I am looking for an alternative to the Youtube app. I heard a lot of recommendations about New Pipe but on F droid there are so many flavors. Which one to pick?
Newpipe is the ol reliable. The other forks tend to be maintained for a few months and then you need to go back to newpipe.
I’ve been enjoying pipepipe for a few months now, started off with new pipe but ended up freezing on me a few times with live streams
I recommend Tubular. It has all the features of NewPipe plus quality of life improvements such as SponsorBlock.
I have both Tubular and NP. I only ever use Tubular.
And you can also install it on TV unlike newpipe. I looked at alternatives, but didn’t like any better than tubular on tv, despite the clunky navigation/controls with remote.
I use SmartTube on my TV. It has a better TV UI imho.
I looked into it when I saw someone else mention it the other day, noped out when I saw the “Important announcement”
That issue has been fixed. The dev has learned from their mistake and taken steps to ensure it doesn’t happen again. It’s fine now.
I use NewPipe as my daily driver, but I also have PipePipe istalled for when Google’s bollocks are in twist again and they want to pester the 3rd party apps again. Usuallly one of them if less affected by yhe shenanigans than the other, or else it will be fixed in a couple hours. In the 3 years I’ve been using NewPjpe, the Longest I’ve been without a pipe-app is three days. It only happens once in a while, not more than 3 times a year, I’d guess. And most times it’s fixed within hours or the other app is still working.
I started with Tubular but switched over to PipePipe. They are barely distinguishable but PipePipe seems to have a bigger userbase and frequent updates. The reason I use them over NewPipe itself is that they have SponsorBlock integrated, which I view as a requirement for using YouTube.
NewPipe: original. no sponsor block or dislikes
Tubular: NewPipe but with sponsor block, dislikes. Relies on upstream updates from NewPipe, so takes slightly longer to fix whenever Google routinely breaks something.
PipePipe: same features as Tubular, and additional accounts/sources such as PeerTube. it is also a hard fork from NewPipe that doesn’t rely on upstream updates and will likely change more over time. also that bug where it stops playback due tk an error and you have to close the video and reopen it happens less often on PipePipe, and can sometimes be fixed just by pressing play again. I use this one as of right now.
Invidious and Piped are both websites that proxy YouTube traffic. they aren’t separate apps, but some apps can use them as a source instead of scraping YouTube directly. Materialous is one that uses Invidious.
There are other apps in FDroid tk choose from too, they usually have a different Ui than NewPipe related ones. I also use Metro List for YouTube Music specifically.
I only have experience with NewPipe but so far it has been positive. I use it every day on both Android and e/OS (Fairphone) without issue.
The times when YT has breaking changes have been resolved by the dev team within a relatively short period (keep in mind they are open-source contributors after all).
Otherwise there is also litube. It’s not the same concept and thus less privacy friendly but it might be useful too. This is a webview customized for YouTube with an ad blocker, player to play in background and many other functionalities.
Try Grayjay. YouTube plugin (skipps adds), video, twitch, all in 1 manageable app. Open source (to my knowledge), never seen an add.
We are legion, but all of us pipes secretly admit that Newpipe is our best.
