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Apparently Vanced was a patched YouTube app for Android, removing ads, adding a dark theme and YouTube Premium features (probably more ?). It was discontinued t

by Aissen 5y ago

Apparently Vanced was a patched YouTube app for Android, removing ads, adding a dark theme and YouTube Premium features (probably more ?). It was discontinued two weeks ago: https://www.theverge.com/2022/3/13/22975890/youtube-vanced-app-discontinued-shutting-down-legal-reasons https://www.theverge.com/2022/3/13/22975890/youtube-vanced-a...

hijinks 5y ago
best part of vanced was the ability to background youtube so you can listen to music with the screen being locked
- convery 5y ago
  BTW, Firefox on mobile lets you do that as well.
  - entropicdrifter 5y ago
    Firefox for Android also supports uBlock Origin
    - Normille 5y ago
      ..but, unfortunately doesn't have text-reflow. Yandex Browser has text-reflow and used to support uBlock Origin [and other extensions] too. Now it no longer supports installing uBO. So Android currently has two browsers, each of which is half useful!
      - The_Colonel 5y ago
        Note that Yandex is a Russian company and as such carries significant risks.
        3np 5y ago
        You are not wrong but the same can be said for PRC and USA companies. Mentioning that every time the products and services of these three countries are mentioned is not interesting.
- ChuckNorris89 5y ago
  New pipe will do that too. Or just watching the video in the phone browser.
  - Tenoke 5y ago
    It doesn't work in android chrome, I just tried. It does work in Firefox though.
  - izacus 5y ago
    Or you know, paying a few bucks for the music via Premium subscription.
    - ChuckNorris89 5y ago
      >Or you know, paying a few bucks for the music via Premium subscription. Or you know, not lecturing people off your high horse on giving their hard earned cash to your corporate overlords on top of their private data, and instead, letting them use the internet as they please. A few bucks here and a few bucks there adds up significantly for those not on Bay Area wages and getting hit by rampant inflation and energy prices. You can donate to the creators Patreon, PayPal or Crypto wallets, if you wish to support them. If YouTube were a boot-strapped start-up in a garage, I would totally agree with your point, but instead Google-YouTube is a multi trillion dollar monopoly and I'm already giving them my private data they monetize, which is more than enough, there's no way I'm giving them my hard earned cash on top of my private data, while they engage in anti consumer behavior by removing the dislike button and using other dark patterns to squeeze view time out of small creators and "maximize engagement" out of their user base.
      - izacus 5y ago
        That's some serious mental gymnastic you have going there just to avoid paying musicians a few bucks to listen to their music. Don't worry, pirates have gone through these mental gymnastics to feel better about their entitlement since the time Napster appeared. Still doesn't change the fact that the author of that post refuses to pay a shitty 12 bucks per months to get access to all the music he wants and pay both the infrastructure provider and the musician performing the tracks. They could easily pay for Spotify, Deezer, Tidal, iTunes or any of the other services if "YouTube is such an evil monster monopoly". But it's not about that is it? I wonder if you're so lenient when someone refuses to pay for your own companys services and just wants them for free.
- zoover2020 5y ago
  NewPipe does this, too :)
  - Sakos 5y ago
    The most important part of Vanced is it allowed you to login to your account. NewPipe isn't an alternative to Vanced. It fills a completely different (more privacy-focused) niche.
PragmaticPulp 5y ago
> Apparently Vanced was a patched YouTube app This is the part I missed in the original conversations. If you redistribute a modified version of a company’s app, it’s going to be taken down. You can’t distribute another company’s work as your own. The difference here appears to be that it’s a patcher, so they’re not distributing the proprietary app. Theoretically more robust against takedowns, but it also significantly limits the audience of who can go through all of the steps to do it. I expect the real outcome is going to be a game of whack-a-mole as random people try to patch and distribute the app under different names. This isn’t actually a great situation because it sets an expectation among users that the app will always be changing names and distributors. Hackers love these situations because the door is now wide open for them to insert malicious code into a version and distribute it as the latest Revanced. Not good.
- lewispollard 5y ago
  Vanced didn't redistribute a modified version of the Youtube app, they distributed a "manager" app which downloaded the official app's APKs and applied the patches at runtime. (edit: actually, I'm not 100% sure of that, since I've always used a rooted version which does apply patches at runtime, but I'm unsure about non-rooted.) They were taken down for using a similar enough logo to Youtube that Google lawyered them into stopping that way, not for any kind of infringement in terms of software.
  - Mogzol 5y ago
    > They were taken down for using a similar enough logo to Youtube that Google lawyered them into stopping that way, not for any kind of infringement in terms of software. Is there a source for this? Seems like they could have just changed the logo if that was the case, no?
    - 3np 5y ago
      It does seem that way but it is the official motivation from the creators. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30747352 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30747352
nfriedly 5y ago
It also restored the dislike button and added support for sponsorblock (which can automatically skip sponsor segments, as well as intros, outros, "like and subscribe" reminders, non-music sections of music videos, and other fluff.) The name comes from it being an "advanced" YouTube app, only without any "ad"s ;) Oh, and you could disable the comments section! All-in-all, it just made YouTube a much better experience.
- adamsmith143 5y ago
  >It also restored the dislike button As a useless button to click? I would assume youtube removed the actual functionality in the backend so what's the point of the button?
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - nfriedly 5y ago
    I think it used an alternate backend, possibly https://returnyoutubedislike.com/ https://returnyoutubedislike.com/
    - aembleton 5y ago
      Yes, it is that one.
  - judge2020 5y ago
    It uses an alternative backend where videos pre-removal had their dislike counters archived, and anything post-removal uses dislike data from users with the extension to crowdsource a likely dislike counter. (in theory, if 5% of viewers of a video are people that have the extension, and only 10% of those viewers hit the dislike button, chances are that's a good sample size to assume that this video should have a 10% dislike ratio, but in practice it's probably a bit more complicated/weighted)
    - outadoc 5y ago
Aissen 5y ago
To make it clear, personal opinion: this is piracy. Use yt-dlp, NewPipe, SmartTubeNext, invidious, VLC, whatever. Or pay for Premium. But re-using a proprietary app and patching it is IMHO crossing the line.
- judge2020 5y ago
  It's at least 'profiteering' off of the current state of YouTube, where anyone that uses an ad-blocking mechanism (desktop or mobile) is effectively being subsidized by the premium subscribers and mobile users without adblock.
  - 2Gkashmiri 5y ago
    profiteering is earning. what are the devs of vanced earning?
    - judge2020 5y ago
      I mean the users using any ad blocking mechanism, including (re)vanced or simply ublock origin. YouTube isn't free for Google to host.
      - 2Gkashmiri 5y ago
        that is not same as profiteering. leeching maybe but "profiteering" is what brave does with replacing google ads with their own so that they show their ads and earn instead of google. that is not what anyone with ad block is doing.. nothing in life is free. everyone knows that. you and me know that. we use adblock regardless of that knowledge. how is this argument used against vanced now since we have accepted the necessity for ublock orign?
        kaba0 5y ago
        Also, it’s not like youtube isn’t popular exactly due to the freely generated content on it, not in spite of their hosting costs.
lfkdev 5y ago
apparently??? it was such an amazing app used by millions and by me every single day, i was devastated to hear it was discontinued

by Aissen 5y ago

hijinks 5y ago

best part of vanced was the ability to background youtube so you can listen to music with the screen being locked

convery 5y ago
BTW, Firefox on mobile lets you do that as well.
- entropicdrifter 5y ago
  Firefox for Android also supports uBlock Origin
  - Normille 5y ago
    ..but, unfortunately doesn't have text-reflow. Yandex Browser has text-reflow and used to support uBlock Origin [and other extensions] too. Now it no longer supports installing uBO. So Android currently has two browsers, each of which is half useful!
    - The_Colonel 5y ago
      Note that Yandex is a Russian company and as such carries significant risks.
      - 3np 5y ago
        You are not wrong but the same can be said for PRC and USA companies. Mentioning that every time the products and services of these three countries are mentioned is not interesting.
ChuckNorris89 5y ago
New pipe will do that too. Or just watching the video in the phone browser.
- Tenoke 5y ago
  It doesn't work in android chrome, I just tried. It does work in Firefox though.
- izacus 5y ago
  Or you know, paying a few bucks for the music via Premium subscription.
  - ChuckNorris89 5y ago
    >Or you know, paying a few bucks for the music via Premium subscription. Or you know, not lecturing people off your high horse on giving their hard earned cash to your corporate overlords on top of their private data, and instead, letting them use the internet as they please. A few bucks here and a few bucks there adds up significantly for those not on Bay Area wages and getting hit by rampant inflation and energy prices. You can donate to the creators Patreon, PayPal or Crypto wallets, if you wish to support them. If YouTube were a boot-strapped start-up in a garage, I would totally agree with your point, but instead Google-YouTube is a multi trillion dollar monopoly and I'm already giving them my private data they monetize, which is more than enough, there's no way I'm giving them my hard earned cash on top of my private data, while they engage in anti consumer behavior by removing the dislike button and using other dark patterns to squeeze view time out of small creators and "maximize engagement" out of their user base.
    - izacus 5y ago
      That's some serious mental gymnastic you have going there just to avoid paying musicians a few bucks to listen to their music. Don't worry, pirates have gone through these mental gymnastics to feel better about their entitlement since the time Napster appeared. Still doesn't change the fact that the author of that post refuses to pay a shitty 12 bucks per months to get access to all the music he wants and pay both the infrastructure provider and the musician performing the tracks. They could easily pay for Spotify, Deezer, Tidal, iTunes or any of the other services if "YouTube is such an evil monster monopoly". But it's not about that is it? I wonder if you're so lenient when someone refuses to pay for your own companys services and just wants them for free.
zoover2020 5y ago
NewPipe does this, too :)
- Sakos 5y ago
  The most important part of Vanced is it allowed you to login to your account. NewPipe isn't an alternative to Vanced. It fills a completely different (more privacy-focused) niche.

PragmaticPulp 5y ago

> Apparently Vanced was a patched YouTube app This is the part I missed in the original conversations. If you redistribute a modified version of a company’s app, it’s going to be taken down. You can’t distribute another company’s work as your own. The difference here appears to be that it’s a patcher, so they’re not distributing the proprietary app. Theoretically more robust against takedowns, but it also significantly limits the audience of who can go through all of the steps to do it. I expect the real outcome is going to be a game of whack-a-mole as random people try to patch and distribute the app under different names. This isn’t actually a great situation because it sets an expectation among users that the app will always be changing names and distributors. Hackers love these situations because the door is now wide open for them to insert malicious code into a version and distribute it as the latest Revanced. Not good.

lewispollard 5y ago
Vanced didn't redistribute a modified version of the Youtube app, they distributed a "manager" app which downloaded the official app's APKs and applied the patches at runtime. (edit: actually, I'm not 100% sure of that, since I've always used a rooted version which does apply patches at runtime, but I'm unsure about non-rooted.) They were taken down for using a similar enough logo to Youtube that Google lawyered them into stopping that way, not for any kind of infringement in terms of software.
- Mogzol 5y ago
  > They were taken down for using a similar enough logo to Youtube that Google lawyered them into stopping that way, not for any kind of infringement in terms of software. Is there a source for this? Seems like they could have just changed the logo if that was the case, no?
  - 3np 5y ago
    It does seem that way but it is the official motivation from the creators. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30747352 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30747352

nfriedly 5y ago

It also restored the dislike button and added support for sponsorblock (which can automatically skip sponsor segments, as well as intros, outros, "like and subscribe" reminders, non-music sections of music videos, and other fluff.) The name comes from it being an "advanced" YouTube app, only without any "ad"s ;) Oh, and you could disable the comments section! All-in-all, it just made YouTube a much better experience.

adamsmith143 5y ago
>It also restored the dislike button As a useless button to click? I would assume youtube removed the actual functionality in the backend so what's the point of the button?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- nfriedly 5y ago
  I think it used an alternate backend, possibly https://returnyoutubedislike.com/ https://returnyoutubedislike.com/
  - aembleton 5y ago
    Yes, it is that one.
- judge2020 5y ago
  It uses an alternative backend where videos pre-removal had their dislike counters archived, and anything post-removal uses dislike data from users with the extension to crowdsource a likely dislike counter. (in theory, if 5% of viewers of a video are people that have the extension, and only 10% of those viewers hit the dislike button, chances are that's a good sample size to assume that this video should have a 10% dislike ratio, but in practice it's probably a bit more complicated/weighted)
  - outadoc 5y ago

Aissen 5y ago

To make it clear, personal opinion: this is piracy. Use yt-dlp, NewPipe, SmartTubeNext, invidious, VLC, whatever. Or pay for Premium. But re-using a proprietary app and patching it is IMHO crossing the line.

judge2020 5y ago
It's at least 'profiteering' off of the current state of YouTube, where anyone that uses an ad-blocking mechanism (desktop or mobile) is effectively being subsidized by the premium subscribers and mobile users without adblock.
- 2Gkashmiri 5y ago
  profiteering is earning. what are the devs of vanced earning?
  - judge2020 5y ago
    I mean the users using any ad blocking mechanism, including (re)vanced or simply ublock origin. YouTube isn't free for Google to host.
    - 2Gkashmiri 5y ago
      that is not same as profiteering. leeching maybe but "profiteering" is what brave does with replacing google ads with their own so that they show their ads and earn instead of google. that is not what anyone with ad block is doing.. nothing in life is free. everyone knows that. you and me know that. we use adblock regardless of that knowledge. how is this argument used against vanced now since we have accepted the necessity for ublock orign?
      - kaba0 5y ago
        Also, it’s not like youtube isn’t popular exactly due to the freely generated content on it, not in spite of their hosting costs.

lfkdev 5y ago

apparently??? it was such an amazing app used by millions and by me every single day, i was devastated to hear it was discontinued