[HN Gopher] NewPipe 0.26
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       NewPipe 0.26
        
       Author : rc00
       Score  : 189 points
       Date   : 2023-12-22 10:14 UTC (12 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (github.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
        
       | ravenstine wrote:
       | So glad this finally adds support for the "Live" tab on channels!
        
       | 2Gkashmiri wrote:
       | i use https://github.com/polymorphicshade/NewPipe which is super
       | amazing. sadly the PR to implement sponsorblock in the main
       | newpipe was worked on for almost a year but unfortunately the
       | youtube-dl fiasco happened around the same time and that spooked
       | the devs who refused to import the PR.
       | 
       | That forced the PR author to set up the fork which is working
       | surprisingly well. People were imagining that the fork would not
       | survive but i have been using it since day 1 and can't imagine
       | newpipe or libretube without sponsorblock.
        
         | wanderingmind wrote:
         | +1 for sponsor block fork. Its available through Izzydroid repo
         | [1] that can be added to F-droid. The author should release it
         | soon as well. Its amazing how well it works
         | 
         | [1]
         | https://apt.izzysoft.de/fdroid/index/apk/org.polymorphicshad...
        
           | faust201 wrote:
           | Izzysoft is doing valuable effort.
        
         | soulofmischief wrote:
         | Just curious, because my intuition is that anyone who finds
         | sponsorblock to be crucial is likely consuming a decent bid of
         | media... What are your strategies for compensating the creators
         | you enjoy?
        
           | faust201 wrote:
           | Many people are patreon or other subscribers. Not needed to
           | watch ads. I would rather pay than waste my bandwidth while
           | on train.
        
             | soulofmischief wrote:
             | I do support creators on patreon, but I find it is too
             | expensive to scale to every creator whose content I enjoy.
             | 
             | I wish there was a tip jar under each video and that it
             | integrated with alternative frontends such as NewPipe, but
             | I also don't want to hear "don't forget to like and
             | subscribe, make sure to hit the bell, and consider leaving
             | a tip" in every single video.
        
               | autoexec wrote:
               | > but I also don't want to hear "don't forget to like and
               | subscribe, make sure to hit the bell, and consider
               | leaving a tip" in every single video.
               | 
               | I don't know why youtube forces people do that, but it'd
               | be nice if they fixed their algorithm so that it wasn't
               | needed.
        
           | 2Gkashmiri wrote:
           | compensation for what?
           | 
           | paint me ignorant but you read dozens of articles linked on
           | HN daily. I do too, how many times have you compensated them?
           | 
           | people who blog for fun, or have a hobby or whatever.
           | tomorrow they start streaming or recording and whatever so
           | why should i compensate them?
           | 
           | why are we normalizing the idea that someone can suddenly
           | start a youtube channel and now its the "responsibility" of
           | subscribers to feed them?
           | 
           | its not a zero sum game. i understand that but the current
           | model works or not, i dont know because i do not contribute.
        
           | Jenk wrote:
           | None. They put their content out on a platform that does not
           | require my contribution. YouTube was, and is, never about
           | "compensating content creators" and I am under no obligation
           | to do so, but they get paid anyway. Some get paid to add a
           | segment from a sponsor, I choose to automatically skip that
           | segment, but they still got paid for putting it in anyway.
           | 
           | Would I watch it if they were behind a subscription fee? No.
        
           | autoexec wrote:
           | I don't use sponcerblock, but I do download all youtube
           | videos before watching them and I manually fast forward past
           | the ads. I'm sure that doesn't help them either.
           | 
           | As others have stated there's no obligation to give youtubers
           | your time/attention/money/engagement, but when you've found a
           | channel you enjoy it's natural to want to help them continue
           | to put out good content.
           | 
           | Ultimately though my options for supporting youtubers are
           | limited, because I'm not signing into youtube so I can't even
           | comment/like/subscribe/ring bells or whatever else most
           | people do.
           | 
           | I have in the past donated to youtubers directly. Mostly
           | though I support them by spreading the word and watching
           | their videos. Maybe one of the people I show the channel to
           | will comment and hit the like button and buy a billion nord
           | VPN subscriptions.
        
         | theNewMicrosoft wrote:
         | Another fork with SponsorBlock support plus a few extra video
         | platforms is the bravenewpipe
         | 
         | https://github.com/bravenewpipe/NewPipe
        
       | kzrdude wrote:
       | Newpipe has always unreliable and prone to not working for me,
       | unfortunately. Crashes. Youtube import gives just 4 subscriptions
       | while I have hundreds and so on.
        
         | the_third_wave wrote:
         | Did you send crash reports, report the problem with the missing
         | subscriptions, maybe even have a go at finding the cause if you
         | happen to be versed in the technology? I've never seen it crash
         | [1] on any of my devices so I can add that piece of anecdata to
         | yours. I'm not a heavy Newpipe user since I run my own
         | Invidious instance which offers close to the same functionality
         | (minus playing in the background since that needs to be
         | implemented on the device while Invidious is a web service) but
         | for those times I do use Newpipe it works well. On those odd
         | instances it doesn't load the video the solution tends to be an
         | upgrade away.
         | 
         | [1] as in 'the app crashes', not 'the video does not play', the
         | former is a crash while the latter is an incompatibility with
         | Youtube and tends to be solved by upgrading Newpipe.
        
           | Sakos wrote:
           | It crashed multiple times daily when I tried it a few months
           | back. Same thing on my partner's phone.
        
           | kzrdude wrote:
           | I feel bad now for posting something negative, it's just a
           | spontaneous report of me trying to use it. Since I've never
           | successfully stepped over to using it and become a user, I
           | don't report bugs either. I've simply been curious to try,
           | but content with youtube (mobile web version)
        
         | csydas wrote:
         | Can you elaborate ont he crashes more? when i still had an
         | android phone newpipe was the only app i actively enjoyed using
         | because it was just reliable and simple. the only issues i ever
         | had were the same everyone had when youtube broke the
         | functionality and usually there was a dev build ready in a few
         | hours with a patch and then a proper update pretty shortly
         | after on the main app. but i never used it to sign in to
         | youtube so might be a difference. i specifically chose newpipe
         | because i didn't need to deal with google's nonsense when using
         | it
        
           | interloxia wrote:
           | I have had a lot of ui crashes unrelated to YouTube over the
           | years. Perhaps similar to the f-droid client. Not enough that
           | it's unusable, mostly, but enough to try to avoid it either
           | by suffering through ads or using an alternative.
           | 
           | For example, this release fixes a foreground service crash
           | that made background play unusable for me for a while.
        
           | pydry wrote:
           | I had a lot more crashes until I started using the official
           | newpipe repository. The fdroid version lags by a few days.
           | 
           | I think it should just be taken off fdroid.
        
           | autoexec wrote:
           | I'm using an old version (2.5.2) and just opening a video
           | will cause an error ("Sorry, something went wrong" banner)
           | but the video still plays so I don't care. rarely the whole
           | thing will crash, but I've only seen that after hours of
           | abuse (hundreds of videos viewed/downloaded)
           | 
           | The only other problem I regularly see are queued downloads
           | being suddenly/silently deleted which is frustrating because
           | you have to try to remember what it was you'd queued up.
           | Maybe that's been fixed already?
        
         | ksjskskskkk wrote:
         | every single newpipe problem is google actively breaking them.
         | 
         | every time it crashed failing to parse some video is even more
         | reason to use it!
        
           | vanderZwan wrote:
           | I mean, I'm sure there's also still plain old bugs from human
           | error in there.
           | 
           | But yes, if it breaks on YT specifically it's almost always
           | due to YT.
        
         | FireInsight wrote:
         | I used Newpipe first after degoogling, then switch to Libretube
         | for the supposed privacy benefits. App looked a bit better too
         | and crashed often, but way too often there were problems with
         | connecting the Piped instances it was using for streaming and
         | it was laggy and slowly. Newpipe, conversely, when it works, is
         | fast. Sometimes it crashes repeatedly but the problems are
         | usually resolved quickly. Streaming is good quality and fast.
        
         | tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
         | I really hope "Fix app not responding, background app crashes
         | and issues with starting the player" actually addresses the
         | issue. Getting an ANR popup and having to either dismiss it
         | every 15 seconds or kill the app, search again for your video,
         | and hope it doesn't happen again is a horrible experience.
         | 
         | The only other experience-breaking issue I ran into is lack of
         | support for multiple language tracks, which also seems fixed :)
        
         | iforgotpassword wrote:
         | I've switched to it maybe two months ago and use it in
         | foreground and background mode, tried pip mode once or twice.
         | But I'm using it almost every day. I had maybe four or five
         | crashes so far, nothing that comes even close to the annoyance
         | of YouTube's ad rate nowadays.
        
           | imglorp wrote:
           | Solid for me.
           | 
           | Also it's not just the ad rate but also the recommendation
           | drek: it's hard to follow subscriptions even, in the yt app
           | or Web client.
        
           | kzrdude wrote:
           | Why I cope with youtube: adblocker ensures no ads and addon
           | enables background play. Firefox on Android.
        
             | ekianjo wrote:
             | Newpipe is much nicer in interface than youtube in firefox
        
               | kzrdude wrote:
               | With the new version I think it's a contender. Now the
               | playlists per channel are available, which is essential.
        
             | iforgotpassword wrote:
             | I didn't really like having YouTube be just another tab in
             | my browser on mobile, it seemed too clunky. So until I
             | switched, I didn't want to bother with 3rd party apps,
             | since the experience a few years ago was horrible (forgot
             | which ones I tried though).
             | 
             | Also I had that little bit of respect to support creators
             | by not blocking ads. But when there's two unskippable 15
             | second ads before a 7 second shitpost video, at some point
             | enough is enough.
             | 
             | So while I mostly just switched because of the ads, what
             | really was a huge improvement to me was how every time I
             | tap a YouTube link now (messenger, browser, mail), I get a
             | nice pop-up from NewPipe asking whether I want to play it
             | right away in the app, play it right away but just audio in
             | the background, or enqueue it (if something's already
             | playing). It's a small detail but it's such an improvement
             | over "just interrupt the current video without asking".
        
         | lupusreal wrote:
         | Yt-dlp is still the gold standard, but in my experience
         | newpipe's reliability has improved in the past year or two.
        
           | opan wrote:
           | Gonna piggyback off this comment to say that although this
           | sounds barely relevant (cli tool vs android app) at a glance,
           | you can actually use both yt-dlp and mpv in termux for
           | playing audio on android as well. If you throw a comment at
           | the end of the mpv command with artist/song-name then it's
           | very fast to find with the ctrl-r reverse shell history
           | search. Arguably faster than opening Newpipe and checking
           | your history or playlists. Speaking of playlists, you could
           | have .m3u files of URLs for mpv to play in termux as well.
        
         | orangepurple wrote:
         | Start the app and play something through one bluetooth device.
         | Pause, then connect to another bluetooth device. App won't play
         | videos and bugs out.
        
       | trulyrandom wrote:
       | I remember there being talks of a complete rewrite of Newpipe.
       | Did anything come of that? I'm a happy user, so I don't really
       | have an opinion on whether it should happen or not.
        
         | the-scrabi wrote:
         | Schabi here: The team wants to start the rewrite in 2024 after
         | 0.26.0 got released. The reson for the rewrite: Codebase got
         | hard to maintin so we need to refactor. Also android changed
         | the UI style and the UI frameworks a lot. We want to stay up to
         | date with that.
        
           | sureglymop wrote:
           | How does one get involved? Are contributors welcome? - I know
           | Kotlin and Jetpack Compose much better than the old ways of
           | Android UIs though.
        
             | the-scrabi wrote:
             | Yes. Contributors are abaoloutly welcome, and Jetpack and
             | Kotlin is exactly what we are looking for. However we need
             | to prepare and sort out things before we can start. Stay
             | put and follow our blog to find out when we begin:
             | https://newpipe.net/blog
        
           | russdill wrote:
           | Pretty happy 0.26.0 went out first. There's a lot of big
           | changes and fixes in there that really are huge steps forward
           | in the app.
        
       | poulpy123 wrote:
       | Newpipe is one of the best app I have on my phone. Congrats to
       | the dev
        
         | Erratic6576 wrote:
         | I'm looking forward to having it on iOS. EU! Eu all the Way
        
           | Zambyte wrote:
           | I missed something - is the EU forcing Apple to let people
           | use the phones they buy? If so, how?
        
             | beeboobaa wrote:
             | Digital Markets Act
        
               | rjzzleep wrote:
               | As of now, it looks more like a maybe, or am I wrong?
        
           | treyd wrote:
           | That's going to be a long way off since it's a Java project
           | and fairly well integrated into Android's APIs.
        
             | nani8ot wrote:
             | NewPipe Extractor [1] can be used independently, e.g. the
             | piped web front-end [2] also uses it.
             | 
             | [1] https://github.com/TeamNewPipe/NewPipeExtractor
             | 
             | [2] https://github.com/TeamPiped/Piped
        
           | bluber84 wrote:
           | I'm quite unsure...so I'm asking the community here. Is this
           | a good newpipe distribution for iOS:
           | https://apps.apple.com/de/app/newpipe-music-
           | videos/id6450053...
        
           | 7839284023 wrote:
           | You can already use https://github.com/arichorn/uYouEnhanced
           | today on iOS.
        
       | dre85 wrote:
       | NewPipe is one of the best apps available on Android. The only
       | thing missing for me currently is Android Auto support.
        
         | nvrg wrote:
         | Very esoteric app, however I think Ymusic needs to be mentioned
         | whenever YT alternatives are brought up. It streams only the
         | MP3 of the video and the UI is cleaner imo - so it's easier to
         | use if you intend to only listen to "podcasts" or music as an
         | alternative to Spotify.
        
           | no-reply wrote:
           | Don't know about Ymusic as it doesn't seem open source, but
           | seal [0] seems like a good alternative, based on yt-dlp
           | 
           | 0: https://github.com/JunkFood02/Seal
        
           | crtasm wrote:
           | Sounds good. Newpipe can stream audio only too.
        
         | ForkMeOnTinder wrote:
         | This is just begging the question: surely you don't watch
         | videos while driving? And if you just want the audio, there are
         | music-focused YT apps (ViMusic, or like sibling said, YMusic)
        
           | explorigin wrote:
           | Newpipe has a built-in "Play in Background" feature that
           | would be awesome while driving. There are tons of podcast-
           | like content videos on YT that would be fine for a commute.
        
             | jcalve wrote:
             | It works in my car, I have it running in background mode
             | and I just select the media player in the car menu, no
             | Android auto needed.
        
       | mikae1 wrote:
       | Hail NewPipe! "Background" playback is just awesome and only
       | downloads the audio stream. Use it all the time for listening to
       | lectures and presentations as podcasts.
        
         | j1elo wrote:
         | I tried to do the same with music but for some reason the next
         | enqueued song has the tendency of going straight up to 20 min,
         | 60 min, 3 hour, 10 hour long videos.
         | 
         | Not sure why. But this was reliably repeatable. Starting from
         | any given song, I'd hit Next and before 5 to 10 videos I'd
         | already be in the 10hrs long spectrum.
         | 
         | Another thing that would also happen too frequently is that the
         | next suggested video gets locked on always different videos of
         | the same song. Once and again.
         | 
         | Without any way to limit video duration and some filter to skip
         | videos with a too similar name to the ones already played, it
         | was useless to me.
         | 
         | We could argue that that's just the next video suggested by
         | YouTube's server. But YouTube ReVanced, on the other hand,
         | doesn't exhibit any of those issues and starting from any song,
         | will enqueue a variety of mostly non-repeated, single-song
         | videos. Much better.
        
           | opan wrote:
           | Are you not putting specific videos into a playlist and then
           | playing the playlist? You make it sound like some sort of
           | magic is taking place adding videos you didn't personally
           | vet.
        
             | Novosell wrote:
             | It has autoplay, just like normal YouTube.
        
               | j1elo wrote:
               | Yeah, I meant the autoplay, aka. "Auto-queue next
               | stream":
               | 
               | https://newpipe.net/FAQ/tutorials/player-enable-autoplay/
        
         | unixhero wrote:
         | Youtube revanced does this too
         | 
         | Android rules
        
           | apapapa wrote:
           | On Firefox mobile, on the official YouTube.com website, if
           | you want to be able to play in the background, all you have
           | to do is request the desktop version of the site... Newpipe
           | is a better way though
        
             | rjzzleep wrote:
             | You can also use video background playback fix on both
             | firefox and orion on iOS.
             | 
             | https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/video-
             | backgro...
        
           | rajamaka wrote:
           | Brave browser on mobile too
        
         | GuB-42 wrote:
         | YouTube premium does that too, it did even when it was called
         | YouTube red. As well as hacked versions of the YouTube app that
         | always enable premium features.
         | 
         | What is nice with NewPipe is that it is independent from the
         | YouTube app.
        
       | darkwater wrote:
       | I use NewPipe regularly but unfortunately many videos play..
       | .weird, either skipping frames or pausing for a few milliseconds
       | and then going faster. I have a Pixel 6a so it's as stock Android
       | as you can get without using an AOSP based ROM...
       | 
       | OTOH on the desktop Freetube is basically 10 times better than
       | original Youtube under every aspect, and videos play perfectly.
       | Kudos to Freetube.
        
       | noman-land wrote:
       | NewPipe is overwhelmingly my most used app. It's simply amazing.
        
       | rzr wrote:
       | Is anyone happy of newpipe on android tv ?
       | 
       | On my freebox mini 4k (french ISP box) experience does not
       | improve over time, but I'll give a try on latest.
        
         | smusamashah wrote:
         | I have SmartTube on Android TV, been working perfectly over a
         | year now.
        
       | notesinthefield wrote:
       | I miss having an android phone for easy file system nav and
       | NewPipe. I hate having to pay YT just for background playback
        
         | 7839284023 wrote:
         | I assume you are using an iPhone now?
         | 
         | You could try e.g.: https://github.com/arichorn/uYouEnhanced +
         | https://github.com/powenn/AltServer-Linux-PyScript (or
         | alternatives)
         | 
         | I dislike that I have to sideload the app every week again or
         | it stops working but better than nothing I guess.
        
       | 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
       | Only use NewPipe for SoundCloud. Quite stable for that. For
       | YouTube it's a waste of time, IMHO. Constantly breaking, IME.
       | Command line utilties for interacting with YouTube I wrote for
       | myself are much more stable and almost never break. (Maybe once
       | every few years. And fixed the same day by me.)
        
         | autoexec wrote:
         | 100% of my youtube use on mobile is via newpipe and I love it.
         | On the desktop it's all command line, but I can't agree that
         | newpipe is a waste of time.
         | 
         | One of the features new pipe offers that I only started using
         | is the ability to "subscribe" to channels. I never log into
         | youtube, so subscriptions are client side only. They're
         | basically just a list of bookmarks, but newpipe can also go out
         | and pull down a listing of new videos from the channels I'm
         | subscribed to and i can categorize those channels into groups.
         | It's extremely useful!
         | 
         | Newpipe does occasionally stop working, but it's been many
         | months since it last happened. When it does happen, it's never
         | newpipe's fault. Blame google (who sometimes intentionally
         | tries to break things), but when that happens the command line
         | usually still works and updates are pretty fast.
         | 
         | My only complaint really is that sometimes new pipe will clear
         | a long list of queued downloads. I'm not sure what triggers it,
         | but it can be difficult to go back and track down what was
         | queued up. For all I know, that's been fixed in this new update
        
       | SpaghettiCthulu wrote:
       | I've recently started using [Grayjay](https://grayjay.app/). It's
       | not open source, but it is source available and individuals are
       | allowed to modify the code to their liking. I've found that it
       | crashes more often than NewPipe, but the vastly expanded
       | features, more frequent updates, and improved performance
       | fetching subscriptions are all worth it imo.
        
       | DrNosferatu wrote:
       | Also, checkout NewPipe with built in SponsorBlock functionality:
       | https://github.com/polymorphicshade/NewPipe
        
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       (page generated 2023-12-22 23:02 UTC)