Just like the title says; I’m interested in being able to sleep to YouTube without ads, but I don’t fuck with their business practices and they don’t deserve my money. Unfortunately, I’m also a very inexperienced pirate and I’m unsure where to look.
Edit: for clarity I’m using a OnePlus 7 Pro with earbuds
it’s available through f-droid on android devices. I won’t recommend just downloading from their website because it gets updated frequently as some youtube updates break their scraper.
For everyone suggesting Revanced, I used it for a while and found it to be incredibly slow and breaking up videos to buffer all the time. Was I using a dodgy version or was I missing something? I had it from the app store if I remember right. (Might be thinking of Vanced??)
Edit: Sorry folks, I wasn’t bashing revanced, I was just pretty sure I had a fake app and wanted to make sure. Thanks for the replies putting me on the right track!
Was I using a dodgy version or was I missing something?
Yes. The devs never provided an APK or released it in any app store. You need to build it yourself by using the revanced manager app from revanced.app (official website).
I use songtube
It is open source, you can download the videos or just the music, listen with the screen off, it is also a music player and it is more eye candy than newpipe.
Lazy piracy with YouTube for me, VPN signup and burner account. Am I happy with their business practices? Nope, but they play too much cat-mouse with the blockers that I’d rather they take my ~$1.17/m and left me alone.
I use vanadium and adblocking on VPN , DNS adblock works as well. Bromite is a good option as well. The thing about putting Firefox on android for privacy/security reasons have a big issue , webview is chromium based . So basically you just get Firefox on top of everything webview has.
I don’t know man, I watch a ton of YouTube everyday and YouTube also comes with YouTube music. I just prepaid for two years of their premium service and I might do another two in the event they raise their price, I want my access locked in. Besides OdyseeTV and Peertube are WIP. It was like $100 a year flat or something.
PIA and NordVPN are probably fine. If your pockets aren’t super flushed those are good services.
I use Piped (https://github.com/TeamPiped/Piped) for youtube both on desktop and mobile through the browser, though there is also the app LibreTube which uses Piped as backend.
Just use Revanced or Revanced Extanded. If you rooted like me (OnePlus 7 Pro + Crdroid 9.5 + Magisk & LSPosed) just use the magisk module, it work great but on my brother phone (not rooted) he use it with the MicroG without problem but you need to disable the official youtube app if you don’t want dupe app
Installed it the other day and found that most of the crap there is pretty useless…
Installed it to force a locale on a specific app that forces my native device language on it but it didn’t work… :(
Xposed had a lot more addons. To be fair though, I’d say most of the addons I used on Xposed, 10 or so years ago, are now an integral part of android so…
I strongly caution anyone from downloading or even visiting either of those links. They are not official and set up by third-parties, who could be doing it for various malicious reasons.
Ignore ReVanced, go for LibreTube. It uses Piped in the backend to access YouTube, and it’s got a really nice user interface on Android.
It also automatically blocks ads, skips sponsored segments, supports downloads, PiP, background playing, subscriptions, comments, live videos.
It doesn’t rely on shady alternative G services running in the background, doesn’t need you to modify any official APKs, it’s open source, and you can customize elements you want or do not want to see from YouTube. Give it a go.
EDIT: And here are some bonuses it’s got over alternatives: customizable sleep timers, channel groups, subscriptions synced automatically with your desktop browser (via Piped), the ability to proxy and reroute your traffic to YouTube, full Shorts support, live comments for broadcasts.
Would be nice if I could sync my browsing history in a way that what I watch on desktop using my Piped account gets all merged, in a secure and private way of course.
The problem is that LibreTube, NewPipe and others do not login or sync with your account. I really miss being able to save a video to my watch later playlist on my desktop, and later on watch it on my phone and it’ll be marked as watched everywhere
With LibreTube that’s only partially true. It doesn’t sync with YouTube, but LibreTube on Android will sync with your favorite Piped instance on desktop, so if you also browse YouTube on desktop using Piped, you’ll get that experience of a synced subscriptions list. You can use Google Takeout to easily migrate from the main YouTube to Piped with all your subscriptions active.
With NewPipe you’re correct - there’s no sync. You can import from Google, but there’s no mechanism to sync with a desktop version.
You are not logged in. However you can subscribe from another Fediverse account, for example Lemmy or Mastodon. To do this, paste the following into the search field of your instance: [email protected]
⚓ A community devoted to in-depth debate on topics concerning digital piracy, ethical problems, and legal advancements.
Newpipe, on F-Droid.
What is f-droid?
F-Droid is an alternative android app-store that is Open-Source and prides itself on providing other, Free and Open-Source Software.
Anyone can host an F-Droid repository and provide their own apps there, if they don’t like the official https://F-Droid.org one.
Newpipe x sponsorblock
A more privacy friendly alternative is Newpipe: no ads, background playing and theres a version with sponsorblock afaik if you would like that
That sounds sweet. Is it available on Android?
Yeah just get it from their github or their offical website so you wont get a clone
it’s available through f-droid on android devices. I won’t recommend just downloading from their website because it gets updated frequently as some youtube updates break their scraper.
Website
F-droid download link
I use revanced, but it does seem like libretube is better
I really like this fork of newpipe. It has sponsorblock and YouTube dislike built in
https://github.com/polymorphicshade/NewPipe
For everyone suggesting Revanced, I used it for a while and found it to be incredibly slow and breaking up videos to buffer all the time. Was I using a dodgy version or was I missing something? I had it from the app store if I remember right. (Might be thinking of Vanced??)
Edit: Sorry folks, I wasn’t bashing revanced, I was just pretty sure I had a fake app and wanted to make sure. Thanks for the replies putting me on the right track!
yes, use revanced manager. buffering issue got fixed in 3 days after it aopeared, 6 months ago
ReVanced has never been on the playstore (you have to patch youtube yourself) and neither has vanced
Yep, that’s confirmed my suspicions then. Thank you!
Yes. The devs never provided an APK or released it in any app store. You need to build it yourself by using the revanced manager app from revanced.app (official website).
I use songtube It is open source, you can download the videos or just the music, listen with the screen off, it is also a music player and it is more eye candy than newpipe.
Lazy piracy with YouTube for me, VPN signup and burner account. Am I happy with their business practices? Nope, but they play too much cat-mouse with the blockers that I’d rather they take my ~$1.17/m and left me alone.
I’m looking for a browser on Android which will let me use Ublock Origin and NoScript.
For now I use Brave and a DNS filter on my mobile, it works well for YouTube
Firefox will let you use both
Will I have to manually harden Firefox, or is there a hardened version like Librewolf for Android?
FIREFOX!
Will I have to manually harden Firefox, or is there a hardened version like Librewolf for Android?
Fennec. Idk if its hardened enough or not tho
Thanks, I’ll take a look
There is Mull
Thank you, this is exciting.
firefox beta, you can use any desktop extensions by enabling an experimental feature.
Just normal Firefox stable works too. They have a Limited selection of extensions, but ublock and noscript are both available.
I use vanadium and adblocking on VPN , DNS adblock works as well. Bromite is a good option as well. The thing about putting Firefox on android for privacy/security reasons have a big issue , webview is chromium based . So basically you just get Firefox on top of everything webview has.
I see. That makes sense - I wonder if there are ROMs with a gecko-based implementation of WebView.
Well, I don’t use WebView much, if at all, so I suppose it’s fine for the most part. I might even disable it at this point
I don’t know man, I watch a ton of YouTube everyday and YouTube also comes with YouTube music. I just prepaid for two years of their premium service and I might do another two in the event they raise their price, I want my access locked in. Besides OdyseeTV and Peertube are WIP. It was like $100 a year flat or something.
PIA and NordVPN are probably fine. If your pockets aren’t super flushed those are good services.
I use Piped (https://github.com/TeamPiped/Piped) for youtube both on desktop and mobile through the browser, though there is also the app LibreTube which uses Piped as backend.
Firefox plus ublock origin, then just open youtube.com
I’ll try this out
Just use Revanced or Revanced Extanded. If you rooted like me (OnePlus 7 Pro + Crdroid 9.5 + Magisk & LSPosed) just use the magisk module, it work great but on my brother phone (not rooted) he use it with the MicroG without problem but you need to disable the official youtube app if you don’t want dupe app
Don’t click anything. Those are fake links.
This is the official revanced github and the website is:
https://revanced.app/
Edit: i see my comments weren’t updated and someone was waaay quicker than me. :)
Unrelated, what do you have running on LSposed?
Installed it the other day and found that most of the crap there is pretty useless… Installed it to force a locale on a specific app that forces my native device language on it but it didn’t work… :(
Xposed had a lot more addons. To be fair though, I’d say most of the addons I used on Xposed, 10 or so years ago, are now an integral part of android so…
I strongly caution anyone from downloading or even visiting either of those links. They are not official and set up by third-parties, who could be doing it for various malicious reasons.
Revanced is here
Revanced extended is here
For both, you’ll also need Vanced MicroG installed.
XDA has a step-by-step guide.
You don’t need microg if you’re rooted.
That’s good advice, thanks for letting people know.
Ignore ReVanced, go for LibreTube. It uses Piped in the backend to access YouTube, and it’s got a really nice user interface on Android.
It also automatically blocks ads, skips sponsored segments, supports downloads, PiP, background playing, subscriptions, comments, live videos.
It doesn’t rely on shady alternative G services running in the background, doesn’t need you to modify any official APKs, it’s open source, and you can customize elements you want or do not want to see from YouTube. Give it a go.
EDIT: And here are some bonuses it’s got over alternatives: customizable sleep timers, channel groups, subscriptions synced automatically with your desktop browser (via Piped), the ability to proxy and reroute your traffic to YouTube, full Shorts support, live comments for broadcasts.
One thing I’ll mention for those like me that use the feature regularly, you can’t cast natively from LibreTube.
That’s perfect! This is probably the one I’ll go with. You’ve been a big help my friend :)
Would be nice if I could sync my browsing history in a way that what I watch on desktop using my Piped account gets all merged, in a secure and private way of course.
The problem is that LibreTube, NewPipe and others do not login or sync with your account. I really miss being able to save a video to my watch later playlist on my desktop, and later on watch it on my phone and it’ll be marked as watched everywhere
Agreed. I need the youtube recommendations
If you need account specific recommendations and subscriptions, you should give Youtube Revanced a go.
With LibreTube that’s only partially true. It doesn’t sync with YouTube, but LibreTube on Android will sync with your favorite Piped instance on desktop, so if you also browse YouTube on desktop using Piped, you’ll get that experience of a synced subscriptions list. You can use Google Takeout to easily migrate from the main YouTube to Piped with all your subscriptions active.
With NewPipe you’re correct - there’s no sync. You can import from Google, but there’s no mechanism to sync with a desktop version.
How does LibreTube respond to fast-paced mobile connection changes?
I’m not sure, but one workaround is to download the video ahead of time when you have a solid connection.
Why ignore ReVanced?
Privacy reasons I guess?
On android you can do Youtube ReVanced.
ReVanced. Old Vanced is dead. Amd only use the ReVanced Manager from their Github.
F***ing autocorrect
I’ll see if I can find that; thank you my friend :)
You can try InnerTube of you care about music. It is like YouTube Music, but without ads, and can download the songs.
For videos, I am using ReVenced.