[HN Gopher] NewPipe - The lightweight YouTube experience for And...
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NewPipe - The lightweight YouTube experience for Android
Author : vyrotek
Score : 175 points
Date : 2023-11-04 19:38 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (newpipe.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (newpipe.net)
| random_ wrote:
| Amazing app, I hope it will last for a long time.
| kosolam wrote:
| Yes! Awesome app
| scosman wrote:
| For iOS users, check out "yattee" for a similar setup
| comprev wrote:
| "musi" is also a great advert-free YouTube client for iOS.
| tomrod wrote:
| Highly recommend using F-Droid-capable phones/mobile support
| systems. Perhaps one day the iOS ecosystem will recognize the
| economic value of democratizing the platform, but until that
| day it's better to use open source software and as open of
| hardware as possible.
| alwayslikethis wrote:
| [delayed]
| davkan wrote:
| You can also use altstore to sideload uyou+.
| riku_iki wrote:
| No mentions about ads?..
| spuz wrote:
| The site mentions: "without annoying ads"
| BuildTheRobots wrote:
| No ads. Also play in background or popout window.
|
| GrayJay is a new contender on the block that might be worth
| looking at too.
| g-b-r wrote:
| Just be careful that there are many clones filled with ads and
| sh*t on the Play Store; Play Store where they, the real app,
| cannot be
| Nux wrote:
| Shhhhht!
| OldGuyInTheClub wrote:
| My first install on getting a new phone.
| gala8y wrote:
| My first install on every phone of any friend who wants this
| after a short pitch.
| jaquesy wrote:
| I've been using this for years to download YouTube videos when I
| go on trips, it makes it super easy since you can just share the
| link directly from YouTube to NewPipe and it'll pop up a neat
| download UI to select quality and threads to use.
|
| Really great app for that purpose, although I will say I just
| used ReVanced for general YouTube browsing on my phone.
| DrNosferatu wrote:
| Also, checkout NewPipe with built in SponsorBlock functionality:
|
| https://github.com/polymorphicshade/NewPipe
| seqizz wrote:
| Yeah this is an absolute gem. Sad that original NewPipe didn't
| include the functionality, even optionally.
| aloisdg wrote:
| well we tried to argue about it back in the time
| micw wrote:
| Honestly, I do not understand why one should use this. I have
| recently seen some high quality YT videos, each of a length of
| 30-60 minutes. In those videos where some sponsors mentioned
| which took only one or two minutes. Seems perfectly OK for me
| to support the creators. I guess if many people block sponsor
| content, this kind of vids will die.
| Bishonen88 wrote:
| So what are we paying premium for if the creator pushes their
| own ads? Anyhow, when I was watching TV year's ago, I hardly
| ever stayed on a channel during the ads break. I won't
| sacrifice my time being sold on mostly rubbish which I
| wouldn't buy anyway (vpn, brilliant etc.)
| ndriscoll wrote:
| I see two scenarios:
|
| 1. The computer doesn't know whether you skipped the ad, and
| won't feel bad when you do.
|
| 2. The computer does track whether you watch the ad segment,
| and that information makes it back to the advertiser.
| Personally, I wouldn't want to support "creators" spying on
| me in this way.
| endisneigh wrote:
| People want content without any inconvenience, it's that
| simple.
|
| If they use ads they will block.
|
| If they ask for payment they will pirate.
|
| Luckily these people are the minority or there would be no
| content to begin with
| Nextgrid wrote:
| > If they ask for payment they will pirate.
|
| If the price & convenience is right, a significant chunk
| (enough to offset the impact of freeloaders) will pay.
|
| Movie piracy used to be the norm before Netflix came along,
| yet movies were still made.
|
| Music piracy was the same until Spotify came along, yet
| there's more music than ever being produced.
| endisneigh wrote:
| > Luckily these people are the minority or there would be
| no content to begin with
|
| The vast majority of people do not pirate, and most
| people who pay would probably find piracy unethical to
| begin with.
| mcpackieh wrote:
| Besides skipping sponsor segments, it has many other useful
| features such as marking/skipping intros and outros,
| filler/jokes, and marking the timestamp of the video
| highlight which is useful if you want to skip 20 minutes of
| filler and jump to the part the thumbnail promises.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| If you watch YouTube enough you'll basically become aware of
| all the sponsors pretty quickly (and may even be a customer
| of some already!), so any exposure beyond that is a waste of
| time for all involved - if I didn't buy the product after
| seeing it 10 times, I won't buy it after seeing it the 11th
| either.
| bozhark wrote:
| This kind of sponsor*
| chasil wrote:
| I use Skytube; I wasn't aware that Newpipe had a download
| feature.
| ForHackernews wrote:
| This is the default player on https://e.foundation/e-os/
| noman-land wrote:
| NewPipe is the best. Dunno how people watch YouTube without it.
| You can also subscribe to channels from it without a YouTube
| account.
| grudg3 wrote:
| Agree, but unfortunately I still can't use it to stream to my
| Chromecast so I need to go to the YouTube app when I want to
| play stuff on TV
| Zambyte wrote:
| Can't you just display your screen using chromecast? I use
| newpipe on my tv all the time by juat plugging my phone in
| via HDMI.
| m4rtink wrote:
| SmartTube supports Chromecast/Android TV:
| https://github.com/yuliskov/SmartTube
| tux3 wrote:
| If the war on ablockers continues things may escalate, and the
| next step will soon mean deploying stronger DRM, in the same way
| that was tried in the fight against piracy.
|
| There's a real parallel between the two. Streaming killed piracy
| for a while because the service was easy and convenient, with
| everything in one place. Then, streaming added more and more ads
| all while it became more fragmented. Now if you pay for a
| service, you will still see ads, and you have an increasingly
| limited catalog (even on Youtube, as creators move extra content
| on Nebula or Patreon)
|
| The more Youtube squeezes and pushes ads, the more demand there
| will be for adblockers.
| vbezhenar wrote:
| The end game is encrypted DRM stream (which is decrypted in the
| display) with encoded ads (so you can't block it tinkering with
| JS).
|
| I guess that only abundance of devices without DRM is stopping
| this scenario.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| Only general purpose computers are stopping this scenario.
| richwater wrote:
| > encrypted DRM stream
|
| Widevine already exists and is increasingly difficult to
| crack, especially the key levels required for 4k content.
|
| > encoded ads
|
| Only a matter of time before hardware encoders can do this on
| the fly
| tomrod wrote:
| > The end game is encrypted DRM stream
|
| That's not the endgame -- Digg:Reddit::YouTube:Vimeo is the
| end game, IMHO.
| alkonaut wrote:
| How are the ads even skippable on YouTube? I have never
| really had a good answer to that. I mean, why is the ad even
| a different stream or detectable on the client? Shouldn't the
| ads just be spliced into the videos if you really want to
| make sure people watch them? Is it because it would be
| prohibitively expensive to do that kind of live encoding for
| each viewer?
| jack_pp wrote:
| You wouldn't even need live encoding because every YouTube
| video is normalized and if you have two streams that were
| encoded with the same parameters you can cut and
| concatenate without re encoding
| meindnoch wrote:
| Because you could just seek over them?
| alkonaut wrote:
| Yes, but the server knows exactly what frames it has sent
| you and when. If you don't want to watch the ad frames
| there's nothing the server can do, but it can make sure
| to not send you the frame that comes after the ad, until
| the 10 seconds of the ad has passed since it sent you the
| last frame before the ad.
| judge2020 wrote:
| What is it with the disdain for paying for services people use?
| People often don't feel like paying for it even if they use
| YouTube more than other streaming services combined.
|
| Maybe the issue is that people got so used to a decade of
| unlimited high-quality videos for absolutely free?
| arcbyte wrote:
| Actually I'm very predisposed to paying for YouTube. My
| experience with it however is that it presented me with ads
| for YouTube premium every 5 minutes and put ad screens in my
| way that were waaayyyyy to easy to click dozens of times a
| day. It wouldn't take a hint that I was interested but not
| ready to buy. I was trying to show someone a quick video on
| my phone, not revisiting my financial relationship with
| Google. After being treated like that, as much as I have the
| money and willingness to pay, I don't want to give them my
| money for a purely emotional reason. Some product manager
| somewhere at Google needs fired. Probably a lot of them.
| lapinot wrote:
| What is it with the disdain for mental health, privacy or
| political mindfulness? Big tech don't feel like paying
| attention to people even if people use Youtube more than
| other streaming services combined. Maybe the issue is that
| big tech got so used to a decade of unlimited high-quality
| tracking for absolutely free?
| friend_and_foe wrote:
| It's not disdain for paying. Netflix proved that. It's
| disdain for getting nickel and dimed and fleeced and losing
| access without warning.
| ertian wrote:
| Well, and there's a difference in usage. When I use
| Netflix, I'm usually either at my desktop computer or
| sitting on my couch, selecting a movie for myself to watch.
| It feels like a good old traditional media experience.
|
| YouTube pops up everywhere, on every system I use.
| Sometimes I'm sitting down to watch something longer, even
| a movie, but often it's just links from friends or
| coworkers, or from news articles on Reddit or Hacker News.
| Sometimes it's lessons, sometimes it's breaking news,
| sometimes it's 5-second meme videos. I use it at work and
| at home. I might be on my wife's iPad, or my work phone, or
| some library computer.
|
| I'm not viewing all those videos on my personal devices
| logged in using my own personal account. I don't feel
| _comfortable_ logging in with my personal account
| _everywhere_.
|
| And there's something especially annoying about constantly
| seeing ads on a service I'm paying for.
|
| On top of that, logging in everywhere lets Google track
| everything I view--every random Reddit click--and Google's
| the single biggest data collector & exploiter I know. I'm
| _paying_ them to let them track me.
|
| All told, paying for YouTube feels kinda icky in a way that
| paying for Netflix does not. I _do_ pay for YouTube
| Premium, but I still prefer to watch videos without logging
| in, (ed:) _with_ an adblocker.
| radicality wrote:
| What I do have a disdain for with Netflix, is paying for
| the version with 4k access and then struggling to actually
| get the service I paid for.
|
| Around two years ago I wanted to watch Squid Game on my
| MacBook Pro + external 4k monitor, and iirc still couldn't
| get it working in 4k after various yak shaving. Perhaps
| it's now supported, but it felt pretty ridiculous to me
| that I can't even access the full service I'm paying for.
| k8sToGo wrote:
| I don't mind paying. I do mind paying $15 and then see still
| ads (Thanks to NordVPN for sponsoring this comment). Plus the
| algorithm keeps getting worse and worse.
|
| I'd prefer to pay like $5. I don't need YouTube music.
| shric wrote:
| Sponsorblock is 95%+ effective against these
| Bishonen88 wrote:
| Whole point of youtube premium is getting rid of ads on
| mobile/tvs
| mulmen wrote:
| The hilarious thing about all the VPN ads is that they are
| collecting all the same tracking information as Google, and
| Facebook and aren't even protecting you from that existing
| tracking.
| davkan wrote:
| $5/mo without YouTube Music would be an easy buy for me.
| I'd gladly pay that to support creators, remove ads on my
| tv, and to stop having to sideload uyou+ on my phone. I
| have zero interest in YouTube music as Apple Music has
| great offline support on the watch for my backcountry
| rides.
| endisneigh wrote:
| I don't understand this logic. Why do you think it would be
| cheaper without YouTube music? YouTube music literally is
| just YouTube. Every song on there can be found on YouTube,
| the only reason it's even a separate app and included in
| premium is due to the lack of ads facilitating a better
| music listening experience.
| month13 wrote:
| I was happy paying for YouTube Premium, but they just doubled
| the price in my geo. So yeah, i'm considering not paying.
| rglullis wrote:
| I don't mind paying for services.
|
| I mind paying to get the privilege my data exploited.
|
| I mind paying to a company that use its infinite bags of
| money to outspend any competition unfairly.
|
| I mind paying after getting blackmailed to accept a new deal
| when they made sure they left no other choice in the market.
|
| I mind paying for a service that is optimized for
| "engagement" instead of my own well-being.
|
| I mind paying to a company that doesn't know the time to stop
| growing and wants to crawl into every aspect of my life.
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| +1
|
| And I mind that paying forces me to give my credit card to
| a companies that have proven to work against me.
|
| I mind that google will take over my entire phone if I
| connect to any service with a google account because I paid
| for it and not just login to that single service.
|
| I mind that it will collect all that data if I don't have
| an adblocker anyway, just not show me ad, and then give it
| to gov entities (see PRISM).
|
| What I don't mind is paying. I pay for spotify, for neflix,
| for dynalist, for kagi, for chatgpt, for codepilot, for
| github...
|
| But I do mind that many people like you on HN accuses us of
| being dishonest.
| mulmen wrote:
| Google has dumped so many gallons of urine into my cheerios
| over the years that I will never, ever pay them for a
| consumer service. They have spent literally decades now being
| absolute assholes to consumers. If they charged for Youtube
| from day 1 then maybe. But at this point the reputational
| harm is permanent.
|
| I do pay for Patreon and Nebula. But Google will never get a
| cent from me.
| colordrops wrote:
| The person you are replying to answered in their comment:
| even the paid service has ads, and a lot of the premium
| content has been moved off of the platform.
| swayvil wrote:
| Digital media can be copied infinitely for free. Thus
| delivering any benefit to infinite consumers. Thus
| multiplying that benefit infinitely.
|
| They want to choke that? May as well tell the wind to stop
| blowing.
| gaganyaan wrote:
| Lack of trust. Google will find ways to enshittify YouTube
| even if you pay for it.
|
| I spend a lot of money at Bandcamp because in exchange I get
| bits that I do what I want with. For some reason that's not
| as popular for video, but it would solve this issue pretty
| well.
| asimops wrote:
| I have zero issues with paying in general.
|
| What I don't see, is me paying for the worse service.
|
| Youtube Premium is 12.99EUR a month for me. For that small
| price I get to create a Google Account, accept their TOS, let
| them track and profile me, keep logging in everywhere
| (because I delete all local storage in the browser routinely)
| and replace the small and efficient NewPipe with the Youtube
| app. Futhermore I cannot download a video now and play it
| next month without connecting to the internet, or move it to
| my small dedicated video player that doesn't even have
| connection to the internet.
|
| What is Googles CPM (revenue per 1000 clicks)? I don't think
| it comes down to more the a low cent amount. I do not watch
| enough video to justify the price of premium and I will never
| watch ads, because those are psychological warfare and
| completely underregulated...
|
| If Google and all the others make a nice micro payment
| platform for the browser, which work anonymously and without
| much hassle, I will by all means pay them the amount of money
| which me watching the ads would have generated plus 10%
| service fee since they build the platform.
|
| But not like this!
| endisneigh wrote:
| People will always rationalize their not paying. Tracking,
| ethics, whatever. Anything other than abstaining from use,
| lol.
| InCityDreams wrote:
| Nope. Thanks to this site i (finally, and only about an
| hour ago) got newpipe from fdroid, subscribed to all my
| channels, and sod youtube, I'm not going back. An
| appropriate ad occasionally, no problem. But recently??
| With newpipe there's a way out: i will happily contribute.
| endisneigh wrote:
| Using New pipe is not abstaining from YouTube, lol.
| lacrimacida wrote:
| Anything like this for Ios? Im now downloading vids or sound
| files from youtube for offline use with invidio.us
| haunter wrote:
| Yattee, needs a bit more tinkering to setup though (it's a
| general network videoplayer not an alternate YT client like
| NewPipe)
|
| https://apps.apple.com/us/app/yattee/id1595136629
|
| https://np.reddit.com/r/Yattee/comments/13d3lj7/how_to_set_u...
| bkm wrote:
| Newpipe is great for background listening and PIP (window can be
| resized/moved). For downloading, Seal reigns supreme. You can
| 'share' a video to the app and it downloads the video right away.
|
| Link: https://f-droid.org/packages/com.junkfood.seal/
| Gerard0 wrote:
| Awesome app. I send them money from time to time when possible!
| sigmar wrote:
| I've been using this on android for more than 6 years. Love being
| able to quickly download a local copy of video or music as I'm
| boarding a flight or train. Highly recommend getting it using
| fdroid instead of apk because there have been points when youtube
| made changes that break the app and you'll need to get the latest
| update
| tomrod wrote:
| We use it daily. We love quietly streaming music during meals. It
| supports subscriptions (though no account integration to Google,
| obviously).
|
| Well done NewPipe, you're showing how web applications should be
| done.
| wg0 wrote:
| If you tube blocks their API, would it be game over for such
| clients? Or how does it work?
| sigmar wrote:
| iirc it loads the page as if it were a browser, then scrapes
| and downloads the video.
| lapinot wrote:
| They don't use official APIs (if you do you need to register a
| dev account and this sort of thing would most likely be against
| the TOS), just like yt-dlp they reverse engineer all sorts of
| apps youtube has (the webpage, the mobile webpage, the TV app,
| the android app, ...) and thus get all sorts of undocumented
| APIs to scrap from.
| anoncow wrote:
| I can't find a source which has all the financial figures for
| YouTube, but YouTube had a gross revenue of 29 bn USD in 2022.
| Alphabet had 55 bn USD in net income in 2022 of which how much
| was YouTube's share in the net income is unknown (or at least I
| couldn't find it).
|
| Let's use some assumptions to get to a number.
|
| 1. Let's assume that out of the 29 bn USD revenue that YouTube
| brings in 55% is shared with creators. Thus we are left with 13
| bn USD.
|
| 2. We know that YouTube's share in the overall revenue of
| Alphabet was 10.5%. Let's assume that all of Alphabet's
| properties were proportionately profitable (highly incorrect
| assumption). If the properties were proportionately profitable,
| YouTube's would have bought in a net income of 5.75 bn.
|
| 3. In the past it has been reported that YouTube has been
| breakeven from a profitability perspective.
|
| This means that YouTube's net profit is in the range of 0 to 5bn
| USD. This is at best a gross profit margin of 17% which is not
| good for an internet services company.
|
| I strongly believe technology like NewPipe should exist and
| companies shouldn't push for more DRM. But end users should not
| misuse open technologies so much so that companies end up with no
| other option but E2E encryption for video.
| mulmen wrote:
| Nah. Fuck Google. We're better off without them. Their shitty
| behavior is why adblockers exist.
| namrog84 wrote:
| I wonder if a torrent style equivalent for bandwidth sharing
| for things like YouTube content creators could work. Like you
| get ads unless you seed enough and then no ads when you
| consume.
|
| I think it'd only work as a near seamless ui experience and not
| actually using torrents or any extra setup or complications.
| Probably branded a bit differently.
| hsbauauvhabzb wrote:
| Bandwidth costs money, YouTube can probably do it cheaper
| than end users at scale. But this isn't about reduced
| bandwidth expenses, this is about maximising profit
| extraction.
| davkan wrote:
| The problem with p2p for video is that the storage and
| bandwidth requirements are enormous most platform consumers
| are using mobile devices with limited storage and bandwidth
| which would have difficulty contributing to the network.
|
| Maybe some type of appliance one could run out of their home
| to buy in or something? But a lot of home users have terrible
| upload or no internet at all.
|
| Peertube is great but could never keep up with the sheer
| volume of data uploaded to YouTube.
| Animats wrote:
| Installable via F-Droid, always a good sign.
| FrenchyJiby wrote:
| Absolutely, though the default F-Droid repo is a little slow to
| update (in case of the twice-a-year "Youtube changed their UI,
| breaking the world" update), so Newpipe team recommends their
| own (third party) F-Droid repo[1], where the updates are fresh
| off the press.
|
| [1]: https://newpipe.net/FAQ/tutorials/install-add-fdroid-repo/
| scotty79 wrote:
| I had trouble switching to alternative clients because I rely on
| algorithmic feed for new content. However I have a perfect
| application for NewPipe. I like to run it quietly in the
| background as I fall asleep. Murmur of a voice too quiet to
| understand helps me sleep. Ads were making that use case
| impossible.
|
| Another use case is downloading music I like. I used YouTube for
| music discovery an ingestion. Now after I find something good I
| go to NewPipe and dowlnoad it as local audio file and enjoy it
| like it's good old times of napster and mp3-s.
| Unfrozen0688 wrote:
| Another reason why Android is the superior phone OS.
| miki123211 wrote:
| iOS has Yattee[1].
|
| It's technically a personal video-watching app, not a Youtube
| app, which you're supposed to link with your own personal video
| server, but the server APIs it is compatible with are the same
| APIs that are exposed by Invidious and Newpipe instances. This
| is not a coincidence.
|
| I'm sure Apple is going to delist it from the App Store at some
| point (App Store guidelines are just that, guidelines, and
| there's no getting around them with a weird loophole like you
| can do with actual laws), but it works for now.
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