SmartTube is a free and open-source YouTube client for Android TV and TV boxes. It removes ads, supports SponsorBlock, works without Google Services, and is designed for large screens and remote controls.
Note: the developer recently disclosed a build environment compromise and has since rotated keys, rebuilt the environment, and added additional verification steps. Users should update to the latest version and verify sources. GitHub: https://github.com/yuliskov/SmartTube
Oh no that works too. That’s what I am using now and was using beforehand, but VaccumTube was nice because it had more controller friendly UI/Controls for the SteamDeck. Using a controller as a mouse cursor kinda sucks. Plus you could dock your steamdeck and cast from your phone. It was nice.
Youtube artificially slows down the loading of videos on browsers like Firefox and especially for Ublock Origin users. I even get a little message saying “Experiencing issues? Find out why” and loading anything on the site takes longer. I even tested this theory by putting it in a fake virtual credit card and getting a free YT Premium trial. Magically the website is worked just fine on Firefox and the message no longer appeared… I refuse to pay Google though.
It turns out my account was a part of some A/B testing “experiment” that makes ALL YouTube videos encrypted, so third party apps don’t work. It wasn’t VaccumTubes fault. The only way I could get around it was by switching accounts. It makes me worried that YouTube will go through with this “experiment” and screw over many other programs like the suggested FreeTube in the near future. They already use this encryption on the TV and Movies you can “watch free with ads” on YouTube. I guess YT wants to use it for normal videos too. Yikes.
just want to add, that even if they encrypt the video, ultimately your pc has to decrypt it and fhere are tools that allow you to do that already… it will allways be a cat and mouse game
Yeah that’s true, I definitely don’t think it would be the end of blocking ads on YT or anything crazy. Tbf I was just making the assumption that it would be pretty hard to decrypt the video streams if YT could just keep changing the decryption key every so often. Had no idea there were workarounds tho, thanks for the info at least!
I shouldn’t really be using YT with an account anyways, it’s terrible for privacy/security to be using Google products in general. I’m gradually trying to break out of bad habits one service at a time. I just need to copy over all my playlists so I can start my little migration to FreeTube or something better.