Vanced has been discontinued
twitter.com
twitter.com
It was much much more of a threat to Google than newpipe or less "normie" friendly alt clients, and it was getting too popular for it's own good. I'm wondering if the current Vance releases will keep working for a while, or if Google will try to target those too by breaking something in their backend.
(The YouTube Premium download feature is bad anyway because videos downloaded that way are artificially DRM-protected when the original streams are DRM-free can be downloaded using something like yt-dlp.)
"Removing the revenue stream for the original app author through modification or bypass."
Just because you're paying through advertising rather than cash doesn't make it any less of a crack or any less piracy.
And to alter it, sure.
Having come to adulthood in the 90s, we absolutely did not all agree that.
More than I am of those who don't.
PS.: I imply that the "beep" is the source of revenue of course, which is a bit hidden in your analogon.
Yes, the rules for digital should be changed to be more alike the physical world, especially regarding ownership, resales, lending/borrowing and modification.
If you remove the source of revenue for a given product without consent of the manufacturer/developer of that product and do this in a professional fashion, you are inflicting severe damage to that manufacturer/developer of a product.
The reason why digital problems are not easily transferred to the real world or back is in this example, that it costs the author of that mod zero time to do it for all people at once (developing time is fixed) and is accessible nearly instantly from everywhere. This is certainly not true for the microwave example.
edit: replace owner with manufacturer/developer (of that product)
Clearly it's not: https://www.extremetech.com/electronics/250050-supreme-court...
Eventually, the form become generalized across all nouns, with -es being applied to any noun to indicate possession. In most cases, the e is silent, and typographers began to either omit it (e.g. "whos") or, eventually, replaced it with an apostrophe, as the French did. And I suppose "whose" gained an e to indicate the "long vowel".
So we've ended up in a situation where we've basically lost noun declension and just attach suffixes to indicate plurality and possession (s and 's), but our pronouns have inherited their old declensions, without the -es/-'s suffix attached.
Granted, "its" is itself a semi-recent invention, as OE and middle english used "his" for both masculine and neuter third person singular genitive pronouns.
Even trying to query Google for the correct rules for it's/its doesn't turn up clear, concise information as you've achieved here in two sentences. Tragically, it's another case of SEO'd to death.
Just remember this[0] and you should be set:
It's is not, it isn't ain't, and it's it's, not its,
if you mean it is.
If you don't, it's its. Then too, it's hers. It isn't
her's. It isn't our's either. It's ours, and likewise
yours and theirs.
[0] http://www.anvari.org/fortune/Miscellaneous_Collections/3944...
Use a dictionary or simply "define:"
He --> his
She --> her
They --> their
We --> our
I --> my
You --> your
It --> its
(Since someone will probably point this out, this is only true of the common pronouns. There are unusual pronouns that have apostrophes in their plurals. Eg: one --> one's. But nevertheless, the rule worked for me.)
Oh wow. So, is this a common thing? When I type without thinking about it too much, and with my typing not being able to keep up with my brain, I tend to make those errors a lot. But I thought it was just me being dumb and not some general thing that happens to people.
I also sometimes put in an entirely incorrect word that is vaguely like the one I intended, with amalgamated hints of a neighbouring word, usually the one after. My brain just melds them together. Sometimes I read what I write and wonder how on Earth I can be such an idiot. Blessed are those times I catch such fuckwittery before posting.
- ed
the its/it's one is really annoying though, because of course I KNOW which is correct, but sometimes my finger just slips and sneaks in that apostrophe.
And yeah, I sometimes created melded words as well. I wonder if there’s a name for our issue.
And of that small set of people, the number who already live in Russia is even lower...
I'm curious, where exactly are the Cease and Desist letters delivered, when they get sent? To whatever contact email appears in the project's website, if any?
An American Court even found Sci-Hub guilty, in a lawsuit brought up by Elsevier. But nobody could enforce it, so it was just pointless in the end.
>do they ever break compatibility?
Yes, but I can't seem to easily find data on how often they do. I assume the "Currently installed versions will work just fine, until they become outdated in 2 years or so." is referring to how long they expect Google to keep compatibility with the latest version they used.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/bensin/2017/01/04/does-the-orig...
I believe that's because unlike other alternative clients it is a modified version of the official app.
[1]: https://newpipe.net/
[2]: https://nitter.net/YTVanced/status/1503055442506915846#m
I’m sick of typing the same search query again and again.
I can't add links because new account.
Easily installable through F-Droid by adding this repo: https://apt.izzysoft.de/fdroid/index/apk/org.polymorphicshad...
Despite my issues with needing to log in, seeing Vanced go is horrible. It is an insanely well put together app.
The user experience is unfamiliar and seems significantly worse than Vanced.
Vanced is what the official youbutt app should've been. RIP.
That didn't used to be a "g" there, would be my guess.
(A comment that "glows" would usually be something like: hey fellow members of radical political ideology, who is up for letting those politicians know what lead tastes like? Let's conspire to commit domestic terrorism!" )
Slight nitpick here - NewPipe doesn't use any API's directly, just scrapes the webpage.
- Random other stuff keeps breaking, not that the 100+ lines of recursive Java gibberish in the crash popups tell you what broke (but the crash reporter itself does break regularly, too)
- App structure is counterintuitive: You have tabs on the main screen, and the side bar... duplicates the tab buttons, but turns the tabs into overlays that disable search and other functions? What?
- Content discovery is a mess: I cannot search specific channels. I cannot sort results. I cannot access channel playlists. It's always faster to open a browser and use the youtube website for this, even on mobile.
- Content organization is a mess: I cannot sort anything, period. Nor can I filter (e.g. to filter out videos already watched, or filter for videos started but not finished, ...), or bookmark specific videos, or do anything else with the content.
- Speaking of already watched videos, tracking progress isn't reliable.
- A few updates ago, video playback was turned into a multi-stage procedure, and now I need 3+ clicks to exit a video that already finished playing. What?
- Video overlay UX is horrible. I don't even know what details to go into, nothing about it is intuitive and I ended up crashing Newpipe a few times just trying to exit it (or go back to regular view), and I gave up on ever trying to use it.
And so on and so forth. That's just off the top of my head.
NewPipe works if you're subscribed to a small amount of channels that update rarely, and you go watch each video when it comes out, so you don't lose track of what's where and what you watched, and don't mind the occasional youtube-free week. For anything else it breaks down quickly, and hard.
If you're, like me, subscribed to a dozen channels that have backlogs in the hundreds of videos to go through, it's a nightmare. I force myself to use it to minimize my exposure to YT's website/client, but I am not enjoying the experience and cannot in good conscience recommend it to anyone else.
Hard disagree. NewPipe is the only way I use youtube on mobile.
> It barely works, if at all. Casting definitely never ever worked for me, not even once.
Because casting requires usage of Google API's and NewPipe is privacy oriented.
It's not broken, it's as intended.
> The user experience is unfamiliar and seems significantly worse than Vanced.
I prefer it to default youtube . It's no nonsense, and gets the job done.
Haven't used vanced, so can't judge there.
Sorry, but until such things are rectified, New Pipe is a hell no for me; -10/10, worse than vanced, cannot recommend sharp-edged user-unfriendly software. Even when it's OSS and privacy friendly.
For a similar case, see gnuPGP. We all know how that one ended up not saving the world :(
That being said, I can't find the cast button you're talking about.
I also can't find the sharp edges you mention[0] could you give other examples? In my experience I've just had it do what it says on the box with no fuss.
[0] though I'll admit my tastes are minimalistic and I avoid cloud tools as much as possible - either or both of those may color my views.
For example, I see not having access to Youtube account information as a positive.
My specific (brief) experiences include: Instead of playing the video..
- Wait forever while it spins.
- Crashes randomly. Repeatedly.
- No way to reference previously watched or liked videos.
- Atrocious, non-functional search.
Have all these bugs have been fixed in the past 6 months?
There's a history tab, I don't really use ot but looking over it now it looks decent, and can sort by most and last played.
The only issue I've had with search is that it doesn't return playlists, but my typical flow is to go to the profile page and follow a link from there so it hasn't bothered me.
Perhaps a hardware issue, or NewPipe handles spotty connections poorly or something.
Do you happen to have a link to a GitHub issue or some other background? I'd like to learn more about this, I was under the impression cast-type devices (including Chromecast) usually implement DLNA which should be interface-able without any proprietary APIs. This is just from vague readings and recollections though.
Found it! The discussion was regarding Chromecast specifically,so I don't know about other cast setups.
Also is from Nov 2021, so possibly out of date at this point?
I've linked to the concluding comment here, I found the whole chain worth reading however:
https://github.com/TeamNewPipe/NewPipe/issues/668#issuecomme...
Is the biggest challenge really in providing an AppID? I must be missing something because that doesn't seem like a big privacy concern or technical hurdle, which brings us back to no traceable logical problem other than "it's hard to do and I don't get paid for this" (which would be a fair position for an OSS maintainer to take).
Maybe the should look at how VLC streams to Chromecasts, because at least in the case of VLC, it's FOSS and sort of works.
The PFY is a reference to a character (the "Pimply Faced Youth") from The Bastard Operator from Hell [0]! I'm just starting out my career, so it felt appropriate.
My understanding is that they mostly didn't want to do anything more involved with Google than scrape a webpage and write an Android app - though I'm not on the team and haven't participated and couldn't say for sure.
I think they have looked at VLC - there's a lengthy workaround lower in the thread via VLC, but I've not read that part in depth.
Actually, just double checked. Looks like theres a mention here: https://github.com/TeamNewPipe/NewPipe/issues/668#issuecomme... of that being a possibility, but no ones commented on it or made any progress yet afaict.
[0] Originals here: http://bofharchive.com/BOFH.html, and I think The Register has new ones.
Maybe now that Vanced is toast, someone will step up and lay the pipe into newPipe to get it working properly? Is this just wishful thinking? We need a hero..
How did you cast it? It worked perfectly when I casted it with Kodi.
Without the great music recommendation system I might as well just listen to my Jellyfin song collection. What value does YouTube even have without recommendations?
[1] some of these clients have their own sign in, but you are not signing into your actual YouTube account and you don't get recommendations from YouTube.
https://github.com/Elijas/auto-youtube-subscription-playlist...
Music I just use the default App and pay for the subscription.
Lack of sign in in NewPipe was a positive change for me.
It pushes trash to my feed.
You can watch videos on it that were recommended elsewhere. Like, say, here. Or reddit. That's my exclusive usage of it.
These days they just encourage you to add their repo to F-Droid. I set it up once and it just works now. I get updates as soon as they're available.
F-Droid adds lag to the build+publish process; cutting out the slow middleman is sensible if you want fast fixes.
The only way that makes sense for all of us as a democratic society is to keep control, and this can only be achieved through Libre Software. The real move right now is not to keep existing Vanced content on life support, but to use Newpipe. If it doesn't support the right features, fork it. Enhance it. Use it as the Common it is
I wouldn't want to be the one with my neck on the line in court over this.
Consider that .torrent files also don't have the content, yet torrent sites which serve them and provide tracking for torrent clients are having to play cat and mouse with copyright holders.
That said, so much of what we knew about copyright and software in the 90s has been overturned by subsequent rulings or even statutes (like the DMCA) that if you wish to avoid being burned by copyright suits, you must retain an attorney knowledgeable in this area of law. (Which is true in any case.) As an example, look-and-feel copyrights are back on the table thanks to The Tetris Company LLC.
These instructions do not increase the number of people who have copies of the work, and so no copying is taking place; copyright should not be applicable here. The licensor may argue that license clauses is being violated, but not copyright; i.e. the users are using the software in ways that they don't like (use is not copying or redistribution).
(Assume for this question that the Mona Lisa was currently protected by U.S. copyright.)
To the extent that it's "based on" copyrightable expression in the Mona Lisa, yes. AIUI the key question is: would a viewer recognise the Mona Lisa from your transparency? And that would be a question of fact for the jury; personally guessing I'd say probably not from just the position of a mustache in a frame, probably yes if you included e.g. an outline of the pose. (In which case it might still be protected fair use, but it would be a derivative work, and you'd have to make that positive defence).
Food is required for a healthy society but would anyone here advocate for farmers to give away all of their produce for free?
Text-tiles are necessary for society but would you advocate that clothing be provided by the creators free of charge?
The only thing different about software is that little to no physical resources are required as a prerequisite to its production, but an individuals time and energy is.
A world in which no one was paid to write software would be a world with much worse offerings than what we currently have and would be a net loss for humanity.
But, but, ... Vanced is free-as-in-beer software that prevents Google getting ad revenue for their product/service.
There are plenty of successful software companies whose offerings are not proprietary, yet manage to pay their developers well. Example products:
- MongoDB
- Red Hat
- Docker
- Elastic Search
- Vagrant
Seeing them succeed up to that point is already an incredible feat, and perhaps they will find a way to turn around with a bright future ahead, but at this point I wouldn't give them as clear examples of success of the business model.
Red Hat is IBM, so I'm not sure it fits in the list.
Their software was ripped and resold by a billion dollar corps and they could do nothing about it.
Yet, they still are able to employ people and give them a fair wage, making them good examples.
Libre Software can totally be funded, through individual donations or through public funding; in fact, because Libre Software is a common, it is only normal that time spent improving them should be time paid by the entire society. I see no problem with the idea of taking from private property to further common property.
Given that HN is a higher quality social media platform than most, maybe today that can change. Would you mind answering a few questions:
1. Who does the hard/dirty jobs in this society? Farming being one. But also construction, sewage, trash, ad inifitum. There are a lot of undesirable jobs and while maybe some people would be willing, I doubt our needs could be met when the same individuals could just work an easier job for the same reward.
2. How are "needs" defined? Food, shelter, clothing. Then what? Electricity? Internet? Smartphones? Gaming consoles/PC's? Games to play on those? Music? Memory foam mattresses? Etc. If all of these aren't needs, then how would individuals with varying interests actually choose what they want to own?
3. What are the incentives to advance amd become highly skilled? Take doctors. Some are really passionate about what they do. Most may be a little passionate, but are mainly just intelligent people drawn by the money and prestige. Assuming medical school and university still exists, for what purpose would someone go through that pipeline when they could do something far easier?
The suggestions that we as a society should basically just bully a certain number of people into undesirable positions is egregious and almost worse than blatant authoritarianism. At least today the people working those jobs are usually compensated better than they would be in another obtainable position given their skills amd ability.
I just feel like all this crying foul about authoritarianism is because people view certain roles, even the essential ones, as beneath them. If that mindset needs to be changed then I'm all for it. I don't deny that it will be hard, and I don't deny that I might be guilty of this myself.
Vanced is literally a cracked version of Google's software though, to remove all the revenue checks.
If Vanced will keep working as-is for maybe a year or two, that's at least nice, I just would like to keep a copy of the latest version for reinstalling when my tablet is formatted in the next days...
Vanced made mobile YouTube tolerable. I have NewPipe but it's not the same. Hopefully as the tweet says, it will stay functional for a while longer.
At times, it's worth thinking about what you're using adblock to accomplish at a higher level. For me it was subjecting myself to YouTube's recommendations for several more hours per day.
Luckily I had found an opportunity to quit YouTube stemming from unrelated reasons, and in the process I uninstalled Vanced. On desktop I block the recommendations feed in case I come from an external link, and I would say it has saved me significant amounts of time.
Also, this shutdown serves as a reminder of the future we may start to find ourselves living in when ads served from first-parties and technologies like DoH become ubiquitous. It's going to be far harder than using uBlock Origin to block ads when you start to need something beyond the DNS layer outside of the browser ecosystem.
I listen to/read this somewhat frequently as a reminder to keep in mind what I ise the internet for.
I held out on blocking ads for some time, until it became impractical to avoid drive-by attacks other ways and the amount of stalking involved got _really_ creepy.
If sponsor segments irritate me enough that I'd consider sponsorblock then I choose between paying for the content directly (if a sponsor-free version is available that way) or just not consuming it (at least not from that source).
I’m guessing that sponsors probably look at click through or view count. I believe sponsors that care about views will ask to see this chart in the future if they don’t ask for it now.
Long term if no one buys the sponsorships will fall off.
> I'll never buy
Of course if you know with absolutely 100% certainty that you'll never buy or mention to others (you might not need/want a WidgitotronAsAService, but maybe someone you know asks about them later) anything ever mentioned in a sponsor spot, then no there is no loss (and I envy your clairvoyance).
I consider it a politeness to the content creators to not automatically skip the sponsor slots. I do manually ship the ones I've heard a few times already, but you never know if the next one might have some relevance. Unlike stalky ads, the sponsor slots have some chance of being relevant to what I'm thinking about while watching that particular clip.
They get paid just for talking about the products, what's the difference if I skip the segment manually, or if a plugin does it automatically?
For me as a european, quite a lot of physical items which are being sponsored are not available in my country, so the ads for these are essentially useless.
The rest of the ads are VPNs(which I already got), various SaaS which I have absolutely no use for or things I already know (and don't want).
Online ads are already annoying and useless to me, but sponsored segments are even worse.
At least I don't feel bad for skipping these segments because AFAIK, creators just have to integrate these segments into the videos, that's it. The advertisers can't know if I've seen the segment so the creator gets paid the same, doesn't matter if I watch or skip it.
However, I do not believe that blocking ads is taking money from providers. I think if your business model involves displaying ads, you must factor in the cases where consumers are not interested in said ads. Otherwise where do we draw the line? What if the consumer is letting the ad shows but not watching it? Will we mandate eye tracking? What if the consumer is mentally tuned out? Will we mandate brain implants? What if the consumer takes a principled stance of never purchasing anything they see in an ad? Will we mandate consumers mandatorily convert a certain percentage of ads that are shown to them? It's gonna delve into absurdity and a consequential threat to human well being. I wish society could just reach a common ground that it's a fundamental right that people are allowed to block ads by whatever means they see fit.
On just that, yes.
But at least sponsor spots are just that, payment for advertising. They are not directly part of the global stalking networks. I don't object to advertising as a way of paying for things, I object to being followed around in everything I do.
Further, if I manually skip the ads, how is that functionally different to automatically skipping the ads? What if I turn off audio or avert my eyes? Are you arguing that I should have my eyes and ears glued to the screen when the ads are playing?
I don't think I can happily pay $0.50 every day just to be able to keep listening to the news after I push the lock button on my phone.
I'd be happy to support youtube if they actually supported their community and content creators, but right now, my opinion on youtube itself is that it's hostile to anyone who needs to use it.
YouTube Premium does support creators, 55% of your subscription gets split among the creators you watch. The more you watch a specific creator, the more they get from your subscription. I've seen some creators say they get more from Premium users than from ad-watching users.
For reference, Bandcamp pays creators 85% to 90% of the revenue they generate.
Examples of youtube's hostility include removing dislikes to please ad companies under the guise of user safety, terrible account recovery processes and allowing copyright bots to shutdown channels by spamming claims because youtube has placed the onus of proof on copyright creators, and not the ones actually making the claims.
[0] https://youtu.be/-zt57TWkTF4?t=408 (Timestamp 6:50)
It's not about the money- it's about respecting the user. The app is so full of garbage I won't pay for it. The day they shut down NewPipe is the day I just stop using YouTube on my phone and tv.
Can you elaborate?
I instantly feel like I'm capital to be maximized rather than a respected user when I open YouTube.
Edit: While typing this they felt the need to use a push notification for some breaking news video. Add it to the pile of bullshit.
Comments under video are just a thin 50px tall bar, just don't click on it? Just like you don't have to scroll down on the web. Just fullscreen and watch your video.
> I don't care about uploading shorts
Then don't press the shorts button?
> I'm tired of constant redesigns or moving things around
I don't think youtube gets that much redesign. On android, the biggest recent changes are dark mode (optional), making comment section smaller actually, and the chip filtering system.
> I just want to see videos related to what I search for
Then use the search button, it does just that
> or channels I'm subscribed to.
There's a tab dedicated to subscriptions, and it only shows chronological order of videos from your subscriptions, nothing else. You can also filter by a specific channel, or by tags such as (today, unwatched, etc).
> a push notification for some breaking news video
All notifications can easy be blocked, either at the app or OS level. Takes 3 clicks.
Until last month, kids could not use YTM. With the family plan, this was basically a DOS for years (or setup new kids accounts and lie about their age).
IMO, GPM's recommendations were much better.
We kept the family plan because of YTP and my wife and I still had access to music.
Wasn't that just moved to Google Podcasts? (Although, something like PocketCasts IMO is a better service.)
The lack of kids support is very true. The free tier also was quite trash for a long time, and the lack of desktop casting. Most of these have been since fixed though and at this point I would say YTM has feature parity.
Recommendation is always hard to discuss as it's very subjective. That being said, YTM has great playlists. It automatically clusters your music into 7 playlists which is describes with 4-5 artist names. There's discovery, replay and new release mixes which are great too.
Overall, I agree GPM got shut down way too soon, but at this point YTM has made a lot of progress vs what it was 2 years ago.
How badly Mozilla messed up with Firefox on Android is worth another topic, however.
[0] https://addons.mozilla.org/it/android/addon/video-background...
Background playback is a paid feature. You may disagree with that decision but the option is there if you wanted it.
These are all solved by Vanced. Paying for Youtube premium does not solve any of these.
No background play
Mainly
I can modify my behaviour instead. Watch using computers with Adblock and de program myself to want to listen to music from YouTube.
Boom done, no need for a YouTube subscription. Subscription hell has got to end.
All of those above are possible via the website - it remembers your video's quality and speed preferences.
There are too many youtube stories shoved right in your face with the app - no way to disable it.
There is no way to disable the 'cast' button from the player - it's not very useful but you can easily fat finger it.
That's just the surface - i haven't even gotten to the ads, and the forced community posts etc.
What even...did Google force them to Tweet this or is it a joke?
Vanced: YouTube adblocker for Android - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30444648 - Feb 2022 (346 comments)
Now I know about Newpipe, but I manually download some videos with youtube-dl and then Syncthing them to my cell phone.
Then watch it with VLC.
It works perfectly fine for me.
Btw, I think they had to stop because they tried to profit from it. I dislike them for it. Apparently they tried to mint NFTs [0]. Later they said it was a joke, but, NFTs were actually minted. So, the joke thing was a cover.
[0]: https://nitter.net/aseldesu/status/1503117413679869952#m
Tech conference talks, (potentially) deep podcast episodes, lecture videos of a topic I am learning, 45 minutes Chopin prelude "jukebox", etc.
Anything that I think could be very interesting or I had preplanned- beyond 15 minutes- is what I do it for.
My internet connection is very good. But the battery consumption is too high when streaming 1080p/2k. I have became a quality snob now and cannot watch lower resolution videos when there are higher ones available.
I also want to avoid ads (I support indie-type YouTubes by buying Patreon subscription and merches, too, if they are innovative). I hate the too-shiny YT interface, too.
I now just watch 1080p/2k videos in peace from VLC with my wifi/data turned off.
I downloaded 1080p videos regularly before it went bad. I downloaded whole playlists.
I can still download videos, but the resolution options are 144p ajd 360p.
Or, did you mean using a NewPipe or some other kind of plugin? Because that doesn't download it directly on the YouTube app.
Was actually too good that even the premium youtube couldn't hold a candle.
If anyone from the Vanced team reads these threads, I understand, and don't feel bad about it. I'm just grateful for your work. You made YouTube usable.
Just replace the domain with "nitter.net" any time someone sends you a link to a tweet, and you're good to go.
I shouldn't have to pay a monthly recurring charge to get some company to undo their kneecapping of how my hardware and software (that I own, outright, code and all according to GPL) works just because their business model isn't compatible with me being in control of what's mine.
It's no small thing, just brushing off $10 a month is hubris. For half the worlds population that's a third of their income. And for some of us other people, I don't want my money going to google, period. I don't care if it is 10 cents a month, I'm not paying a company to solve a problem they created on purpose in order to charge for the solution.
Firefox + uBlock Origin + Video Background Play Fix
uBlock Origin -> removes the ads (but no sponsorblock) Video Background Play Fix -> lets you turn off the screen or switch tabs with it still playing
The F-Droid guys have forked Firefox for Android to let you use any extension you want. They named it Fennec as the older Firefox, but is just the name, the codebase is the new Fenix one.
Doing none of that and just pay for YouTube premium.
Why?
Because sponsorblock is fantastic and I can set my default video speed to 2x.
That's it. That's all I wanted. But I was more than happy to install and maintain the app to do so.
So if there's anything resembling source, it's more of a diff of a certain YouTube app version you can't just cleanly upload somewhere or even apply to new versions.
The problem, of course, is that bogus DMCA claims are enough to take down a repository, and protesting those DMCA claims will dox you to the big tech companies.
Every time a project like this goes down, I feel more like there should be some kind of Gitea server hosted on a hidden service where "illegal" projects like these can be developed.
While not a Gitea server per se (GitLab instead), git.rip used to be a well-known host for pirated content, leaked source code, and various other things. If I remember correctly, the amount of content on there was in the hundreds of terabytes, which would have made it very hard to externally archive (not even taking into account bandwidth restrictions).
Vanced (and user made hax/mods) was a big reason I chose android. One more major reason lost. Soon I'll be back to walking around with a laptop as a my personal media player.
https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/20647
To anyone out of the loop, Firefox Android has basically killed add-ons, similar to Chrome. This is why you have to go through 12 steps just to install a fucking addon.
I don't see how Firefox for Android is similar to Chrome, as Chrome doesn't have add-ons at all.
Also the vanced devs got to use the decompiled Google app. Not like they started from scratch and made a better app.
they are the "best" at satisfying the corporate demands of google, rather than consumer's demand.
Vanced is very much focused on improving the user experience. Sad to see it go - i hope they leave behind a way for others to do this very same mod in a way that google cannot cease and desist.
Not great, but works OK and you don't get ads.