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NewPipe — Lightweight YouTube front-end: background playback and downloads without Google Play services.
Or if you dislike all kinds of ads like me, you may also like the NewPipe fork Tubular, which provides SponsorBlock integration.
Me like PipePipe
pipepipe is a way better app for me. they tend to fix stuff much more frequently than the newpipe app devs.
newpipe had bugs that still hadn’t been fixed for years. so I switched and pipepipe is much more reliable.
The only issue I get with PipePipe is that when I switch from LTE to WiFi the stream cuts off and won’t restart due to an error. I can play other stuff through the app, just not what I was listening to after the network change.
I prefer PipePipePipe.
See also, FreeTube.
I feel like NewPipe would be awesome if it weren’t just for Android. Like if you could run it on PC/Mac/Linux. iOS wouldn’t be entirely out either, since you can sideload up to 3 apps with a free developer account. If you have an iPhone or iPad, you already have an Apple account, so you can just make it a developer account, and all that really does is add you to the developer mailing list, which isn’t that annoying.
Of course, on the computer I just use Firefox + uBlock Origin, but I can do that on Android, too. I’ve never tried watching YouTube on my Android phone (my iPhone has a bigger screen, but I’d just rather use a computer) but I bet I can block the ads in the browser. I think the app comes with it. My iPhone doesn’t even have the YouTube app. I never see ads in Safari using uBlock Lite, which is a DNS filter, which is exactly what Android users without root are doing, AFAIK (or VPN-based blocking e.g. PiHole that’s platform independent).
(So basically I prefer a solution that works on all my devices from various vendors. But a good option for Android, especially since Google backed down on canceling sideloading!)
there’s freetube for desktop, i hate how it’s an electron ‘app’ though
I think there’s technical reasons for that. It looks like (and I may be wrong) they grab the YouTube website and show you a modified version of that, instead of requesting just the video from the server. This may be useful because YouTube changes how its API works sometimes to throw off 3rd party clients.
nope they’re completely creating a new page, not a modification of the youtube website.
PipePipe still works without being an electron app but redundancy is good
Ah, yes, I have it (on macOS, I use it for downloading when YouTube blocks jd2 from downloading, I can get the video in any res with no audio, and the video in like 160p with good audio. Throw both into mkvtoolnix, ditch the low-res video stream, and it’s all good. A bit of extra work, but if I want the video I can get it). I know it’s similar.
i think you can just use
yt-dlp -x {youtube link}to get audio btw.There is an experimental version floating around that does run on linux through the very new android translation layer. Very buggy though currently. Its in flathub.
Ya, it works! But it is very much like a phone interface on the computer. Maybe not perfect but it exists.
That’s awesome. Linux should absolutely be pushing for Android app compatibility in much the same way macOS does with iOS/iPadOS apps.
And by pushing, I mean it should be an optional project people could install if they want, not forced on everyone like a commercial OS feature. I just mean it should be a thing.
I think Waydroid fits the bill of what you’re describing.