YouTube being a Google product, obviously has a full featured Android app. But there are a lot of third party clients that allow you to go beyond what the official app allows. One such client is NewPipe. It is a full featured, third party, open source YouTube client for Android. It has all the functionality of the official YouTube app, including support for things like subscriptions and playlists, without having to sign in to your Google account. NewPipe is open source software, licensed under the GPLv3 License.
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Google Play Services are not required
A common complaint among people who are privacy-conscious is the fact that most Google apps and products need Google Play Services. Google Play Services is notorious for demanding access to virtually all data on the phone, including permission to access the microphone and camera. Fortunately, NewPipe does not require Google Play Services.
NewPipe Features
The good thing about NewPipe is that it doesn’t need Google Play Services, and yet it lets you access all the features that the official YouTube app does such as:
- Support for higher resolutions like 2K and 4K(depending on whether your phone
supports it) - Suggestions for videos to play next.
- Increase or decrease the speed of the video.
- Captions(if available)
- Import subscriptions from the official YouTube app/from a file. Export your subscriptions to a file for backup.
- Support for playlists and bookmarks.
newpipe video page
newpipe subscriptions page
In addition to all that, NewPipe does a lot of things that the official YouTube app does not, like:
Popup player - The YouTube app has a Picture in Picture mode, but it’s only available in a few countries. Fortunately, NewPipe has that feature out of the box:
Picture in Picture mode
Play in the background(even when the screen is off) - Again, this is something that only YouTube Premium subscribers are allowed to do. But with NewPipe, you can play the video in the background, while using any other app, or when the phone is asleep.
NewPipe Background player
Download videos, or even just the audio - This is actually not allowed at all by the YouTube ToS. But NewPipe allows you to save the video, or even just the audio to your device, so you can watch/listen to it when you’re offline.
Select the specific filetype that you want to stream - You can choose not only the resolution that you want to watch a video in, you can also choose a specific filetype (depending on whether the video is available in that filetype). Certain filetypes can stream better than others, so having that choice is good.
Verdict
NewPipe is a great third party app, that allows you to do a lot more than the official YouTube app. If you watch a lot of YouTube, you should check it out, even if you’re satisfied with the official app.
NewPipe is exclusively available on F-droid. To download it from F-Droid, click here:
Get NewPipe on F-Droid
Suggested read:
- Mps-youtube – A Commandline YouTube Player And Downloader
- ClipGrab – A Free multi-platform YouTube Downloader and Converter
- Streamlink – Watch Online Video Streams From Command Line
- Download YouTube Videos with Subtitles using Youtube-dl
- Youtube-dl Tutorial With Examples For Beginners
- 20+ FFmpeg Commands For Beginners
And, that's all for now. Have you tried NewPipe already? Great! Share your thoughts about this app in the comment section below.
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