Just like the title says; I’m interested in being able to sleep to YouTube without ads, but I don’t fuck with their business practices and they don’t deserve my money. Unfortunately, I’m also a very inexperienced pirate and I’m unsure where to look.
Edit: for clarity I’m using a OnePlus 7 Pro with earbuds
Revanced on mobile phone, Smart tube next on TV.
If on Android, NewPipe is a great app. Blocks all ads and let’s you create playlists and stuff.
Firefox mobile with Ublock add-on installed is good too.
This. Unlike ReVanced that requires a bunch of hacks* to work, Newpipe is easy to simply download and install.
Has all the features premium youtube has, and unlike Vanced, it uses Youtube’s API to serve the content, which means Google can’t shut them down (They tried, and lost the case).
Because Newpipe simply doesn’t use the advertisement API, you’ll never* see ads in Newpipe.
HOWEVER. Please keep in mind Newpipe is currently in spaghetti code form, and that means fixing a bug causes more to appear. They’re working on a complete rewrite, aka Newpipe 2, but it’ll take a while. In the meantime, you may encounter some issues if you’re on the road for example.
I’ve had Newpipe shit itself almost always while biking, due to constant mobile connection tower changes. For those errors you need to open the app up again, and press play. It unfortunately doesn’t respond to bluetooth play/stop signals in that state.
Have you tried Revanced Manager? I’m not rooted and can pretty much just download the proper version from apkmirror, select it from storage, and run the patch and then install it.
What issues do you have with ReVanced? It works great! The only thing that’s kind of a pain in the ass is that if you’re rooted using KernelSU, you have to repatch the app every time you reboot. Fortunately I usually only reboot once a month when the new OTA gets released for my phone.
I’ve had issues that I’ve been able to work around.
I have previously had the error, “settings could not be applied”, which I worked around by uninstalling my YouTube updates, installing the recommended version and clearing revanced manager data. I now get an error about not being able to load the original APK. I work around this by deleting the two apks in /data/abd/vanced before patching.
I’m rooted and have to repatch on each reboot. Not complaining, just want to share my experience in case it helps others.
I love revanced, and feel so thankful for it. I can’t afford YT premium, without revanced I would miss out on so much great content.
Sounds very much like my experience: a wonderful project, but not without its flaws that are kind of annoying, but not a big deal for the price. :)
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If you’re willing to sacrifice the perks of using YT with a Google account (commenting, uploading videos, history and playlists saved in cloud, paid content, mostly anything else that might require an account), then I’d recommend NewPipe (especially the fork that incorporates SponsorBlock).
Despite the sacrifices, you don’t actually need Play Services in order to use the app, and the playlists/history stuff is made up by storing that locally in your device. It’s FOSS under GPL, too!
It also lets you watch other stuff that isn’t on YT (Soundcloud, CCC, Bandcamp, PeerTube and most likely others that I forgot), and even lets you download the stuff on them!
I’m looking for a browser on Android which will let me use Ublock Origin and NoScript.
For now I use Brave and a DNS filter on my mobile, it works well for YouTube
I use vanadium and adblocking on VPN , DNS adblock works as well. Bromite is a good option as well. The thing about putting Firefox on android for privacy/security reasons have a big issue , webview is chromium based . So basically you just get Firefox on top of everything webview has.
Ignore ReVanced, go for LibreTube. It uses Piped in the backend to access YouTube, and it’s got a really nice user interface on Android.
It also automatically blocks ads, skips sponsored segments, supports downloads, PiP, background playing, subscriptions, comments, live videos.
It doesn’t rely on shady alternative G services running in the background, doesn’t need you to modify any official APKs, it’s open source, and you can customize elements you want or do not want to see from YouTube. Give it a go.
EDIT: And here are some bonuses it’s got over alternatives: customizable sleep timers, channel groups, subscriptions synced automatically with your desktop browser (via Piped), the ability to proxy and reroute your traffic to YouTube, full Shorts support, live comments for broadcasts.
The problem is that LibreTube, NewPipe and others do not login or sync with your account. I really miss being able to save a video to my watch later playlist on my desktop, and later on watch it on my phone and it’ll be marked as watched everywhere
