I've been using and loving NewPipe since 2015 or 2016--whenever it first showed up on Fdroid. Really like the ability to play songs from bandcamp too. Although there's one bug in the bandcamp workflow that I wish was fixed: If you search for an artist then tap the artist page in the results this will take you to the albums screen. Click to the album, then if you either use the back arrow or swipe back you're returned to the search results rather than the list of albums on the artist page.
IME newpipe breaks every few weeks or so, presumably because of some youtube change / obfuscation. Or at least that was the case a few years ago.
I've had more success hosting an invidious instance and using the materialious client for mobile. And a bonus is that it comes with sponsorblock built in.
"IME newpipe breaks every few weeks or so, presumably because of some youtube change / obfuscation."
Same experience. I have a commandline program I wrote to retrieve YouTube download URLs many years ago. On average it has always been more reliable than Newpipe. It continues to work when Newpipe fails and I can fix it quickly when there is a YouTube change
However I noticed recently Newpipe, the original, not SponsorBlock, old version, no updates, had been going many weeks without failure. When it eventually failed I was able to get it working again immediately by simply changing the www.youtube.com IPv4 address
Editorialized title! Portrait aspect ratio (or "vertical video", as it's described here - at least I assume that's what the term refers to - like, as if the landscape aspect ratio has no Y axis!) is not obviously mentioned anywhere.
The issue is I like the algorithmic feed, as well as having all my subscriptions there. I believe that's not available in NewPipe without manually adding all subscription channels.
Been a long time user of Newpipe. It do occasionally break but not that huge of a deal breaker for me.
Only complaint is I can't select a livestream quality/resolution. I want to catch up to some news live and put those on background but it would use too much bandwidth since it's locked to a higher resolution. In such cases, I would just open them on Firefox, set to desktop mode, and listen from there. Afaik, Invidious doesn't support livestreams.
I primarily use NewPipe, but I'll also throw out Grayjay as a client with similar benefits. They work a little differently and since Google sometimes pushes out breaking changes to YouTube's API, I'll switch to Grayjay while I wait for the eventual NewPipe update. In my experience, the Grayjay player also tends to work better with live streams.
newpipe used to work great for me. but for the past month or so I can't watch a video without being prompted to sign in. this is despite constantly switching vpn servers. others don't seem to have this problem. I wonder if my device has been fingerprinted and blocked somehow.
I'd feel very ripped off because it gives a directly worse experience than free tools. Not only does it not turn off Shorts, as previous commenters mentioned, but the most offensive scam in my eyes are downloads. I'd need to use yt-dlp for them anyway, as the paid downloads are directly inferior - DRMed and expire without online checks. Worthless for archival that I'm currently doing a lot.
I revived a once popular Youtube frontend called Cloudtube. All the Youtube media url deciphering is still done by Invidious and I use it more like a frontend for invidious.
NewPipe works good enough, learned here that "was able to get it working again immediately by simply changing the www.youtube.com IPv4 address", is a fix for
it breaking, not that it fusses me as watching vids is a very low priority for me, though sometimes a video that tells me which wire to cut first, is invaluable and has saved my sorry ass.Which sometimes I wish there was a similar way to make, edit and upload videos useing nothing but a cheap phone.
44 comments
[ 4.8 ms ] story [ 72.4 ms ] threadhttps://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.polymorphicshade.tubular...
0: https://github.com/InfinityLoop1308/PipePipe
0: https://github.com/polymorphicshade/Tubular
https://freetubeapp.io
I've had more success hosting an invidious instance and using the materialious client for mobile. And a bonus is that it comes with sponsorblock built in.
https://invidious.io/
https://materialio.us/
https://pipepipe.dev/
Same experience. I have a commandline program I wrote to retrieve YouTube download URLs many years ago. On average it has always been more reliable than Newpipe. It continues to work when Newpipe fails and I can fix it quickly when there is a YouTube change
However I noticed recently Newpipe, the original, not SponsorBlock, old version, no updates, had been going many weeks without failure. When it eventually failed I was able to get it working again immediately by simply changing the www.youtube.com IPv4 address
Will try this again when it fails the next time
Personally I take these periods as healthy time off from YouTube, so I'm no longer even annoyed by them.
Though I don't think it will ever happen...
Only complaint is I can't select a livestream quality/resolution. I want to catch up to some news live and put those on background but it would use too much bandwidth since it's locked to a higher resolution. In such cases, I would just open them on Firefox, set to desktop mode, and listen from there. Afaik, Invidious doesn't support livestreams.
NewPipe Is Turning 10 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45707575 - Oct 2025 (28 comments)
NewPipe 0.26 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38732781 - Dec 2023 (91 comments)
NewPipe – Lightweight YouTube experience for Android - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38144400 - Nov 2023 (389 comments)
NewPipe: A lightweight YouTube experience for Android - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30449570 - Feb 2022 (220 comments)
NewPipe – ad-free, open-source Android YouTube client - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23871169 - July 2020 (590 comments)
“My Google account got suspended because of NewPipe” - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21247759 - Oct 2019 (522 comments)
"www.youtube.com##ytd-browse[page-subtype="home"]"
Sadly, you can't do this on Chrome/Chromium anymore with manifest v3.
https://github.com/rhee876527/clean-youtube/