NewPipe: YouTube client without vertical videos and algorithmic feed

[Frotag]

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.

https://invidious.io/

https://materialio.us/

[distances]

Not every week, more like a couple of times a year when YouTube makes some breaking changes.

Personally I take these periods as healthy time off from YouTube, so I'm no longer even annoyed by them.

[super256]

I found pipepipe to be more stable, break less and have more features.

https://pipepipe.dev/

[_blk]

Absolutely but I stop YouTube consumption if it's not through NewPipe, so a little productivity boost here and there is not too bad ;)

[kyleee]

I think that is overstating it, there has been one recent breakage and fix in the last few months or more roughly. It would be interesting to see it plotted out on a timeline though.

[faust201]

A few years is different case. Invidious is also getting blocked easily. Are you running it now? If yes, then report.

[1vuio0pswjnm7]

"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

Will try this again when it fails the next time

[EspadaV9]

There is a fork called PipePipe[0] too, that also implements SponsorBlock

0: https://github.com/InfinityLoop1308/PipePipe

[Erenay09]

I just switched from Tubular[0] to PipePipe. It has more feature than Tubular! I also migrated my database without any problems.

0: https://github.com/polymorphicshade/Tubular

[dang]

I think these are the main related past threads:

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)

[Sytten]

Newpipe is great, I tend to spend too much time on youtube. This at least limits it. It does break from time to time.

[tom_]

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.

[netsharc]

I don't get why the poster thinks NewPipe doesn't support vertical videos (let's not be anal, we know what they mean) if the video is "vertical" then making it fullscreen will fill the phone's screen vertically.

[CivBase]

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.

[biglyburrito]

There's also Freetube, which is a fantastic desktop client.

https://freetubeapp.io

[pmarreck]

is this just a way to browse youtube without ads or tracking, or what?

I'm looking to just hide Shorts, but I want my recommendations. Not sure what's out there for that.

[digiown]

For some reason I always preferred having tabs on desktop, so I can having stuff paused to be watched later.

[nvader]

Thanks, I've bookmarked it for later.

[WithinReason]

and Grayjay

[simon666]

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.

[satvikpendem]

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.

[okanat]

NewPipe can parse a Google data export dump and import all of your subs.

[metalman]

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.

[_HMCB_]

I see no mention of not playing vertical videos on their website.

[CivBase]

It absolutely works with YouTube shorts. It just doesn't put them in your subscriptions or let an algorithm feed them to you.

[alskdj21]

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.

[bryanhogan]

What's the difference of NewPipe to ReVanced?

[charcircuit]

Revanced is a mod for the official Android app, where NewPipe is an original app.

In practice this means that Revanced will be much more feature complete than NewPipe.

[subscribed]

NewPipe always works while the weird revanced route worked for me exactly once out of the several attempts on two phones.

[s_ting765]

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.

https://github.com/rhee876527/clean-youtube/

[dartharva]

I use LibreTube: https://libretube.dev/

[akssri]

Newpipe is awesome. If you're on firefox, you can block the main-page feed with the following filter in ublock-origin,

"www.youtube.com##ytd-browse[page-subtype="home"]"

Sadly, you can't do this on Chrome/Chromium anymore with manifest v3.

[igneo676]

The biggest issue with it is that watching a few videos in a row will result in YouTube soft blocking your IP for an hour or so. They're really cracking down on watching videos without a login

[citizenpaul]

Probably already mentioned, but tubular is a fork with sponsor block enabled

https://github.com/polymorphicshade/Tubular

[villgax]

I used to use this & just ended up paying for premium for my family to get over the headache of bugs & risking any IP associated with our google accounts lest Sundar wakes up on the wrong side of the bed

[someperson]

For the desktop, I recommend https://github.com/lawrencehook/remove-youtube-suggestions

[scott01]

It’s possible to disable history in YouTube’s settings. This will turn off algorithmic feed replacing it with a reverse chronological feed of channels you’re subscribed to.

[zeckalpha]

There are YouTube settings that seem to get unset periodically. Even some that their documentations says should be sticky, like caption preferences.

[catify]

I don't use YouTube much nowadays. It's better for your mental health. I mostly use a fork called Tubular that has sponsored block

[cermicelli]

If only it worked. We need a good alternative to YouTube that still let's creators feed themselves...

Though I don't think it will ever happen...

[fragmede]

Brilliant? Nova? It won't happen if you don't support it.

[weightedreply]

See also: Tubular

https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.polymorphicshade.tubular...

[chrysoprace]

Context: Tubular is a fork of NewPipe that adds SponsorBlock and ReturnYouTubeDislike integration.

[homeslice69]

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.

[2OEH8eoCRo0]

I love newpipe I've watched hundreds of hours of videos on my shield tv with it.

[iCstyle]

SwizzTube for iOS is also great

[jeena]

I use Tubular because of sponsorblock.

[Asparagus7426]

Is there anything comparable for ios?

[TechSquidTV]

Please just buy YouTube Premium and support content creators on the only platform that gives a fair deal.

[xigoi]

Even with premium, the official YouTube app has a much worse UX than NewPipe (and is proprietary).

[ackfoobar]

I'd gladly pay for Premium (I'm already paying for YT Music, the price difference is minimal) if they allow turning off shorts. But they won't. They see time spent in app goes up when they hypnotize the users. They're too Goodhart'ed to realize that quite a lot of users don't enjoy being hypnotized.

[y-curious]

I do this and I am still considering going third party if I can’t turn off shorts soon

[Hoodedcrow]

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.

[948382828528]

Fuck Google. Knowingly providing a platform for scammers and flooding the recommendations with absolute garbage should not be rewarded. If valuable channels don't have a way to support them outside of Youtube, then so be it.