoyances of using the YouTube website, including all the gratuitous requests to unnecessary domains. "[A]s few web requests as possible" depends on what functionality the user wants. For example, if the user must have thumbnails then we must make requests to ytimg.com subdomains. Otherwise there is no need to make requests to ytimg.com subdomains. Because I only want to search, read JSON and download video, I do not need to make requests to the above domains that NewPipe tries to reach.
- poglet 5y agoI keep a OneNote page on how to block YouTube Ads: Desktop: Firefox + uBlock Origin iOS: Cercube Android: NewPipe, Vanced I would like to know a good non-jailbreak method of blocking YouTube ads on iOS if anyone knows how.
- jraph 5y agoUsing an Invidious instance probably solves the issue. That's what I use on my Linux laptop now. SponsorBlock is also compatible with it. I now have my own install of Invidious on which I manage my subscriptions (without any Google account) but there are quite a few readily available Invidious instances.
- chrysoprace 5y agoNewPipe is great but it breaks quite frequently due to the use of unofficial YouTube APIs. I tried to get my girlfriend on it because she was annoyed by all the ads but it kept breaking every month. Vanced is nice but a weakness for both is that they can't support casting on a non-jailbroken device (and I suspect the issue won't be solved by jailbreaking).
- 4gotunameagain 5y agoI have been using it for more than a year, and I have updated it like 3-4 times. Maybe you just got unlucky?
- xigoi 5y agoThat's Google's fault, not NewPipe's.
- kebman 5y agoI have an Samsung S7 and it works just fine with my non-jailbroken phone. I use it through F-Droid who keeps it updated. I don't use it constantly, though, and I mostly dl contents that I watch offline later when I'm out and about, so that might also affect some differences in usage patterns.
- tremarley 5y agoMe and all of my friends and family have Vanced, I've never heard anyone of them mentioning a casting issue
- kamokujin 5y agoYes, I too use Vanced frequently and casting works fine. It also detects and casts to the smartyoutubetv app on my firetv.
- chrysoprace 5y agoI'm not the only person with this issue. The maintainer of Vanced said it'll likely never be fixed. [0] [0] https://github.com/YTVanced/Vanced/issues/688#issuecomment-992102591 https://github.com/YTVanced/Vanced/issues/688#issuecomment-9...
- simon_kun 5y agoDo folks know that 55% of ad revenue goes directly to the creators whose content you are watching? Apps like this sound great, but ultimately damage ecosystems. YT Premium is like $11.99/mo and you never see an ad again. If you think you're getting $12/mo USD value out of YT, then I question why you'd want to go through the hassle of this over just paying not to see ads (ps: premium income also goes to the creators!) - how much is your time worth?
- xuki 5y agoThe YouTube algorithm is the problem. Any feature that was designed to maximise engagement will eventually destroy the product itself. You can only avoid the algorithm if you don’t use the YouTube app.
- duxup 5y agoWe internet users don’t want to pay for anything, we don’t want to watch ads, we get upset when free products aren’t free anymore, and when we are the product… I sometimes think we get what we deserve.
- wanderingmind 5y agoPeople can pay the content creators through Patron or other platforms without having Google watching and tracking every online action. Google is pushing tag manager and other options because of ad revenue. Killing ads at every possible opportunity is a noble act and moral responsibility of every tech sophisticated user.
- unfamiliar 5y agoThen they can watch the content through Patreon too, no need for YouTube at all.
- toastal 5y agoWhat piece of the pie does Patreon take and why do we want to pay their slice?
- Crash0v3rid3 5y ago
- gitgud 5y agoAre these kinds of "Youtube Client's" against the terms of service of Youtube? I can't imagine they would like appreciate these features: Play in background No proprietary Google APIs
- unicornporn 5y agoThere's a reason it's not in the play store...
- 0xdeadb00f 5y agoIt does break YT/Google TOS. Which is why it isn't allowed on the play store.
- TMWNN 5y agoFor Android TV, SmartTubeNext (<https://github.com/yuliskov/SmartTubeNext https://github.com/yuliskov/SmartTubeNext>) is excellent.
- scim-knox-twox 5y agoI recommend https://vancedapp.com/ https://vancedapp.com/
- thrdbndndn 5y agoYeah, last time I tried NewPipe has no login (probably obviously). I use YTB almost exclusively to watch my subscriptions. Without that it's kinda useless (I'm aware you can import a channel list somehow in NewPipe, but it's very inconvenient if you constantly sub/unsub stuff.)
- xigoi 5y agoJust manage your subscriptions in NewPipe. Don't give any data to Google.
- mastazi 5y agoOn desktop: https://freetubeapp.io/ https://freetubeapp.io/
- xrd 5y agoDoes this or Vanced help with the problem I have: my kids are being brainwashed via Google's algorithms? More specifically, I hate that when they watch YouTube it is pushing really shitty content on them. Is there a way with either of these apps to filter out things I don't want them to watch, or perhaps even have a list of things I only want them to watch? I don't think my kids would notice if they couldn't get Ninja Kidz and their spammy Walmart plastic crap they are always shilling to my kids.
- rjzzleep 5y agoWhat about just removing the youtube app from the tablet you give your child?
- xrd 5y agoThere are good things on YouTube. And, their friends watch YouTube.
- R0b0t1 5y agoIf they're so young they get sucked into those weird meme videos they're probably too young for the device, if they're older than that try impressing upon the importance of viewing useful content. And take it away if you catch them watching pointless stuff.
- kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 5y agoI do agree there are good things on YouTube, but there are also horrific, definitely not age appropriate things, and there is not enough control to keep one flowing into the other. We watch YouTube as a family, but we're fortunate in that we all like the same content. But in my opinion, supervision is the only true way to make sure they're only seeing appropriate things. Also, "their friends are doing it" is a terrible reason to let them do it, IMHO.
- rjzzleep 5y agoYou can just download those and show them instead of having them browse around Youtube. But I guess it takes time and effort to do that
- azca 5y agoProactively this is the only thing that worked: get yt premium, download YouTube videos you preselected, and disconnect the child's device.
- gaius_baltar 5y ago> Proactively this is the only thing that worked: get yt premium, download YouTube videos you preselected, and disconnect the child's device. YT Premium only makes the problem worse by still allowing native ads and requiring you to log in using an account that is tied to your real world identity (for payment processing). You just end up giving more data points to Google to track and don't get rid of all ads.
- xaxaxb 5y agoBetter than Vanced
- leke 5y agoI was thinking of installing vanced, but then realised I do banking on my phone, and thought, yeah, I must be crazy to think about installing something not on the App store. The only thing I would install not on the app store would be something opensource like NewPipe.
- mstngl 5y agoI like this app as well as this is an effective hindrance to not get sucked into the recommendations and losing time with endless amount of content youtube rates as interesting for me (and it often really is, unfortunately). Nevertheless, I like some channels and their visibilty and success depends on views, likes and interactions. If it is just about monetization, there are alternatives beyond youtube, but pure visibility and growth if the chanel isn't already established to its full potential? I'm wondering in how far I'm weakening those channels / creators when accessing their content through this tool.
- minroot 5y agoPlease somebody implement playlist download in NewPipe
- creambinator 5y agoUnfortunately they stopped supporting older versions of Android and don't even update legacy version :(
- albert_e 5y agoother than breaking Google/YT terms ... is there any other downside or risk to installing YT Vanced on your daily driver phone? does it break any other apps like banking/payments? how about devices on which we also have a work profile managed by employer.
- abhinavabcd 5y agoYouTube is an incredible service to the world, economy and creators. Just spend a minute off lazy ass time to customize it and you should be fine. If you don't want ads buy a premium, "you will feel much better". All pirated content just drain economic value, that's what causes inflation and shit and unemployment. Without capital there won't be innovation and new discoveries and the privileges you take for granted won't exist. Think.
- malermeister 5y agoWay to miss the mark. This is about privacy, not ads.
- Crash0v3rid3 5y agoThese solutions all offer ways to block ads, even sponsored ads. So please, don't be disingenuous, this is certainly about ads in one form or another.
- elric 5y agoSome time ago Google made some changes to age verification, and now you can't watch age restricted videos without logging in, which means you can't watch them using NewPipe. It also means you can't watch them without handing over your phone number to Google, because it seems it's no longer possible to create a YT account without a phone number. This whole thing makes NewPipe a lot less useful than it used to be.
- pmontra 5y agoI don't log in into YouTube, even on phone, so NewPipe was an improvement for me. I can bookmark videos and subscribe channels in the app. I could do that with bookmarks in the browser but this is more convenient.
- Pooge 5y agoInstead of using bookmarks, you could subscribe via RSS. Sometimes the link is not easily found, except if you use a reader that will "auto-find" the URI for you (I use Brook [1]). [1]: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/brook-feed-reader/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/brook-feed-re...
- johnisgood 5y agoOn top of all this, being logged in is not enough. I just checked right now. You have to verify yourself using either a credit card, or submitting an image of a valid ID, such as your driver's license or passport (I have neither, FWIW). NO THANKS. I cannot tell you just how much I hate this kind of bullshit. This is becoming increasingly common. Call me old and grumpy, but I would much prefer to go back 10-20 years. The web was a symbol of freedom, decentralization, and so forth. Now we have major websites that you can count on one hand that makes up the Internet. Along with their fucking shitty, severely restricting or limiting systems. On the other hand, they might be successful in reducing my Internet consumption. :)
- ikt 5y ago> Call me old and grumpy, but I would much prefer to go back 10-20 years. The web was a symbol of freedom, decentralization, and so forth. Strange that no one has brought up hosting a peertube instance
- Synaesthesia 5y agoBTW with Firefox for android and ublock origin as well as background video extension installed I can play YouTube videos in the background without ads, very convenient.
- scotty79 5y agoI really can't watch the 'popular' content of the internet, not personalized to me. I don't want to manually subscribe to channels. It's a lot of manual work intially and later in new content discovery. Is there a 3rd party open source recommendation engine where you might plug in content browser such as NewPipe that would register my clicks, searches, watch time, and could filter content for me and pick suitable channels or other content groupings (like searches, or feeds from my yt accounts) to present me with my personalized feed?
- distances 5y agoI don't use YouTube as a discovery platform. I go search for very specific things, or watch linked videos. I don't subscribe to channels either, if it's something I like I'll go and have a look when I have free time for some videos. I don't know if this is common use pattern or not, but NewPipe is close to perfect for me.
- kebman 5y agoJust curious. What do you use as a discovery platform?
- distances 5y agoI don't particularly want to increase my YouTube time and I don't have a need to find new videos actively, but often some comment for example here in HN suggests a video/channel I do like. Is that what you were asking?
- toqy 5y ago>> what do you use as a discovery platform > I randomly happen upon them It answers the question but likely not the answer they were looking for. Personally I find that YouTube recommends decent content to me based on what I like to watch. But it’ll recommend garbage to my kids. The problem is that the kids like the garbage. Beyond that often YouTubers in a certain niche will mention / promote others doing similar stuff. I do subscribe to premium just to avoid the Prager U and other ads that have no business being targeted at kids in the first place.
- kebman 5y agoA lot of YouTube contents is just talking heads or commentary, but for some reason they don't dual-upload so you can get their stuff as a podcast as well... Some do it, but most don't. That's a major pain for me since I'm travelling a lot. I don't want to waste bandwidth or time on actually watching their stuff, when all I want to do is to listen. But NewPipe solves this rather neatly. Just set up a list of "subs" and then download the contents as audio only so I can also listen to it offline. I use the paid version of Smart AudioBook Player to listen to the dl's so I can speed up the playback. Also it's neat because you can bookmark and so on.
- JSavageOne 5y agoI wish more talking-head Youtubers would write articles to accompany their videos. I'd much rather quickly skim through an article than have to sit through a 10 minute video.
- kebman 5y agoI guess that's your one reason to stay on YouTube, since they have an automated transcription service. You may know this already, but in case you don't, just click the three dots below the video to the right, and then click "Open transcript." AFAIK not all videos are transcribed, though, so this might be a little hit-or-miss.
- dfxm12 5y agoI've wondered why so much content that used to be in a user friendly web page is now on YT, even if it is more cumbersome to consume. I can only conclude that people think they're going to get rich from YT ads, it's easier to record a YT video than to set up and post to something like Blogger (depending on the production quality, of course), and/or people think YT videos are a valuable portfolio/practice for speaking/being on screen (and see YT as a stepping stone to another job).
- madmads 5y agoYouTube videos have a much easier time reaching more people. Not only is video easier to consume than sitting down and reading for a lot of people, but YouTube also has a discovery system making your content easier to discover. I also believe it is probably easier to keep a lot of people watching a 10-20+ minute video rather than having them spend that amount of time reading too. The HN crowd might not fall into any of these categories though. If the content is also just a stream of thoughts, it can be easier for some people to just talk to a camera, edit it down, and put it up as a video. For some people that is easier than having to think about wording, grammar, formatting, etc. Hosting on YouTube is also free as opposed to hosting your own written website, but of course free hosting for written content exists too.
- DoingIsLearning 5y agoSlightly off topic is 'VancedTube' (currently in the Android play store), an unofficial clone of 'Vanced' the app?
- t0bia_s 5y agoWhat about Windows? Is there anything like NewPipe also for Win?
- danuker 5y agoI would use Firefox + uBlock Origin. It can block YouTube ads.
- Liquid_Fire 5y agoYou can paste a YouTube video page URL into VLC and it will stream the video (without ads etc). For the video downloading feature, you can use youtube-dl or one of its forks (command-line, but maybe there is a nice GUI somewhere?)
- sameyepatch 5y agoFreetube. Breaks every now and then (just like NewPipe when YouTube changes stuff) but it is really useful to track subscriptions and categorize them, and you can have feeds of each category (NewPipe has categorization but you can't set up feeds per category). It's still in beta so a it has still a way to go.
- Sheen96 5y agoAn alternative to this is to just use youtube in the Brave Browser on mobile. No ads, you can't play in the background but you can play picture-in-picture mode.
- uhohnowayman 5y agoWhere can I find 'brave browser' in Fdroid please?
- TapamN 5y agoInstall FFUpdater, then you can use that to install Brave.
- WickyNilliams 5y agoNewpipe allows you to subscribe, create playlists etc with no account, download videos, audio, shuffle playlists, create groups of channels. And much more. All features I regularly use in newpipe. Not a true alternative
- moogly 5y agoMy experience with NewPipe is twofold: on the phone its great; on Android TV the UX is maddening.
- thiht 5y agoUse SmartTubeNext on Android TV, the integration is incredibly better than NewPipe.
- moogly 5y agoThanks for the suggestion. Does it support subscriptions? I can't tell from the README...
- thiht 5y agoYes, it supports connecting with your (or multiple) YouTube account(s). That means it supports subscriptions, history, likes, etc. It just doesn’t handle comments in any way (which is a feature if you ask me :D)
- moogly 5y agoAh. One-time export or does it actually impersonate YouTube? Not having to use a YouTube account and log in is the best thing about NewPipe on the phone and FreeTube on the desktop IMO.
- thiht 5y agoNope it’s a full YouTube account integration. I actually prefer it because this way I can subscribe to new channels on the go from the official YouTube app, and it synchronizes directly with my Android Tv. What’s wrong with using a YouTube account? Is it just the ca t that it’s a Google account (which I could understand)? Or is there something more?
- moogly 5y ago
- irae 5y agoSeems to me that not a lot of people here understood deeply the purpose of the app, and maybe the app itself don't understand youtube deeply either. The app is aiming for privacy and most comments are about ad removal. What maybe both the comments and app creators might be missing, is that youtube is not only about hosting videos and content creator channels, it is also about content discovery, and that is key for both its success and for the users to make use of the service to its full potential. I am a Youtube Premium user, I pay via credid card, so I am KYC'd already. But I wish I had something similar on iOS. Not because of ads, but because the Youtube experience is really suffering from having too many developers and focus on kiiling the competion instead of keeping youtube identity. The app is really bloated with experiments like "shorts", which is copying TikTok, and same can be said from the AppleTV or LG TV apps, which now put subscriptions to the botton to force you to click on gaming (twitch clone) and news. It is really a shame that Youtube, as most rent seeking big companies, can't be satisfied in being the best in one thing, rather trying to be predatory to similar but not quite the same competitors.
- thiht 5y agoIf you’re using an Android TV, I’d totally recommend SmartTubeNext over NewPipe. I tried both and the experience is way better. STN also embeds SponsorBlock by default. And it supports YouTube accounts so you can still subscribe to channels properly. You can even cast to SmartTubeNext from your smartphone, from the official YouTube application !
- lephty 5y agoYes, I add my recommendation too for SmartTubeNext for Android TV. Awesome app with frequent updates.
- vaidhy 5y agoThis is one of two apps I miss on my iPhone (the other is an app to play Tamil music). Wish there is something that is as easy to use on iphone. For those who are facing frequent breakages, using the newpipe from their website (rather than F-Droid) gives faster updates.
- AnonHP 5y agoTangentially, apps like this are why I’d like to have sideloading on iOS. We need to be able to access these platforms with something other than a plain browser or the official platform app.
- i13e 5y agoFor those that aren't aware, there is a fork of Newpipe that implements SponsorBlock, which blocks several annoying segments in youtube videos. I honestly can't believe how much of a quality of life difference it makes for YouTube https://github.com/polymorphicshade/NewPipe https://github.com/polymorphicshade/NewPipe
- Bilal_io 5y agoI enjoy using Vanced, which blocks ads and in a recent update started blocking sponsor segments.