Youtube - like apps like piped.video, but as Android app?

bremen15@feddit.de to Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ@lemmy.dbzer0.com – 45 points –

I am looking for for an app that registers as a YouTube endpoint, but has no ads and tracking (or backdoors). I had one (forgot the name) which stopped working. Please advice.

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You need ReVanced app, that's new incarnation of Vanced app that ceased to work

Pretty sure that Revanced still has google tracking since its a patched version of the official app.

Also if anyone here intends to use it: Please be careful. The real revenced site (www.revanced.app) has awfull SEO and usualy appears way below fake websites (that sometimes spread malware). The only real websites are revanced.app and the github.

Also you have to patch the app yourself for copyright reasons so don't trust and websites that offer a direct apk of revanced (the real website offers a manager app that you can use to patch the official app)

Revanced instructions (official Youtube app, but with adblocking, sponsorblock and other nice improvements).

  1. Uninstall Youtube (or disable if not possible)
  2. https://github.com/ReVanced/revanced-manager/releases
  3. Install
  4. Open, go to "Patcher", find "Youtube" and download the specified recommended version from https://www.apkmirror.com/
  5. Patch it, install it.
  6. Install MicroG if you want to use your Google account with it: https://github.com/TeamVanced/VancedMicroG/releases
  7. Launch your installed youtube app. You will need to login from within the app if you are using MicroG.

Also you have to patch the app yourself

I thought I read someone was providing "clean" patched APKs now?

Google might go after pathed apks, but you can't go after patches (which isn't apk).

EDIT: Google actually went after patched Vanced apk and got it off the internet. ReVanced was born afterwards shortly :)

Newpipe + Sponsorblock is a really good option.

This is what I use. Great once you've properly customized it.

Can you share some specifics on what you've customized?

Removed the trending tab, made my tabs "What's New" "Subscriptions" "Bookmarks" and "History". Made a few categories in the Subscriptions tab to sort specific channel types into different feeds. Bunch of minor tweaks to the video player/SponsorBlock settings. Honestly I recommend just taking the time to go through all the settings to configure it exactly how you want.

NewPipe, NewPipe + Sponsorblock, PipePipe and LibreTube are pretty much all of them.

Libretube works off piped servers and has multiple instances listed ready for use. It includes Sponsorblock and has a beautiful UI. It's slightly buggy sometimes but if you can deal with that it's the best.

Clipious for Invidious based, but it's not as good as Libretube Newpipe for Piped, but it's direct and reveals your IP to YT and has bad UI Libretube for Piped, but it's a bit buggy at times.

Libretube is what you are looking for. It uses piped api. It's also available on F-droid.

Newpipe or Newpipe X Sponsorblock is also a good option.

Newpipe X Sponsorblock

Wow, this is great. Are there any downsides of using this vs using regular NewPipe? Like updates delays etc.?

Delay is usually 1-2 days. You can have both installed in parallel.

There are two majore options, Newpipe and Libretube. To summ it up, Piped uses the Newpipe extractor which is the backend of Newpipe and Libretube uses Piped to put a server in between and mask your IP, both are great!

I am amazed why no one has said Clipious.

It uses Invidious instances, and if you enable the proxy option, Google won't even get to know your IP address, which is not the case with apps like LibreTube and NewPipe.

Libretube uses Piped so it is the case with that one too...

New Pipe unofficial fork with Sponsor Block if you want to skip ads

I don't bother with an app. I have found that FF with ublock works best for me on Android.