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Vanced has been discontinued
- yoasif_ 5y agoNot a bad idea to move towards a browser that allows for similar functionality: https://www.quippd.com/writing/2022/03/13/youtube-vanced-is-dead-how-to-replace-it-with-firefox.html https://www.quippd.com/writing/2022/03/13/youtube-vanced-is-...
- svnpenn 5y agoFor anyone reading this. Don't visit the above link, just use older version instead: https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/20647 https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/20647 To anyone out of the loop, Firefox Android has basically killed add-ons, similar to Chrome. This is why you have to go through 12 steps just to install a fucking addon.
- yoasif_ 5y agoTerrible idea - the version referenced is two years out of date with security issues. I don't see how Firefox for Android is similar to Chrome, as Chrome doesn't have add-ons at all.
- Jamie9912 5y agoI'm on iOS I just use Brave browser app, works a charm
- wooque 5y agoIt works on Android as well. New Pipe is good alternative for people looking for dedicated app.
- fuckcensorship 5y agoNewPipe [1] is an open-source alternative, although latest versions of Vanced will supposedly keep working for the foreseeable future [2]. [1]: https://newpipe.net/ https://newpipe.net/ [2]: https://nitter.net/YTVanced/status/1503055442506915846#m https://nitter.net/YTVanced/status/1503055442506915846#m
- drewg123 5y agoAnd for AndroidTV devices, SmartTubeNext is awesome: https://github.com/yuliskov/SmartTubeNext https://github.com/yuliskov/SmartTubeNext
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- tut-urut-utut 5y agoIt’s great, but I sorely miss my search history. I’m sick of typing the same search query again and again.
- adithyassekhar 5y agoThe official NewPipe client hasn't added support for sponsorblock, but there's a fork by polymorphicshade on GitHub. I can't add links because new account.
- Lammy 5y agoGot you https://github.com/polymorphicshade/NewPipe https://github.com/polymorphicshade/NewPipe Easily installable through F-Droid by adding this repo: https://apt.izzysoft.de/fdroid/index/apk/org.polymorphicshade.newpipe https://apt.izzysoft.de/fdroid/index/apk/org.polymorphicshad...
- sphars 5y agoI use NewPipe frequently. It's rumored that Vanced was sent a cease and desist (which seems pretty likely). Out of curiosity, what are the chances that NewPipe will face the same fate?
- adithyassekhar 5y agoLast I've heard they don't even use the YouTube APIs, just parses the website. So they're probably fine.
- 5y ago
- armujahid 5y agoThey didn't mention why they are discontinuing it.
- obviyus 5y agoFrom their officia Telegram channel, it seems to be for legal reasons: https://t.me/Vanced/197 https://t.me/Vanced/197
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- sphars 5y agoAccording to a mod in the Discord server, it was indeed a cease and desist: https://twitter.com/linuxct/status/1503081083486810120 https://twitter.com/linuxct/status/1503081083486810120
- tentacleuno 5y agoAccording to their reply to that tweet, it wasn't a mod, just someone who had the same role colour.
- hutrdvnj 5y agoWhat's the reasoning behind this?
- Beta-7 5y agoMy money is on a C&D letter.
- hutrdvnj 5y agoSounds reasonable.
- YuccaGloriosa 5y agoYouTube premium
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- Drainik 5y agoWould it be possible to use it if the source code is forked?
- mardifoufs 5y agoVanced was not open source, supposedly to avoid angering Google by openly sharing the mod. Not sure how that makes sense though now that I think about it
- expicli 5y agoYou should be allowed to distribute your own code. The Youtube app itself is Google's intellectual property so I understand why they did that. I hope they can release the mods so we the users can apply them to the app ourselves
- izacus 5y agoThere isn't really a "source code" per-se for Vanced, they took the official YouTube app, decompiled it, applied hacks and recompiled it - pretty much very much the same way we hacked key checks and CD copy protections back in the day. So if there's anything resembling source, it's more of a diff of a certain YouTube app version you can't just cleanly upload somewhere or even apply to new versions.
- nextaccountic 5y agoBut the source for the hacks could be made open, so that other people could work on it.
- cuteboy19 5y agoReminder for similar projects: Don't promote it over the internet. If people want to find it, they will do so eventually. Share it peer to peer instead.
- chid 5y agoI can think of very few projects that are p2p distributed only (and often they are available on internet archive)
- mardifoufs 5y agoSurprised it took so long to be honest. It was so good and unlike with other youtube alternative clients, you basically had almost 1:1 feature parity over the official app. Plus you had the option to disable almost all the recent UI changes easily and a sponsorblock integration. It was much much more of a threat to Google than newpipe or less "normie" friendly alt clients, and it was getting too popular for it's own good. I'm wondering if the current Vance releases will keep working for a while, or if Google will try to target those too by breaking something in their backend.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 5y agoI was under the impression that Vanced was a cracked version of the official app. If that was the case then they deserve to be sued.
- stavros 5y agoWell, they only deserve to be sued in your ethical system. To me, adding features that I can't even get if I pay isn't unethical, it's commendable.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 5y agoI'm a NewPipe user. I just think distributing a cracked version of somebody else's app calls for being sued.
- stavros 5y agoDefine "cracked" here. Is it a crack to add a feature to an app, for example?
- Nexxxeh 5y agoNot grandparent poster, but I think the easiest definition would be: "Removing the revenue stream for the original app author through modification or bypass." Just because you're paying through advertising rather than cash doesn't make it any less of a crack or any less piracy.
- rahidz 5y agohttps://twitter.com/YTVanced/status/1503083904047194116 https://twitter.com/YTVanced/status/1503083904047194116 What even...did Google force them to Tweet this or is it a joke?
- chairmanwow1 5y agoProbably
- TillE 5y agoReads like a sarcastic joke
- zozbot234 5y ago
- mkdirp 5y agoUnless you're a creator or an advertiser, I'm sure who why you'd be so against it, you can just not use it. It's not a "ripoff". It was just the official app with a bunch of mods applied. Ads blocked, sponser segments removed, dislike added and in general it had a bunch of UX improvements too. They never claimed it improved privacy or the recommendations. Those probably wouldn't be possible to improve anyway, since those are likely to be server side.
- causality0 5y agoDammit I knew this would happen after it hit the top of HN. RIP Vanced, you were the best Youtube experience bar none.
- 0des 5y agoNewPipe is next.
- cosmiccatnap 5y ago
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 5y agoIt's probably safe for now. Vanced was cracked Google software. NewPipe is basically a FOSS YouTube web scraper.
- 0des 5y agoLet us not be making shit up.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 5y agoCan you elaborate?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- minroot 5y agoI am glad that it's gone.
- sonicggg 5y agoThat's disappointing. I was in awe on how much better an alternative modded app was, when compared to the official one from Google, which supposedly has the "best" developers working on it.
- hyperhopper 5y agoHow are you in awe? Google developers and vanced developers have different objectives. Of course the apps would have different experiences. Also the vanced devs got to use the decompiled Google app. Not like they started from scratch and made a better app.
- sonicggg 5y agoHave you ever worked with decompiled apps? It's extremely hard. Even more props to Vanced. Yes like they are playing a game on "Hard" mode, while Google is on "Easy".
- chii 5y ago> supposedly has the "best" developers working on it. they are the "best" at satisfying the corporate demands of google, rather than consumer's demand. Vanced is very much focused on improving the user experience. Sad to see it go - i hope they leave behind a way for others to do this very same mod in a way that google cannot cease and desist.
- anaganisk 5y agoTheir best developers are employed to make money for the company by shoving more ads and gathering more insight on you, google ain’t a charity.
- rchaud 5y agoThere aren't many moments where I truly feel dismay at the end of something's lifecycle, but this definitely is one. Vanced made mobile YouTube tolerable. I have NewPipe but it's not the same. Hopefully as the tweet says, it will stay functional for a while longer.
- nonbirithm 5y agoFor me, it made YouTube so tolerable that I would spend significant amounts of time on it. Sometimes I get the feeling that a side effect of adblockers is that they unintentionally act as enablers for addicting platforms. At times, it's worth thinking about what you're using adblock to accomplish at a higher level. For me it was subjecting myself to YouTube's recommendations for several more hours per day. Luckily I had found an opportunity to quit YouTube stemming from unrelated reasons, and in the process I uninstalled Vanced. On desktop I block the recommendations feed in case I come from an external link, and I would say it has saved me significant amounts of time. Also, this shutdown serves as a reminder of the future we may start to find ourselves living in when ads served from first-parties and technologies like DoH become ubiquitous. It's going to be far harder than using uBlock Origin to block ads when you start to need something beyond the DNS layer outside of the browser ecosystem.
- Shared404 5y agoRelated read: https://tube.cadence.moe/cant-think https://tube.cadence.moe/cant-think I listen to/read this somewhat frequently as a reminder to keep in mind what I ise the internet for.
- unixhero 5y agoYes I am very addicted to YouTube because of Vanced. Those niche channels have given me a lot of fun.
- Gareth321 5y agoYears ago I drew a big red line in the sand for myself: no ads ever, for any reason, ever. If a service cannot fulfil this, I don't pay for it or use it. Makes the decision easy for me.
- dang 5y agoRecent and related: Vanced: YouTube adblocker for Android - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30444648 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30444648 - Feb 2022 (346 comments)
- samgtx 5y agoI knew that post was a mistake as soon as I saw it.
- matyasrichter 5y agoIt's not like Vanced got taken down because of a HN post...
- akpa1 5y agoAnything that drew attention to it was a risk, and that certainly drew attention.
- Push_to_master 5y agoI can confirm that vanced had Google/YT eyes on it for many years now, or at least that someone I know on the Ad abuse team at Google was talking about them finding ways to stop vanced for years now.
- CPAhem 5y agoFor those who have the ability to do so, please make an Archive of all the Vanced Versions before the download links are taken down https://mirror.codebucket.de/vanced/ https://mirror.codebucket.de/vanced/
- sodality2 5y ago504'ing :(
- metadat 5y ago
- oh_sigh 5y agoHow does one differentiate between a service being greedy, and a service simply not operating as charity?
- metadat 5y agoThey have plenty of resources, no need to be greedy to survive. In fact, I predict it is precisely the greed that will be Big-G's downfall. Rule #1 is: Don't alienate your power users. They are in the exploitation phase of civ. What phase comes next? Pretty sure it's the final phase..
- oh_sigh 5y agoIs that rule #1, as stated by power users? I've never heard of it before. And having plenty of resources doesn't mean it's wise to squander them, or give them away for free.
- mattgreenrocks 5y agoI wish that rule was true, but the core users are always the first ones to be eaten. Without fail.
- sreevisakh 5y ago
- gundamdoubleO 5y agoWelp. Using the official Youtube app is a miserable experience. Guess it's time to check out NewPipe again.
- nightfly 5y agoWhat problems do you have with the official app? I normally have large list of complaints about video streaming services, and I don't have a single issue with the Android Youtube app
- gundamdoubleO 5y agoForced ads on mobile is just an experience I'd rather not deal with. If I didn't have them blocked on my main machine I could at least tab out and do something else in the meantime. Via mobile you can't really do that and it was enough to make me think twice about even bothering to use the official app before I got Vanced.
- j1elo 5y agoAdd to those list of cons that I've been years hopelessly trying to educate YouTube to avoid showing me repeated videos or topics that don't interest me, but they don't care, as long as it increases "engagement", they will do as they please, not as you would.
- CountHackulus 5y agoMy big issue is the backgrounding. I like watching a video while cooking, but I also need to use timers. Not having the video stop and re-orient itself to portrait while I quickly set or dismiss a timer is excellent. I also find the UI during live streams to be borderline unusable on mobile.
- thirdsun 5y ago> My big issue is the backgrounding. I like watching a video while cooking, but I also need to use timers. Not having the video stop and re-orient itself to portrait while I quickly set or dismiss a timer is excellent. Background playback is a paid feature. You may disagree with that decision but the option is there if you wanted it.
- collsni 5y agoFirefox mobile with ublock, no YouTube app at all. Suck it google.
- Biganon 5y agoNone of the comfort of the native app either, so not at all like Vanced.
- 0xTJ 5y agoThe mobile YouTube site is one of the worst usability experiences out there.
- j1elo 5y agoYou need to see the clusterfuck that is Twitter.com mobile site, it's so slow and laggy that it makes YT seem like a perfectly good page.
- tentacleuno 5y agoI really don't understand what they were thinking. They made such a big deal of the site being mobile-friendly, yet it's unbelievably slow and laggy. It's a lot of marketing that quickly falls apart in practice.
- foepys 5y agoIt's probably fast on the current gen iPhone and in their local test environment so they called it a day.
- tentacleuno 5y agoIt's not even fast on my Pixel 5 though, which is supposed to be quite powerful. It can handle other sites (and PWA's) fine! It's just the Twitter one that bogs everything down. Oh well.
- Andaith 5y ago
- malwarebytess 5y agoGoogle Sucks.
- anaganisk 5y agoTo be fair it’s their app and their platform. Blame content creators who use the app rather than the platform.
- indigodaddy 5y agoI pay for YTM, so haven’t ever tried any of these Adblocking things for YT. I think $10/mo is pretty decent for a music service and also the removal of all ads from YT (which includes their fairly decent library of free movies that would be ad-supported without YTM/YTP)
- rahidz 5y agoI also pay for Youtube Music/YT, but I exclusively use Vanced on my phone, as it integrates with Sponsorblock, locks in a set quality setting (unlike the actual YT app which keeps kicking me to 480p when it feels like it), removes a lot of the cruft on the home page, and as of recently shows downvotes.
- eins1234 5y agoWow, how did I just find out about Sponsorblock? That makes this news even sadder. :(
- MMS21 5y agoSponsorBlock is it’s own thing separate of Vanced. https://sponsor.ajay.app/ https://sponsor.ajay.app/
- dspillett 5y agoI draw the line before sponserblock. At that point you are taking money directly from the content creators, not YT or other platforms. I held out on blocking ads for some time, until it became impractical to avoid drive-by attacks other ways and the amount of stalking involved got _really_ creepy. If sponsor segments irritate me enough that I'd consider sponsorblock then I choose between paying for the content directly (if a sponsor-free version is available that way) or just not consuming it (at least not from that source).
- hammock 5y agoWhat is Vanced?
- Bayart 5y agoBack to not using YouTube on mobile.
- TheNewAndy 5y agoI'm not a power user, but I have found this combination works well: Firefox + uBlock Origin + Video Background Play Fix uBlock Origin -> removes the ads (but no sponsorblock) Video Background Play Fix -> lets you turn off the screen or switch tabs with it still playing
- betwixthewires 5y agoI've got another solution, it's kiwi browser (or Firefox, if they've graciously allowed us to install extensions we want on our machines) + redirector (add on) + invidious.
- ajot 5y ago> Firefox, if they've graciously allowed us to install extensions we want on our machines The F-Droid guys have forked Firefox for Android to let you use any extension you want. They named it Fennec as the older Firefox, but is just the name, the codebase is the new Fenix one. https://f-droid.org/packages/org.mozilla.fennec_fdroid/ https://f-droid.org/packages/org.mozilla.fennec_fdroid/
- betwixthewires 5y agoIt's not forked by f-droid, it is maintained by Mozilla to not contain any proprietary blobs in accordance with the official f-droid repo policy, and last time I used it it only allowed curated extensions as of the fenix update. I'll try it out again.
- seanw444 5y agoYeah Fennec is to Firefox, like Chromium is to Chrome.
- datavirtue 5y agoWhat is vanced?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- EastSmith 5y agoYoutube.com on Brave mobile continues to play music / video when the screen is off. No ads.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- seanw444 5y agoWow, this is a real shame. Love Vanced. I've been testing the grounds with NewPipe lately, and it's surprisingly good compared to when I last used it years ago. If anyone from the Vanced team reads these threads, I understand, and don't feel bad about it. I'm just grateful for your work. You made YouTube usable.
- LilBytes 5y agoHere here.
- The_rationalist 5y agoNOOO whyyyy
- rvbissell 5y agoHot take: I like the YT ads, because they help me limit my time wasted on Youtube. That and the death of Google Play Music is what got me to cancel my Youtube Red/Premium subscription.
- deutschew 5y ago
- rg111 5y agoI had stopped using Vanced a few weeks back, because I couldn’t download videos beyond 360p. Now I know about Newpipe, but I manually download some videos with youtube-dl and then Syncthing them to my cell phone. Then watch it with VLC. It works perfectly fine for me. Btw, I think they had to stop because they tried to profit from it. I dislike them for it. Apparently they tried to mint NFTs [0]. Later they said it was a joke, but, NFTs were actually minted. So, the joke thing was a cover. [0]: https://nitter.net/aseldesu/status/1503117413679869952#m https://nitter.net/aseldesu/status/1503117413679869952#m
- unixhero 5y agoYou do this for every casual video you watch?
- anaganisk 5y agoThats sound too exhaustive to watch a 3 min video
- rg111 5y agoOh no. Tech conference talks, (potentially) deep podcast episodes, lecture videos of a topic I am learning, 45 minutes Chopin prelude "jukebox", etc. Anything that I think could be very interesting or I had preplanned- beyond 15 minutes- is what I do it for. My internet connection is very good. But the battery consumption is too high when streaming 1080p/2k. I have became a quality snob now and cannot watch lower resolution videos when there are higher ones available. I also want to avoid ads (I support indie-type YouTubes by buying Patreon subscription and merches, too, if they are innovative). I hate the too-shiny YT interface, too. I now just watch 1080p/2k videos in peace from VLC with my wifi/data turned off.
- MisterSandman 5y agoYou mean watch? Vanced doesn't let you downlooad videos at all.
- rg111 5y ago
- nunez 5y agosurprised it didn't happen sooner?
- xaxaxb 5y agoNewPipe
- justnotworthit 5y agoI setup newpipe this week thinking maybe I should wean myself off being logged into yt (I've become disgruntled with its actions, and I don't want to contribute to it anymore). "But I can't give up sponsorblock!" I told myself. Ha. Vanced (and user made hax/mods) was a big reason I chose android. One more major reason lost. Soon I'll be back to walking around with a laptop as a my personal media player.
- Daedren 5y agoThere is a fork of NewPipe with Sponsorblock built in.
- pmarreck 5y agoNever heard of them until this post
- unixhero 5y agoNooooo
- unixhero 5y agoWhat are the download links for the latest version? I mean the two- three apks, not the download manager.
- anshumankmr 5y agoPost the source code to Codeberg or something
- Gareth321 5y agoI choose to remain glass half full here. I don't think it will take long for decent open source alternatives to emerge. The only reason they haven't yet is because Vanced was so good.
- afroboy 5y ago> Vanced was so good Was actually too good that even the premium youtube couldn't hold a candle.
- joelthelion 5y agoFor those who don't like NewPipe, try the webapp with Firefox mobile + uBlock + Background play fix extension. Not great, but works OK and you don't get ads.
- refracture 5y agoSad as it is Google's got me.. I got a premium trial at some point and couldn't go back after it expired. For years I never cared because I only watched YouTube on my desktop with a adblocker, but now it's mostly on mobile or on a TV..
- NotPractical 5y agoDoes anyone know on what grounds Google was able to do this? I'm assuming copyright infringement, because Vanced was distributing modified YouTube APK files, which are copyrighted. If so, could they not simply release an APK patching tool or something, instead of the APK files directly?
- stereoradonc 5y agoThere was some talk about Vanced developers starting their own NFT, which miffed Google as they were profiting from something they never owned.