Apparently Vanced was a patched YouTube app for Android, removing ads, adding a dark theme and YouTube Premium features (probably more ?). It was discontinued two weeks ago:
It also restored the dislike button and added support for sponsorblock (which can automatically skip sponsor segments, as well as intros, outros, "like and subscribe" reminders, non-music sections of music videos, and other fluff.)
The name comes from it being an "advanced" YouTube app, only without any "ad"s ;)
Oh, and you could disable the comments section!
All-in-all, it just made YouTube a much better experience.
This is the part I missed in the original conversations.
If you redistribute a modified version of a company’s app, it’s going to be taken down. You can’t distribute another company’s work as your own.
The difference here appears to be that it’s a patcher, so they’re not distributing the proprietary app. Theoretically more robust against takedowns, but it also significantly limits the audience of who can go through all of the steps to do it.
I expect the real outcome is going to be a game of whack-a-mole as random people try to patch and distribute the app under different names. This isn’t actually a great situation because it sets an expectation among users that the app will always be changing names and distributors. Hackers love these situations because the door is now wide open for them to insert malicious code into a version and distribute it as the latest Revanced. Not good.
I have a feeling that any piece of closed-source software that becomes important enough will inevitably be reverse engineered by highly motivated people. This is doubly so for Vanced: The original team took pains to not release the source, but it merely took a few weeks for someone else to reverse engineer the reverse engineered codebase.
I've worked on preserving a few games with decompilers long after the original creators have moved on. Anecdotally, the death of Flash all but killed off a couple of assorted communities that didn't have enough motivation to hack the binaries themselves.
My guess is the only software that can perpetually maintain a community is software where the source code is available to be modified.
I don't know much about the topic so forgive my ignorance, but aren't Android apps written in Java/JVM language?
Meaning decompilation should be really straightforward, I remember IntelliJ having a decompiler, many times I would accidental open a `class` file and it would suggest decompilation. This kind of code was still hard to read, but it was Java, not bytecode.
Looks like their patches repo is public - I wonder if that'll lead the the adblocking technique being patched out quickly by Google? Either way happy to see this app revived, even as a premium subscriber - it provides functionality that makes YouTube much nicer to use
The Re in ReVanced is for "Reverse Engineered" Vanced. ReVanced is going to be identical to the original Vanced, but later on (especially since it's open source) more patches/"plugins" will be available.
At first is different because to avoid the same issue as Vanced, it will not ship you patched version of YouTube App but it will ship a patcher.
That mean you'll must have installed YouTube because it will be companion or patch (I'm not sure if it will patch the YouTube app or be a service next to YouTube to apply Vanced feature at runtime)
I decided to be a translator for this project - that's the best contribution I can do as I know nothing about android - it seems like a good cause for the following reasons:
- I know of people who live in countries where YouTube Red isn't available, I pay for YouTube red myself and it's life changing. I want them to be able to experience this too in a way or another
- I feel like Google might have done the right thing in their eyes by forcing Vanced to shutdown, but I also think they didn't address the problem in its entirety. You can shut down 1 app - 10 more pop up. Maybe the strategy should be, introduce better features instead of taking them away and think about monetizing differently?
- I really can't stand Monday.com ads btw ;) they're everywhere even in my sleep.
My guess is YouTube is well aware of the fact that new ones are going to pop up. I'm guessing they did the math and realized that YouTube Vanced became big enough that it was worth shutting down and removing it from the limelight while minimizing the Streisand Effect.
> Maybe the strategy should be, introduce better features instead of taking them away and think about monetizing differently?
As a Vanced user, I do agree that the app is objectively superior than the YouTube app. Customizable toolbars, better dark mode, disabling thumbnails auto-playing, more video control options etc. But 99.99% of people used Vanced to get rid of ads without paying, and that isn't something YouTube can compete against. No amount of "good features" would've caused people to abandon Vanced and switch to vanilla YouTube (well, unless they reduced or removed ads, which would be detrimental to their business and creators).
Every Vanced user should've known that this was a fight club situation, where if Vanced got big enough it would have to die.
codeberg might be a good candidate. Slightly tangentially, to facilitate mobility and cross-server collaboration and repo syncing, Gitea (which they're built on) is getting federation in place
In general, this is my position to most paying things. There's always some legitimate reason for me to not pay for anything. Honestly, I've done it all my life. I never paid for a single college textbook, for instance. If more people would make paid things that weren't also evil, then maybe they could have my money.
The interesting thing is that the more money you have, the easier this becomes. For instance, with low cash flow, you can't afford an occasional $86 SF parking ticket. But with high cash flow, you can do the math and know that if you can escape every 3 days downtown, you come out ahead just paying the ticket.
Same thing here. I'm happy to pay for Nebula. But I don't want to pay to a platform that is constantly criticized by all the creators publishing there.
Same. I was happy to pay for it a couple of years ago, but I recently cancelled a pretty long running premium subscription.
If they're not outright removing videos from people I subscribe to, or outright removing people entirely, they're creating an atmosphere where those who remain rigorously self-censor to preserve their clout and income streams. Most of the content that's left is uninteresting because it's too risky to discuss anything controversial, let alone express a controversial opinion. RIP.
Youtube's frequency of ads has become so extreme that I've just yesterday opted to pay 11€/month for YT Premium.
I had tried before disabling them with a Pihole or by blocking domains. It didn't work. Also, on a Samsung TV, you can't really install another front end.
When you essentially have a monopoly position, and most of your product updates are to improve your own revenue and not to make the customer experience better because you simply don’t have to do that anymore, eventually people will try to revolt and create alternatives. Because of the network effect lock-in, this kind of creativity (patching the existing monopolist’s app rather than creating a whole new service) is one of the more accessible methods of trying to improve the product. I’m not making a judgment on whether or not it is right, but from a purely providing-the-best-product-to-the-user perspective, I am happy to see alternatives flourish.
Could anyone who is familiar with Java/Kotlin/Android explain how does this work?
I tried decompiling YouTube App on Android to remove the ads some time ago, but I failed to compile it back because some kind of security thing did not allow the app to start.
At least they didn't make the copyright mistakes this time. Perhaps it would be better if this version of Vanced stayed difficult to install to avoid spreading it too wide.
I wonder if they fixed the bug Vanced had where you set mobile video to 480p and it kept trying to play 1080p instead even when your connection wouldn't support it.
I hope they get a version without MicroG requirement again. I like having an additional YouTube app installed that’s logged out without immediately getting the ad-infested free version. I used NewPipe in the past for that but that is constantly buffering for me and I don’t have a lick of experience with Android development to resolve that.
[+] [-] Aissen|4 years ago|reply
https://www.theverge.com/2022/3/13/22975890/youtube-vanced-a...
[+] [-] nfriedly|4 years ago|reply
The name comes from it being an "advanced" YouTube app, only without any "ad"s ;)
Oh, and you could disable the comments section!
All-in-all, it just made YouTube a much better experience.
[+] [-] PragmaticPulp|4 years ago|reply
This is the part I missed in the original conversations.
If you redistribute a modified version of a company’s app, it’s going to be taken down. You can’t distribute another company’s work as your own.
The difference here appears to be that it’s a patcher, so they’re not distributing the proprietary app. Theoretically more robust against takedowns, but it also significantly limits the audience of who can go through all of the steps to do it.
I expect the real outcome is going to be a game of whack-a-mole as random people try to patch and distribute the app under different names. This isn’t actually a great situation because it sets an expectation among users that the app will always be changing names and distributors. Hackers love these situations because the door is now wide open for them to insert malicious code into a version and distribute it as the latest Revanced. Not good.
[+] [-] hijinks|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lfkdev|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Aissen|4 years ago|reply
But re-using a proprietary app and patching it is IMHO crossing the line.
[+] [-] nonbirithm|4 years ago|reply
I've worked on preserving a few games with decompilers long after the original creators have moved on. Anecdotally, the death of Flash all but killed off a couple of assorted communities that didn't have enough motivation to hack the binaries themselves.
My guess is the only software that can perpetually maintain a community is software where the source code is available to be modified.
[+] [-] og_pixel|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throwaway684936|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] siccophantic|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] infinityio|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] idealmedtech|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ushakov|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gundamdoubleO|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Psychotherapist|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kakawait|4 years ago|reply
That mean you'll must have installed YouTube because it will be companion or patch (I'm not sure if it will patch the YouTube app or be a service next to YouTube to apply Vanced feature at runtime)
[+] [-] ushakov|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] orliesaurus|4 years ago|reply
- I know of people who live in countries where YouTube Red isn't available, I pay for YouTube red myself and it's life changing. I want them to be able to experience this too in a way or another
- I feel like Google might have done the right thing in their eyes by forcing Vanced to shutdown, but I also think they didn't address the problem in its entirety. You can shut down 1 app - 10 more pop up. Maybe the strategy should be, introduce better features instead of taking them away and think about monetizing differently?
- I really can't stand Monday.com ads btw ;) they're everywhere even in my sleep.
[+] [-] MisterSandman|4 years ago|reply
> Maybe the strategy should be, introduce better features instead of taking them away and think about monetizing differently?
As a Vanced user, I do agree that the app is objectively superior than the YouTube app. Customizable toolbars, better dark mode, disabling thumbnails auto-playing, more video control options etc. But 99.99% of people used Vanced to get rid of ads without paying, and that isn't something YouTube can compete against. No amount of "good features" would've caused people to abandon Vanced and switch to vanilla YouTube (well, unless they reduced or removed ads, which would be detrimental to their business and creators).
Every Vanced user should've known that this was a fight club situation, where if Vanced got big enough it would have to die.
[+] [-] xyzal|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 3np|4 years ago|reply
https://github.com/go-gitea/gitea/issues/18240
https://forgefriends.org/
[+] [-] blibble|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] toomuchtodo|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] noname120|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] brink|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] renewiltord|4 years ago|reply
The interesting thing is that the more money you have, the easier this becomes. For instance, with low cash flow, you can't afford an occasional $86 SF parking ticket. But with high cash flow, you can do the math and know that if you can escape every 3 days downtown, you come out ahead just paying the ticket.
[+] [-] laci37|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wintermutestwin|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xanaxagoras|4 years ago|reply
If they're not outright removing videos from people I subscribe to, or outright removing people entirely, they're creating an atmosphere where those who remain rigorously self-censor to preserve their clout and income streams. Most of the content that's left is uninteresting because it's too risky to discuss anything controversial, let alone express a controversial opinion. RIP.
[+] [-] timdaub|4 years ago|reply
I had tried before disabling them with a Pihole or by blocking domains. It didn't work. Also, on a Samsung TV, you can't really install another front end.
[+] [-] omginternets|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hohoemi8|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Chirael|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sofixa|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throwxxxaway|4 years ago|reply
I tried decompiling YouTube App on Android to remove the ads some time ago, but I failed to compile it back because some kind of security thing did not allow the app to start.
[+] [-] Psychotherapist|4 years ago|reply
- decompile using apktool
- make changes
- recompile apk using apktool
- zipalign apk
- sign apk (using the apksigner.jar) with a certificate
Tools like uber-apk-signer really help to do the last three steps
[+] [-] mach1ne|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gruez|4 years ago|reply
more like, trademark mistakes. Patching and redistributing a proprietary app most definitely violates copyrights.
[+] [-] moondev|4 years ago|reply
I wonder if the original "vanced" can now file a dispute over this project's name?
[+] [-] causality0|4 years ago|reply
I wonder if they fixed the bug Vanced had where you set mobile video to 480p and it kept trying to play 1080p instead even when your connection wouldn't support it.
[+] [-] chronogram|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ben30|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] monocularvision|4 years ago|reply
(edited to remove incorrect statement)
[+] [-] zumzumzum|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] reayn|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] jerrygoyal|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] princevegeta89|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] siccophantic|4 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] onbfdoibfdoidf|4 years ago|reply
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