When they intentionally changed their app to stop playing when you lock your phone (the default for every single app at the time was to keep playing) and then hid that feature behind a paywall, I vowed to always hate and never pay for this fucking service. I have never regretted that decision.
this post was submitted on 25 Aug 2026
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The idea that taking chunks out of the service will make you want to pay for the service, clearly sound reasoning.
newpipe users stay winning
Newpipe getting taken behind the shed by changes to android API relatively soon unless you're side loading or something idk
Is it possible to even install NewPipe without side loading?
pretty sure it's just a 24 hour wait and then u can download whatever u want after pressing a button
side loaders stay winning. once they disable that, i go to graphene and say shit like graphene users stay winning.
my personal tactic / benchmark for dealing with enshittification is to imagine the nuclear option (completely degoogled life) for a given platform (mobile shit). and each time they do something shitty, i invest the time and effort to move another step towards it. just like i used to have a shitty job, and every day the bosses did something i hated, i would update the resume and throw it around. like a productive way to blow off steam. then one day, i got an offer that was killer and fuckin' bounced.
honestly, the whole reason i have a killer jellyfin/servarr setup + home theater was years of asshole decisions by studios and streaming companies until i finally had enough, tested out my new setup, then seamlessly transitioned to something easier and more enjoyable as i cancelled all my subscriptions.
i have been using newpipe for so long that when somebody shows me some shit with the native app, it blows me away. all the fuckin' ads and dogshit UX, like holy shit. it's the worst. i will never go back to that.
and, sure, sometimes newpipe falls behind and i can't watch a video right then. i do the mental calculus of deciding if i actually want to watch it enough that i'll watch 4 insurance ads in a row and then one every 5 minutes. half the time i don't, so i just do something else. so it's like the process is training me to resist the call of immediate content and to never normalize their horrendous UX.
ps - love how newpipe has a built in "save" feature to scrape either audio or audio+video. i just started using this to build a little library of latest hits on my phone for short trips. it + AIMP for playback and i've got an easy setup for quickly scraping an mp3 or two right into my music folder. i would have killed for this kind of easy setup years ago.
But its so easy to block ads why would anyone pay for this
The average person can barely do an advanced Google search now that they've stopped teaching computer literacy in most schools
The assumption is that you grew up with touch screens and therefore "know how computers work"
It's wild
It also doesn't help that any alternative clients or ad blockers, Google keeps shitting them up.
Go to F Droid = "Due to Google policies this app will no longer function." Go to vanced = "We're shutting down, you can guess the reason why, we don't have to tell you." Go get a adblocker = "You have 3 videos and then you just can't use YouTube. Also we're going to do the equivalent of cranking down the AC until you leave by slowing down your browser artificially."
Having to reinvent the wheel because Ford made a proprietary wheel shaped like a Bald Eagle
Man that sucks, fuck the education system
Yep
Ruined my desire to be a teacher
Google keeps removing/breaking advanced search features.
What happened to Google is unironically a tragedy, imagine just wanting to be nothing more than a chatGPT off-shoot.
Mobile ads mostly if I had to guess. Little more difficult there, especially if you primarily rely on something like a pi hole at home that you can’t use on the go
Does revanced not work for that?
revanced still works for me although I've been getting some minor buffering issues recently
It has enough problems that I rather use YouTube in the browser (which has enough problems that I would rather pay 1.50/month but not 10 times as much).
It does but I think the effort barrier for that is just high enough for some to give up and pay lol. That and I don’t think revanced is on iPhone
You have stuff like "DNS66" on Android and "DNSCloak" on iOS, both of which allow you to do DNS based adblocking, even when using cellular networking.
It's very nice. Doesn't block all the ads, but it gets rid of a great majority of them!
Especially in mobile phone games.
When I could get it for 1.50 a month I thought it was worth it to be able to use the apps without ads. But this is way to expensive and the multiple tiers for an already expensive service feel insulting.
I use my buddy's family account and when i use it, it's for keeping the sound playing when the screen is locked.
If i had to pay for it myself I'd probably try to defeat that limitation but this works
If that ever stops working for you and need help defeating that particular limitation let me know because I know a couple of ways around it that can help
Thanks dorty
I mainly watched on my smart tv, so I paid for years just to get rid of ads there. Plus, it gave you access to some premium content, and I kept access to the gazillions of playlists that I already had (those are hard to access on NewPipe). The price got insane, though, and the ads are intolerable so I just stopped watching youtube.
people pay for YouTube??
uBO my beloved
Invidious is my YouTube Premium.