Alternative to NewPipe SponsorBlock

TheCopiedCovenant@lemmy.cafe to Android@lemmy.world – 51 points –

I love the app, but as of late it's crashing and getting network errors All. The. Time. I'm kinda done bearing through it waiting for it to be fixed. The official app has the same issues.

Any alternatives, preferably with SponsorBlock and YouTube Dislike integrated?

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LibreTube

Libretube is good. But it still in beta. Sometimes videos just don't play. So i have Newpipe installed as a backup.

i just started using it because of the new pipe crashes, its great.

I'm not sure how piped will be able to handle all the traffic when it gets more popular.

As far as I understand it - piped proxies the traffic between youtube and yourself.

And libretube uses piped in the backend. So all traffic has to go through the piped servers. Not sure if they will be able to scale this up...

Gonna have to add to the people shouting out Revanced. It has both sponsorblock and dislike options.

I'd say Revanced is still a bit more irritating to setup and sometimes has weird errors though.

Libretube - trust me

This is the one. It honestly works better than the first party YT app

I've been giving libretube a shot for the last 3 weeks and uninstalled it a few days ago, half the time videos wouldn't play or would just stop mid video or a video I knew was posted wasn't showing up in search or the channels page.

I had these problems to but everytime i have a problem i just changed instance works everytime

I use ReVanced and love it. Works great, though you do need to do some fiddling to set it up. Once it's installed, though, it's just regular YouTube with all the bullshit stripped out. You can even remove features you don't like, like the Shorts page or the Cast button. And it's got patches for SponsorBlock and Return YouTube Dislike.

Was thinking to install either ReVanced or LibreTube but I'm not sure if using Google account with ReVanced will get you banned? They say that MircoG prevents that, but where there actually any cases of people getting banned?

I have used Vanced and now Revanced for many years and not had a problem with that

What kind of fiddling? I just installed it from the playstore and it seems to be working fine.

...what exactly did you install? I'd be very weary of installing anything other than official builds from their website/GitHub.

It'd be a good way to get your Google account stolen.

If your unrooted it involves downloading the APK and patching it with the manager. Can take a little to figure out what patches work or not. Luckily they recently added 'recommended' patches to make that a bit easier. It was a bit of a roll of the dice prior

I personally didn't really find it fiddly, though there are a couple more steps involved than just downloading any old app off the play store. I just followed the instructions (download the recommended YouTube version APK for the revanced version, download revanced manager, install with the utilities you want, voilà). I did find adding an external application to download videos directly through the app a tiny bit more difficult but not too bad. Keep in mind this is from the point of view of someone that is kinda tech-savvy though.

I tried explaining it in simple terms to a few non-tech-savvy friends and they said it sounded "too complicated." and they'd rather just deal with the ads than mess around with it.

Oh yeah that's fair, and to be honest explaining it verbally makes it sound a lot worse than it is. A video walkthrough or follow along to instructions is much better. "I'll tell you all the steps and it'll take max 5-10 minutes to set you up for life with a better free YouTube premium experience" sounds a lot better than "all you have to do is [list of 10 steps in technical terms]"

Which version are you using? Mine (0.25.2) is still working perfectly well.

OP might be using an old version of the app I think, I'm on the same version 0.25.2 and have no issues.

The previous version was broken AF though, used libretube to get through that period

Revanced or Revanced Extended but it requires mMicrog/Vanced MicroG and either Revanced Manager or Termux to compile the APKs.

Fennec fdroid with ublock, sponsorblock, and I haven't tried the dislike extension but it has pretty good chances of working.

You will probably have to make your own extensions collection on the extensions website.

Legitimately the main reason I prefer NewPipe is because the devs took a stand against Sponsorblock on ethical grounds. Blocking YouTube ads is one thing, actively hurting the content creators themselves is quite another.

Most content creators are just scraping by because Google doesn't pay them well. Every cent goes to them, without passing through google or harvesting your data. Those sponsorships protect creators in the event their video gets copyright strikes. They're skippable with literally a single click, maybe two. They are by far the least obstructive and invasive monetization they could possibly do. Going out of your way to download special forked software just to skip those few seconds of completely skippable video, it's not just shitty, it's petty.

Taking the moral high ground after already blocking ads, which are pay based on view as opposed to based on segment? Do sponsor pay more based on segment of the video that is watched?

I can see someone who pays from YouTube premium taking this stance, but it is odd making it as though only blocking ads is morally superior to sponsorblock. When both forms are not providing revenue I'm not sure this grandstanding has much weight.

Just FYI paying for Premium gives out money to creators - way more than they'd get if you just watched the ads.

I don't buy anything based on sponsorships, so my skipping them doesn't take any money from the creators.

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