SmartTube - an advanced player for set-top boxes and tv running Android OS

Jeena@jemmy.jeena.net to Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ@lemmy.dbzer0.com – 423 points – GitHub - yuliskov/SmartTubeNext: SmartTube - an advanced player for set-top boxes and tv running Android OS
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I've already been paying for YouTube Premium for many years to get rid of advertisement, and I've been using SponsorBlock for a year or so on my laptop to skip the inline ads, but because most of my watching of YouTube happens on the TV I always had to use the remote to skip it. It helps to see the "most rewind" area so you can fast forward to it, but it's still very cumbersome.

Now a couple of days someone mentioned SmartTube on Lemmy and I installed it on my Chromecast with Google TV OS and oh boy is this software great! I did it to get SponsorBlock, but that is by far not the only feature I love about it.

  • flexible time hiding the UI of a video (have it to 1 sec now)
  • not showing UI when pausing
  • way faster scrolling
  • instant loading
  • way faster account switching
  • instant voice search

But there is one feature missing, changing the search language. We speak combined 7 languages at home and it's impossible to search anything other than in English which is really annoying.

Anyway, check it out if you can on your TV.

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Yes it's brilliant, and very useful especially if you want to browse a different timeline on a different account or just use it anonymously.

It's mind blowing how well built the settings are.

SmartTube is what the YouTube app should be. I've been using it for I think 2 years now and it works like a charm, is super stable, offers loads of customization options, and the interface is better and more complete than the official app. Truly a must have for any Android tv box.

I fuckin love how it auto skips the sponsored bullshit. I have no idea how it knows even when it's seamlessly part of a video but it does. It's witchcraft and I love it!

Works on desktop and ReVanced also. It's community driven! I've seen tiny videos get fully timestampped within about 10 minutes of publishing. People are very active on the project.

https://github.com/ajayyy/SponsorBlock

Look at these stats!

It's insane to me that I can click on a video that was posted by a creator with under 10k subscribers, less than 15 minutes ago, and it already has dozens of votes for submitted segments.

And some videos, people go waaaaay out for segments, little 2 second skips for subscribe reminders, while blocks rendered down into 5 types of segments so depending on your settings, you might get some of it, or you might get just the meat of the content with no fluff or filler.

I LOVE the "interaction" skip on some content creators, because they like to address the audience unnecessarily trying to drive comment interaction up. I totally get why they do that, and I respect their decision, but I also have no intention of commenting on 90% of videos, so asking "what do YOU think? Head down to the comments and..." will get nothing from me, but might from someone else. And now I can skip those.

Re/vanced and now this have been the best things about YouTube since like 2007.

Oh those are interesting stats, especially the 338k Firefox vs 1M Chrome users, so basically 25% of SponsorBlock users are Firefox users, while Firefox has 3% market share.

Sponsorblock is a browser add on and it’s crowdsourced, also try DeArrow for crowdsourced titles and thumbnails

I kind of need a whitelist of channels where I want to see the ads, like Jay Foreman.

Sponsor Block (the Firefox extension) gives you a ton of customizability. You don't have to have it auto skip, you can make it so a tiny bubble pops up asking if you want to skip or not. Or you can even just have it highlight it on the seek bar and nothing else.

Awesome, I've been running SmartTube on a Sony Android TV for a bit. Works really well, almost seamless. Regular updates appear via the Telegram chat too. SmartTube coupled with YT Pro for phone is a perfect combination.

For the phone there is also ReVanced, but it's not as nice as SmartTube, but does the job to SponsorBlock.

I find YT Pro to be more polished. It uses MicroG and is closed source which can put some people off, but I've had nil issues.

I wonder why SmartTube doesn't work on phones and tablets? I've looked into ReVanced but I can't figure out the whole process. SmartTube is just an apk.

Just installed it, I've been crying about not having sponsorblock on my chromecast. Works a charm, thank you!

Been using since few days on my first gen fire stick. Feels like another world completely. No more bloated YouTube app and MUCH faster

The only feature missing is the streaming from the phone

You can cast videos from your phone, you just have to connect it somewhere in the settings (can't really check right now but I'm sure I've used it)

I tried but it opened the YouTube app instead

I haven't tried it with the official YouTube app, but in YouTube revanced, there is a "watch on tv" settings that would let you pair with SmartTube. This would turn the cast button from casting to Chromecast to casting to SmartTube, though you'll need to have SmartTube running first.

In Smarttube, go into settings and link device or something similar (edit: remote control). On your phone, go into settings and link TV and input the code Smarttube will give you.

It acts more as a remote, you need to have Smarttube already opened. It's not perfect, it's a decent compromise.

On my Android box running SmartTube, I can cast to it a few seconds after it's booted up. No need to open the app first.

Sounds like the devices aren't properly connected yet. In the settings of the SmartTube app, go to Remote Control to find the numbers you need in order to connect to SmartTube. Then, in the YouTube app (unmodded or Revanced) on your phone, hit the Cast-button, then "Connect with TV-code". Enter the code, and you're ready to cast. Next time you want to cast a video, just hit the Cast-button and select the device with its name ending in "(SmartTube)".

ohh totally gonna try and get this installed on my friends tv!

I also installed https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=flar2.homebutton to be able to remap the YouTube button on the Chromecast remote to SmartTube.

I guess it's time to get the SmartTube icon on the remote too 😂

Has Remapper been updated to fix the volume control glitch? Last time I used Remapper the volume would be uncontrollable. Without it, pressing the volume up key would only go up 2-3 units on my tv. If I used the volume up button with Remapper running it would scroll all the way up to max volume with a single press...

Volume control seems to work fine for me.

Cool. It's been about a year since I tried it so I'll have another whack at it tomorrow. That will be so awesome. My Chromecast will be complete. Smart tube on one button and either Stremio or HDOBox on the other...

Just tested it out and still get the runaway volume. Did some testing and it seems to happen with some other services activated so a Chromecast problem not a Remapper problem... I'll play again tomorrow...

Never heard of HDO Box. Is it good? Do I need a debrid subscription in order to use it?

No Debrid required. Recommend VPN obviously.

Put it this way: I put it on my 70yo mother's tab for her when I cancelled the family Netflix plan...

Have a look at it. You can link in your Trakt account And they have a Discord and a Telegram for keeping an eye on updates. Can currently sideload on to iPhone and hoping to make it available on Apple appstore in the future. Available on Android obviously. No PC port unless you want to mess with an Android emulator...

https://hdo.app

Also, resolved my volume problem. Had the Chromecast set to CEC mode instead of device volume.

Thank you very much for this, finally managed to disable and rebind some remote buttons for apps that Ive already nuked off the TV. Works great with some workarounds.

I... didn't know I needed this. Remapped the YT and Netflix buttons, with single and double taps. The remote is now exactly the remote I need for my Chromecast.

Been using this on a FireTv 4k stick for a few years. The youtube on it was one of the few places my house where my adblocking dns didnt work. SmartTube is just perfect.

This is so good I bought a cheapo tv box just to run Smart Tube

I have a box in the mail, was going to install newpipe, but gonna try SmartTube instead.

But be aware that those two apps do vastly different things. One is trying to save your privacy by hiding you behind a wall of other users, the other one is just a different frontend for the YouTube API.

I really like the app, but I wish it would let me load ads on creators I wanna support, I realize it's worth less then peanuts, but if it could allow only 30s ads or less that would be perfect for me

Sign up to their patreon or buy their merch. They'll get a bigger cut that way.

Just open your favorite creator on the main app or through your browser with AdBlock off

that is a terrible UX lol, the main youtube app for TV is absolute dogwater, it's slow and it even crashes fairly often. im not going to swap apps for this. browser is even worse

Oh I agree that it's terrible, and that's what you should be expecting with ads, as a majority of the money goes towards funding the terrible YouTube experience. If you really want to support your content creators, send them money directly. $5 directly to them will improve their lives more than 3¢. If you don't want to go as far as directly funding them, try patreon even.

If you are that concerned why not just run a playlist of their videos on desktop in the background with the tab muted and Adblock off while you do other things.

I'd love to find something like this for the SamsungOS tvs, or at least a locally hosted alternative adblocker. I get 3-4 ads per 10 minute video now and it's endlessly frustrating.

One idea for the language problem. It needs a little bit of tinkering. Grab the apk and alter the package name. Than you can install multiple instances side by side. You could install one instance for each language. Probably necessary to alter the app name as well so you can distinguish between the different versions.

I've been using this app for years and sometimes it's almost super stable. Sometimes things don't load and an update or restart is required to fix it.

The only trouble I have is sometimes it can’t parse updates so I have to try again later

I'd love to use it on my smartphone as well... problem is the interface was designed to react only to directional buttons, not to touch inputs. I wonder if somebody can manage to add the ability in the source code?

Newpipe is pretty effective for me on Android.

My only issue with Newpipe is that I can't sync my "watch later" list with Google's servers. That, and I can't reply to comments straight from the app. Otherwise I'd probably be using either that or Piped.

That makes sense, comments are an issue with NewPipe. Please open an issue on the NewPipe GitHub about that and the watch-later list.

The functionality will only get added if users ask for it. The idea for NewPipe in the beginning was a light-weight YouTube frontend with offline subscriptions ( i.e. no need to login ). Bits and bobs got added as and when user requests came in.

For the phone the easiest way is NewPipe with Sponsorblock https://github.com/polymorphicshade/NewPipe

One step above it , slightly more involved is ,YouTube-Revanced. The step by step walkthrough is in this thread, no command line stuff just follow the steps religiously. https://www.reddit.com/r/revancedapp/comments/xlcny9/_/

Currently using Revanced, I'm hoping to see a way to actually integrate my Google account with something else, in a similar manner to what SmartTube is somehow allowed to do.

I love finding and using other people’s wonderful creations.

I got an Apple TV, and found a SponsorBlock script i can run from my media server that polls the tv for what YouTube content I’m watching, and automatically skips ads for me. It’s so seamless, I don’t even realize it’s doing it most of the time.

I've been using it for a few months on my Nvidia Shield and the only two problems I have with it are the audio and video desync when skipping segments (rewinding one step resyncs it though) and the content on the Suggested Videos/Home page sucks, it doesn't seem to offer the same recommendations that the YouTube equivalent does.

Other than that, it's great to not have to manually skip the Sponsor segments.