Used through all of the apps and personally there's little incentive for me not to use Firefox/Fennec. The only issue is that background playing is flaky, not sure it only works on my Poco F7 and not my S23, or if it randomly starts pausing the video when leaving de browser or even if it's a browser or OS power saving settings. But when it works it works flawlessly.

In any case, there needs to be a huge problem to justify installing an android app. I prefer to keep them to a minimum and focus solely on the browser. Browsers are the only OS-vendor-safe option which I can use to bail entirely on Google's Android or iOS and go some place else.

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mawadev 35 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

Solid take, these days most apps are just glorified browser wrappers and you don't miss out on anything. In fact, you could have a separate browser with all these saving modes disabled just for the youtube use case.

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TFNA an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

NewPipe has a one-click download button. If one follows channels with mainly-audio content that one may want to listen to later, possibly away from an internet connection, that is super-handy.

NewPipe also lets you export your subscriptions (which is just a bunch of links to RSS feeds), so you aren't shackled to Android/RSS.

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gchamonlive an hour ago | parent | next [-]

Can I somehow import my current subscriptions from Google into newpipe? When I tried newpipe what put me off was that I already had a list on the browser. I also couldn't sync the list between multiple devices. Also is there anything on Linux I can use to sync to newpipe and resume videos on my laptop if I'm tired of watching on my phone? Of if I saw something interest and I wanted to continue on Linux in order to take notes and make proofs of concept.

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TFNA an hour ago | parent [-]

NewPipe does have a Share function for any video and there is probably some way to customize it to get the integration with your Linux laptop that you want. I believe (though I haven't tried in a while) that if one is watching a video on NewPipe and then clicks Share and passes the video to a media-center device running Kodi, Kodi will even start playing the video from that same timestamp, so Share is pretty powerful. Not sure what is available for passing vids from a Linux computer to NewPipe on the phone, though.

	▲	gchamonlive 30 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		To add to the list, if you share the link over kdeconnect and select a linux device (mine is hyprland on archlinux) it'll open the link using the default $BROWSER. If there's a simple integration to sync subscriptions I think I'd give it another go. Fennec is good but as mentioned background playback stability would be really nice to have.

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shellwizard an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Also newpipe let you create a playlist of videos and only play the audio track in the background or play a given video in the background

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II2II 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

One of the reasons why I use an app to view YouTube is to disable suggested videos and comments. Basically, I want to have a personalized list of the channels I view as worth watching and I want to discourage continued watching outside of those boundaries.

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Groxx 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

There are adblock filters and extensions for that fwiw.

YouTube does make some kind of changes significantly harder to build than simple scripting will handle though. I do definitely see some reasons for specialized apps, and video is a fairly prime example of where they're often more capable or more (power/time/whatever) efficient.

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gchamonlive 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I don't have a problem with compulsive watching, so for me the subscriptions view is good enough. I think there are be extensions for Firefox to customize the layout the way need, but it falls in the pitfall of relying on YouTube code for it to work, so it's bound to be flaky or have a short lifespan.

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II2II 2 hours ago | parent [-]

For the most part, I've been using the apps for so long that compulsive viewing is not an issue on my end either. That said, I do have my days and I don't want to slide into that habit. By sticking to my curated list, I am limited to a couple of hours of videos a week. Quite often it turns out to be less since I've grown much more selective about what I will watch from that list.

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gchamonlive 2 hours ago | parent [-]

In a non-curated list, or one curated by the algorithm, what types of videos do you think has this potential to suck you back into this habit?

	▲	II2II an hour ago \| parent [-]
		By far the easiest ones that would cause me to slide back into this habit come from channels I used to watch, then decided to stop watching. In a lot of cases, those channels produced videos I enjoyed. Yet I also found them hit-and-miss in terms of quality or the channel focussed upon long-form videos with too little content to justify the time watching them. When I switched over to using an app, there was also a good chance that an algorithmically suggested video from an unfamiliar creator would capture my imagination. When I have looked at recommendations recently, I doubt that would be a problem today. Too much AI and human generated slop. Too many click-bait titles that barely give a hint on what the video is about, never mind why I should care about their take on it. Then there are the days when I am both bored and exhausted. While I don't tend to watch much on those days, I have known myself to scroll through the recommendations to see if there is anything to occupy the time.

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Latty 34 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Have you tried disabling the Page Visibility API? Web apps will sometimes use that to try and mess with background playing, IIRC.

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crtasm 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I use NewPipe so I can subscribe to channels and put channels/videos into playlists, without needing to make a youtube account.

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gchamonlive 2 hours ago | parent [-]

I use android so I'm already past that point sadly, but I'd be the first to dump my Google credentials as soon as that monopoly that's got a stranglehold on Android cracks

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crtasm 37 minutes ago | parent [-]

I'm also on Android, running LineageOS without adding google services

	▲	gchamonlive 34 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Indeed, but then I'd have to say goodbye to banking and thus NFC paying, which needs the banking app installed locally AFAIK to authorize the link. So yeah, it's doable but cripples the device to such a point that I'd only be able to use it at home. On the go access to banking is a must. The block in degooglifying is usually region not lack of willingness. Some places are locked to Google by no fault of the consumer.