PipePipe: NewPipe hard fork implementing SponsorBlock

PipePipe: NewPipe hard fork implementing SponsorBlock github.com

An open-source Android app to let you browse YouTube and other services freely. - InfinityLoop1308/PipePipe

502 points•Qision•6 days ago•289 comments•

#pipepipe #implementing #newpipe #sponsorblock #fork #fork implementing #hard fork #newpipe hard

289 comments

I want these things to implement peer to peer caching, so that when 10 people are watching the same video, only one downloads from youtubes own servers.

Then it's just a matter of letting people add their own videos directly to the service and it can become fully independent of YouTube.

t2r31214 days ago

Peer to peer died because (1) a lot of the world, especially outside the US, has terrible upload/bandwidth, (2) HTTPS CDNs got _really_ cheap, far cheaper that p2p technologies like BitTorrent+WebSeed.

There are a minority of users who care about being able to host videos that violate YouTube/TikTok/Instagram policies. Unfortunately, a significant part of that minority is working with infringing or illegal content, which both prevents ad networks from working with you and attracts attention from law enforcement.

serbuvlad4 days ago

It's much more of a storage space problem and a device running 24/7 problem. With the desktop of yore you can just leave them running and attach cheap HDDs to them for media storage. Nowadays, most people have laptops -- which are explicitly closed for most of the time -- and phones -- which doing 24/7 upload on will kill your battery life. And neither support 3.5" HDDs.

BitTorrent is certainly built around the idea that upload can be slow. Even if user have upload 100x worse than download, 100 seeders can saturate a leacher, and then the leacher becomes a seeder.

The problem is just that he doesn't stay a seeder forever, because of the other problems.

gus_massa4 days ago

> There are a minority of users who care about being able to host videos that violate YouTube/TikTok/Instagram policies.

IF I had a penny for every time I heard "unalive", I'd build my own hosting platform.

kmeisthax4 days ago

don't forget 3) mobile phones exist and 4) anyone watching PeerTube over BitTorrent is publishing their watch history to the Internet

WithinReason4 days ago

Peer to peer is alive and well in BitTorrent

some_random3 days ago

YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok (especially) are becoming stricter and stricter about the kinds of content they allow to exist and spread on their platforms. Right now I think an alternative is non-viable but it's increasingly possible that won't be the case in the near future.

adrianmonk4 days ago

Delivering the bits is not the hard part of making a successful video platform. It's other stuff like recommendations and content discovery that is actually useful, allowing creators to monetize enough that they want to be on your platform, navigating legal issues, fighting spam and abuse, and getting enough users to sign up and start using your service.

idrios4 days ago

Delivering the bits is a part of it though. When youtube changes its api in a way that forces NewPipe to change its algorithm, they have to push out a change that forces users to update the app. This is annoying because naturally you won't find NewPipe on the app store so updating the app is tedious for users who use it. The parent's workaround fixes some or all of this nuisance, depending on how implemented

maybewhenthesun4 days ago

Delivering the bits might not be hard. Storing the bits is hard. Or at least expensive.

xgulfie4 days ago

Newpipe isn't trying to be a video platform

the-scrabi3 days ago

(One of the) NewPipe devs here: I've been dreaming of something like a Worldwide Video (WWV) for a while. Essentially, instead of having one huge platform you would have many smaller platforms. These would talk the same content language, like HTML/HTTP for the Web, so you could have Video browsers like PipePipe, NewPipe or others that could aggregate and display the content from these platforms. Peertube kind of goes into that direction, but the Peertube network just like other similar platforms/systems have many problems right now. These often suffer from lacking content moderation, a strong network effect towards bigger platforms and a well scalable content provisioning (CDN costs money and P2P is complicated) for example.

prmoustache4 days ago

That would put users at risk of being sued/punished for copyright infrigement.

Animats3 days ago

That's what PeerTube does. If enough people are watching the same thing, the clients start to serve blocks of the video to other clients, taking load off the hosting server. There's still only one hosting server. It just scales for popular videos.

Nobody uses PeerTube much. I put technical videos on Hardlimit because it doesn't insert ads. I don't care about "discovery"; they're for a tiny audience that comes in from postings elsewhere. Works fine for that. The client side is all Javascript in user's browsers.

gchamonlive4 days ago

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.

TFNA4 days ago

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.

wafflemaker4 days ago

It's even better with a podcast app that can have a directory read as a podcast. Have to click once more though to have the"podcasts"refreshed to get it in my playlist. Still cool for podcasts that are only on YouTube and Spotify.

gchamonlive4 days ago

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.

shellwizard4 days ago

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

II2II4 days ago

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.

Groxx4 days ago

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.

gchamonlive4 days ago

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.

easterncalculus4 days ago

If you're not doing it already, you can pretty much get this from using RSS feeds for the channels you want to watch and yt-dlp.

landdate4 days ago

brave mobile has settings to disable youtube shorts, suggested videos, etc.

mawadev4 days ago

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.

CarlJW4 days ago

Have you tried the Firefox extension "Video Background Play Fix"?

This has worked flawlessly for me on every phone I've used.

crtasm4 days ago

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

gchamonlive4 days ago

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

AlbertoLuna4 days ago

After trying all the alternatives in the end I settled on self hosting https://github.com/Materialious/Materialious

All the YouTube alternative frontends are so privacy focused that they do not even offer video history in your account.

Having video history is a must for me as I might start watching a video in my computer and then continue on my phone.

Also as it is just a web (and includes support for SponsorBlock) it works everywhere, no need to patch apps or install extensions.

Aachen4 days ago

I have watch history in NewPipe just fine? And I find it very convenient to know what I've already watched. All local, Google doesn't need to store it for you / you can't lose access to it

jurf4 days ago

I think OP meant cross-device.

Lerc4 days ago

Is it a problem for you that YouTube's watch history is littered with videos you didn't watch, but got recorded as being watched because the mouse pointer moved over one of their suggestions for a moment.

cannonpalms4 days ago

I use the better YouTube preview browser extension that moves preview from mouse over to long click just for this reason

01jonny014 days ago

I just use skipvids.com rather than installing an invidious fork that constantly breaks

Tha_144 days ago

I have been happily using PipePipe for the past few months and have been very satisfied with it. The developer seems to spend the time and attention needed to make it work again whenever youtube likes to change things and I really appreciate that.

y-c-o-m-b4 days ago

I think it's been about 6 months or more for me and I am also very satisfied with it. I left NewPipe because I'd often have to wait days to weeks for simple fixes to get implemented. PipePipe is patched very often.

simur4 days ago

I think part of the reason why NewPipe is so slow is that they are in the middle of a rewrite/redesign. All the focus is there and the current app is in the maintainance mode.

riedel4 days ago

This is the reason I switched probably mor than a year or two ago. YouTube remains a cat and mouse game. Strange things with those forks is that they always add some more streaming sources Mike BkliBili but keep the old stuft. Actually soundcloud only works very limited lately.

hadrien014 days ago

Same. It's also less buggy, and they've fixed long-standing navigation gripes I had with NewPipe. I did disable the SponsorBlock integration because I find it quite annoying to go back on a skipped sequence.

sureglymop4 days ago

Same. My only issue (with NewPipe also) is that at ~50 subscribed channels, Google rate limits me when I refresh. I wish there was better logic to get new content or a way to space it out over an amount of time.

2Gkashmiri4 days ago

I am at 340+ subs and rate limits happen very rarely.

I have had this issue few times on a specific wifi router (different router on same line doesn't) so don't know exactly.

Cider99864 days ago

If you want music I've found Metrolist to be the nicest frontend.

https://github.com/MetrolistGroup/Metrolist/releases

timpera3 days ago

Thank you for sharing, it really seems to be a great app!

broodbucket4 days ago

Limusic on desktop has been good for me too

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