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Comment by de6u99er | Hacker News Reader

YouTube is one of the worst Android apps in regards of usability, accidental clicks, and anoying ads.

It would be great if there was a way installing the app without allowing third party sources.

Haven't developed on Android since years. Does anyone know if I can build it and upload it via ADB without enabling apps from 3rd party sources.

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Sure. Download the APK from the F-Droid website [1] and install it with adb install. If you want to build it yourself, you can build it like any regular Android app with gradle, or by following the F-Droid recipe [2] (edit: which does not provide much useful information in the case of NewPipe, but it can be a great source of information for apps that are more difficult to build, especially if you want to remove the proprietary bits / tracking parts).

You won't get automatic updates, though. I encourage you to install F-Droid (that you can also install using adb install), and enable third party sources just for F-Droid (which is possible on the latest versions of Android). Or, if your bootloader is unlocked, flash the f-droid zip package and then you don't even need to enable third party apps and F-Droid will be even more enjoyable to use.

[1] https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.schabi.newpipe/

[2] https://gitlab.com/fdroid/fdroiddata/tree/master/metadata/or...

I've found that the Magisk module for the f-droid priv-ext tends to work better than the OTA for Android 10.

Exactly. The ota was not yet updated to support android 10 last time I checked and paths have changed.

The ads in youtube this past year have been a bit scary. I'm assuming some weird ads are getting past the moderators because I'm in Sweden, and it's not a big ad market maybe.

Either way, I get misspelled ads, or ads that just say "18 YEAR OLD WOMEN" in some shitty 1999 font that is barely legible.

Edit: I'm talking about the clickable ads interspersed between videos in the UI.

An ad for "18 YEAR OLD WOMEN" is scary? They don't bite.

It seems generic not really weird.

It sounds like the sort of shady ads you would get on torrent websites or image boards.

All app stores are far shadier thans torrents websites or worse, warez websites of old. App stores come with spyware, adware, and regularly mineware or worden. I visit torrent websites for peace of mind.

But mostly F-droid, which has Newpipe. Both excellent and reliable and shite-free.

I really don't get app stores. How did they convince everyone to install so much spy and adware?

I don't really understand your point, F-Droid is definitely an app store.

I think you must mainly mean the Google Play Store, where the situation seems really bad... As for Apple, they manually review every application. I remember iOS apps for jailbreaking getting removed incredibly quickly.

F droid is an exception. Google, Apple and Microsoft app stores are the best guarantee you're installing spyware. That's what ubiquitous telemetry is after all.

They have a shady vibe to them is what I mean. Like e-mail spam.

Another example is "Generic viking game", like literally. It just says some generic viking game, no brand or recognizable name. It looks just like phishing.

I have a feeling Google's OCR for Ads (scanning for Ad Guideline violations) requires those types of fonts to get by without being banned too quickly.

Something like this showed up on reddit a couple of months back: https://redd.it/ghmuy7

I've been getting ads for months now that show a devastating natural disaster approaching my location. It was very alarming the first few times I saw it. Reporting it has done nothing.

As a YouTube Premium user it's a lot less annoying, but what's frustrating for me is it not being simple to go back to a video after accidentally exiting it (where in a browser you would just go back to that tab, or press back or whatever).

Also the application crashes all the time, especially when switching to play in the background (locking the screen, switching apps, etc.); and as of Android 10 on my device it introduces a delay when switching to background play, which interrupts the audio (it didn't do this on Android 9).

About half the time I get a new error on NewPipe I just go to their FDroid.org page and download the new mi or version bump and its been sorted out.

what's maddening for me as a premium user is that i can't turn off their Movie recommendation ads

Oh yeah the back button UX is bad. If you do multiple searches in a row, the back button doesn't exit the search screen, it goes back through your searches. But if you're watching a video and accidentally click on a different video, the back button doesn't take you the the previous video, it goes to the home screen.

This is the opposite of what I want, the search bar has a scroll menu with the most recent searches anyway, I really have no need to traverse my search history.

Your history is in the Library. Its the bottom right-most tab.

What's wrong with enabling third party sources? Apps like this are exactly why that option exists.

Why don't you want to enable installation of apps from 3rd party sources? You can turn it off again after installation

For Android, I just use the standard YouTube mobile site with fennec Firefox and ublock origin. Seems to work fairly well on my old S6 for 1080p60 content and below.

I suspect that's not very battery efficient though.

I highly recommend using invidio.us (or another invidious instance) instead.

Also, as an ad free and non tracking twitter alternative there is nitter.net (other nitter instances exist as well).

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