[HN Gopher] Vanced has been discontinued
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Vanced has been discontinued
Author : nixass
Score : 110 points
Date : 2022-03-13 17:42 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (twitter.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com)
| mardifoufs wrote:
| Surprised 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.
| 0des wrote:
| Just a nitpick, the word it's does not imply possession, you
| are looking for 'its'. If you cannot substitute your usage of
| it's with 'it is' then it is the wrong one to use.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| English spelling is so fucked up. Possessives normally have
| the apostrophe, except the possessive pronouns. Just because.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| I 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.
| izacus wrote:
| Vanced was indeed a cracked version of official YouTube app.
| mardifoufs wrote:
| Oh I don't disagree that Vanced was probably breaking a few
| copyright/IP laws so Google sending a C&D would be well
| within it's legal rights. But I'll just say that I enjoyed it
| while it lasted
| nyuszika7h wrote:
| Many features existed in Vanced before YouTube pulled a bait
| and switch on users and put existing functionality such as
| background playback behind a paywall.
| sonicggg wrote:
| I'm surprised they did not have a plan for this. I thought
| Vanced would be based in a more "rebel" country like Russia,
| which is what Sci-Hub does. A Cease and Desist letter from
| Google would be meaningless there. Were they trying to pull
| this off in the USA, or other Western countries?
| londons_explore wrote:
| The number of people willing to put many months work into a
| project like this, with substantial legal risk, and no
| possibility of getting paid money, is very small.
|
| And of that small set of people, the number who already live
| in Russia is even lower...
| [deleted]
| minroot wrote:
| I am glad that it's gone.
| mackatap wrote:
| Why?
| rchaud wrote:
| Those advertisers paid good money for their messages to be
| heard ! /s
| Drainik wrote:
| Would it be possible to use it if the source code is forked?
| mardifoufs wrote:
| Vanced 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 wrote:
| You 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 wrote:
| There 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 wrote:
| But the source for the hacks could be made open, so that
| other people could work on it.
| dang wrote:
| Recent and related:
|
| _Vanced: YouTube adblocker for Android_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30444648 - Feb 2022 (346
| comments)
| rchaud wrote:
| There 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 wrote:
| For 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.
| fuckcensorship wrote:
| NewPipe [1] is an open-source alternative, although latest
| versions of Vanced will supposedly keep working for the
| foreseeable future [2].
|
| [1]: https://newpipe.net/
|
| [2]: https://nitter.net/YTVanced/status/1503055442506915846#m
| drewg123 wrote:
| And for AndroidTV devices, SmartTubeNext is awesome:
| https://github.com/yuliskov/SmartTubeNext
| [deleted]
| tut-urut-utut wrote:
| It's great, but I sorely miss my search history.
|
| I'm sick of typing the same search query again and again.
| metadat wrote:
| Sorry to shit on this, but NewPipe sucks. In my experience it's
| a waste of time to try and use it as a YT client replacement.
| It barely works, if at all. Casting definitely never ever
| worked for me, not even once.
|
| The user experience is unfamiliar and seems significantly worse
| than Vanced.
|
| Vanced is what the official youbutt app should've been. RIP.
| suetoniusp91 wrote:
| This post glows
| mardifoufs wrote:
| Maybe but Vanced was undeniably easier to use and
| transition to if you were used to the official app. I knew
| totally tech illiterate people using the app specifically
| because there was 0 difference with the official app. Once
| they just got it installed by someone they knew everything
| just worked and it was easy to update. Very very different
| from newpipe, which barely even has support for basic
| features like subscriptions.
| 0des wrote:
| The people here don't use that term, and they aren't the
| type to accept it. You get what I mean? It's only
| associated with bad outcomes here.
| [deleted]
| Shared404 wrote:
| > Sorry to shit on this, but NewPipe sucks. In my experience
| it's a waste of time to try and use it as a YT client
| replacement.
|
| Hard disagree. NewPipe is the only way I use youtube on
| mobile.
|
| > It barely works, if at all. Casting definitely never ever
| worked for me, not even once.
|
| Because casting requires usage of Google API's and NewPipe is
| privacy oriented.
|
| It's not broken, it's as intended.
|
| > The user experience is unfamiliar and seems significantly
| worse than Vanced.
|
| I prefer it to default youtube . It's no nonsense, and gets
| the job done.
|
| Haven't used vanced, so can't judge there.
| gcthomas wrote:
| Rather than just dis, could you be specific? It works for me,
| and I know a number of people who use it since they find it
| is better for them than the official client.
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| I've found it very flaky in the past. Half the time it
| can't load a video or it crashes while playing the video.
| I'd understand if some of the issues came from being
| throttled the way yt-dl does, but the Android user agent
| that my phone has (which is the workaround that yt-dlp uses
| right now to be unthrottled) should present unthrottled
| downloads. I have a better experience having a service
| running on my seedbox which downloads and serves a Youtube
| video than using Newpipe, which says something.
| adithyassekhar wrote:
| The 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.
| reflexco wrote:
| I would venture it's not going to be so hard for Google to
| detect and obsolete existing Vanced installations some way or
| another.
| sphars wrote:
| I 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 wrote:
| Last I've heard they don't even use the YouTube APIs, just
| parses the website. So they're probably fine.
| rchaud wrote:
| C&D is almost certainly what happened. The wording of the
| tweet makes that clear, as they aren't attributing it to
| something like someone leaving the team.
| R0b0t1 wrote:
| NewPipe has loads of random breakage. But as a plus, it doesn't
| need you to sign in.
|
| Despite my issues with needing to log in, seeing Vanced go is
| horrible. It is an insanely well put together app.
| rahidz wrote:
| https://twitter.com/YTVanced/status/1503083904047194116
|
| What even...did Google force them to Tweet this or is it a joke?
| TillE wrote:
| Reads like a sarcastic joke
| chairmanwow1 wrote:
| Probably
| armujahid wrote:
| They didn't mention why they are discontinuing it.
| obviyus wrote:
| From their officia Telegram channel, it seems to be for legal
| reasons: https://t.me/Vanced/197
| [deleted]
| sphars wrote:
| According to a mod in the Discord server, it was indeed a cease
| and desist:
| https://twitter.com/linuxct/status/1503081083486810120
| hutrdvnj wrote:
| What's the reasoning behind this?
| Beta-7 wrote:
| My money is on a C&D letter.
| hutrdvnj wrote:
| Sounds reasonable.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| And good riddance. It was a blatantly unethical YouTube Red
| ripoff. Didn't even save you from having to log in, so no
| benefits wrt. privacy/managing AI-bot recommendations, either.
| Just total BS all around.
| causality0 wrote:
| Dammit I knew this would happen after it hit the top of HN. RIP
| Vanced, you were the best Youtube experience bar none.
| 0des wrote:
| NewPipe is next.
| sonicggg wrote:
| That'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.
| cuteboy19 wrote:
| Reminder 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.
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(page generated 2022-03-13 23:00 UTC)