alt.hn

2/15/2026 at 1:24:16 AM

NewPipe: YouTube client without vertical videos and algorithmic feed

 https://newpipe.net/

by nvader

2/15/2026 at 2:41:39 AM

IME newpipe breaks every few weeks or so, presumably because of some youtube change / obfuscation. Or at least that was the case a few years ago.

I've had more success hosting an invidious instance and using the materialious client for mobile. And a bonus is that it comes with sponsorblock built in.

https://invidious.io/

https://materialio.us/

by Frotag

2/15/2026 at 11:56:14 AM

Not every week, more like a couple of times a year when YouTube makes some breaking changes.

Personally I take these periods as healthy time off from YouTube, so I'm no longer even annoyed by them.

by distances

2/15/2026 at 5:13:28 AM

I found pipepipe to be more stable, break less and have more features.

https://pipepipe.dev/

by super256

2/15/2026 at 10:06:39 AM

How can it be more stable if it still uses NewpipeExtractor?

by FireInsight

2/15/2026 at 8:14:00 AM

A few years is different case. Invidious is also getting blocked easily. Are you running it now? If yes, then report.

by faust201

2/15/2026 at 12:41:34 PM

I am running it, and I used to use NewPipe before. I honestly don't notice much difference in stability. In both cases I would experience issues every couple of months for a day or 2. As YouTube made some change and I need to upgrade the app or server to resolve it. I wouldn't say one is better than another. Both have different advantages and drawbacks that come mostly from the nature of one being an app and the other being a server+web

by agile-gift0262

2/15/2026 at 5:52:48 AM

"IME newpipe breaks every few weeks or so, presumably because of some youtube change / obfuscation."

Same experience. I have a commandline program I wrote to retrieve YouTube download URLs many years ago. On average it has always been more reliable than Newpipe. It continues to work when Newpipe fails and I can fix it quickly when there is a YouTube change

However I noticed recently Newpipe, the original, not SponsorBlock, old version, no updates, had been going many weeks without failure. When it eventually failed I was able to get it working again immediately by simply changing the www.youtube.com IPv4 address

Will try this again when it fails the next time

by 1vuio0pswjnm7

2/15/2026 at 8:26:29 AM

Why did you think of changing the ip address?

by fuzztester

2/15/2026 at 9:25:19 AM

Rate limiting IP addresses is one of the many tools in YouTube's anti 3rd party client toolbox.

by brnt

2/15/2026 at 3:31:19 AM

Absolutely but I stop YouTube consumption if it's not through NewPipe, so a little productivity boost here and there is not too bad ;)

by _blk

2/15/2026 at 5:25:07 AM

What’s the point of newpipe? You can block ads with ublock. You can block shorts with browser extensions. What other benefits does newpipe offer?

by dyauspitr

2/15/2026 at 7:39:12 AM

Play in background, including with screen off, and ability to download videos to watch on a plane.

by Tistron

2/15/2026 at 6:20:18 AM

"What other benefits does newpipe offer?"

The Javascript source code for Google's YouTube player and the YouTube website is obfuscated and/or minified

The Java or Kotlin source code for Newpipe is not

If one does not like something about Newpipe, one can change or remove it

by 1vuio0pswjnm7

2/15/2026 at 8:46:51 AM

Newpipe doesn't clutter the screen with constant recommendations. You can just subscribe to the channels you want, get updates when they release a new video and that's it. It's a much more focused experience than regular Youtube.

by grumbel

2/15/2026 at 8:03:13 AM

The UX is much better. It has convenient gestures to change brightness, volume and speed during tte video. The speed can range from 0.1× to 5×, not just 0.25× to 2×. You can download videos or play them in the background.

by xigoi

2/15/2026 at 11:10:12 AM

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned this: NewPipe is an Android app, and consuming YouTube on a mobile browser is a much worse experience.

by stavros

2/15/2026 at 11:19:04 AM

You can, in both Firefox and Brave

by WithinReason

2/15/2026 at 11:28:42 AM

Thanks, I've edited my post to be more accurate.

by stavros

2/15/2026 at 5:49:15 AM

Newpipe is more pleasant than YouTube on FF Android with uBlock in my opinion. I often search find a video on YouTube, copy the share link into Newpipe and watch there.

by DangitBobby

2/15/2026 at 5:50:04 AM

What do you mean by pleasant? Is this primarily something for Android users?

by dyauspitr

2/15/2026 at 11:32:35 AM

Some things I've not seen others mention: you can subscribe to channels, create playlists etc, all without needing a Google account

by WickyNilliams

2/15/2026 at 3:17:26 PM

I think it's only for mobile, and you can only get it by side-loading as far as I know.

by DangitBobby

2/15/2026 at 8:15:01 AM

If you have a $100 phone then UI is lighter as compared to running firefox etc.

by faust201

2/15/2026 at 6:41:39 AM

Leaner. No ads in layout. Better organized. Not cluttered by buttons nobody asked for.

by scotty79

2/15/2026 at 7:27:00 AM

It's a native Android app vs. a bloated multi MB web page. Of course NewPipe and PipePipe are better. :)

by mikae1

2/15/2026 at 6:24:38 AM

Personally, I use it for a chronological feed of my subscriptions. It takes less time to find something worth watching, and it is easier to move on to do something else if there isn't anything worth watching.

Bookmarking or downloading interesting videos is also handy, since they aren't mixed in with my general bookmarks (in a web browser).

by II2II

2/15/2026 at 7:18:24 AM

> I use it for a chronological feed of my subscriptions.

YouTube provides RSS feeds. You could use an RSS reader to subscribe to your channels. I do, it's marvellous.

On mobile I use PipePipe for listening to stuff (like presentation videos) in the background and downloading offline audio and video.

by mikae1

2/15/2026 at 9:48:44 AM

Newpipe is a good youtube downloader for android. Works well for me with this pipeline: Youtube music -> newpipe -> music speed changer, so that I can slow down and pitch shift then song when using it to transcribe or learn a song.

by kzrdude

2/15/2026 at 12:56:55 PM

Not needing a google account to view most of the videos? Being sble to download those you have interest to watch later offline (in a plane for instance)? Being able to subsribe to channels without a google account?

by prmoustache

2/15/2026 at 6:28:18 AM

It can run in the background. I use it to listen to videos before I fall asleep. Ads would mess up this hard and keeping the screen on would be unnecessary use of energy and OLED.

by scotty79

2/15/2026 at 1:14:16 PM

That is the kind of habit I would want to break if I had it.

by prmoustache

2/15/2026 at 1:30:35 PM

Falling asleep with a barely audible friendly human voice in the background instead of complete silence? Why would you prefer to avoid that?

by scotty79

2/15/2026 at 5:08:10 PM

Yes I would prefer having to be able to not rely on specific background noise. And it looks to me like most of sleep issues are the consequence of unhealthy habits (too mich screen time, too much blue light in the last hours of the day, too heavy dinners, or too close to bed time, not enough physical activities during the day, not enough sexual activities...) so I would rather treat the problem before the symptoms.

It also seems kind of potentially antisocial/annoying behavior if you share yoir bed with someone.

by prmoustache

2/15/2026 at 6:01:01 PM

I don't have any problems with falling asleep without the voice. It's just pleasant. And I live alone. But I see why this might be habit forming for you and why you might want to avoid it. Overthinking something as simple and natural as falling asleep points to high neuroticism.

by scotty79

2/16/2026 at 12:20:08 AM

There's a mobile Firefox extension to do the same thing BTW.

by shiroiuma

2/15/2026 at 2:51:47 AM

I think that is overstating it, there has been one recent breakage and fix in the last few months or more roughly. It would be interesting to see it plotted out on a timeline though.

by kyleee

2/15/2026 at 3:05:24 AM

I think there was a phase of repeated breakages a while back, but things seem to have stabilised.

Fixes are released quickly ime too.

by jimlikeslimes

2/15/2026 at 3:19:41 AM

I use it to mainly download videos, and that seems to break every few weeks. I just updated and it's fixed. Small price to pay.

by truckingthrow33

2/15/2026 at 4:15:20 AM

I think these are the main related past threads:

NewPipe Is Turning 10 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45707575 - Oct 2025 (28 comments)

NewPipe 0.26 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38732781 - Dec 2023 (91 comments)

NewPipe – Lightweight YouTube experience for Android - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38144400 - Nov 2023 (389 comments)

NewPipe: A lightweight YouTube experience for Android - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30449570 - Feb 2022 (220 comments)

NewPipe – ad-free, open-source Android YouTube client - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23871169 - July 2020 (590 comments)

“My Google account got suspended because of NewPipe” - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21247759 - Oct 2019 (522 comments)

by dang

2/15/2026 at 1:55:26 AM

Newpipe is great, I tend to spend too much time on youtube. This at least limits it. It does break from time to time.

by Sytten

2/15/2026 at 2:42:37 AM

Editorialized title! Portrait aspect ratio (or "vertical video", as it's described here - at least I assume that's what the term refers to - like, as if the landscape aspect ratio has no Y axis!) is not obviously mentioned anywhere.

by tom_

2/15/2026 at 2:48:38 AM

I don't get why the poster thinks NewPipe doesn't support vertical videos (let's not be anal, we know what they mean) if the video is "vertical" then making it fullscreen will fill the phone's screen vertically.

by netsharc

2/15/2026 at 3:08:04 AM

Well, perhaps you know what they mean! Me? I can only read the words and then guess based on the words I read. If it's not clear from my post what guesses I have made based on the words I have read, and which assumptions I have made while making those guesses, then I apologise. I will try to make it easier for the reader next time.

It sounds like you found no reference to portrait aspect ratio videos in the article either.

by tom_

2/15/2026 at 4:01:58 AM

I assumed it was just a sloppy way to actually say it has an option to filter out shorts. (Because shorts are always portrait, and it's a common wish to want to eliminate shorts.)

Either way, I also knew what they meant, because "vertical video" is not an inscrutable term that leaves any room to guess it's meaning incorrectly. It's entirely scrutable.

You can keep trying to defend the obtuse complaint that all videos have a vertical dimension, but if it were me I think I would not be so eager to advertise that I was this baffled by this.

by Brian_K_White

2/15/2026 at 4:12:00 AM

Yes, we can assume "vertical video" means "shorts". But once we do that, I still don't see anything on the front page or the FAQ or the github page that mentions shorts. The HN title had "without vertical videos" jammed in and that needs clarification. Maybe there's a toggle somewhere to hide shorts? Or maybe it doesn't have a shorts feed but it otherwise has shorts? Or something else? It's not clear.

by Dylan16807

2/15/2026 at 4:54:15 AM

I don't either. But I didn't install the app so it's still possible. But yeah I don't see anything either.

by Brian_K_White

2/15/2026 at 4:15:22 AM

The point of my post was that the title is editorialized. Am I allowed to say "Did you click the link"? Probably not. But, still, let me suggest that you click the link. Once you've clicked the link, compare the title of the page you find yourself on to the title posted here. Now you've compared them, ask yourself: are they the same? I just did this experiment myself, and the answer was: no. The title of the page at time of my click is this: "NewPipe - a free YouTube client". The title of the HN submission at the time I'm composing this message is this: "NewPipe: YouTube client without vertical videos and algorithmic feed".

We are oft implored, not only by our famous and much-valued dang, but also the other guy (whatever his name is. He does a great job too though), not to editorialize the titles by submitting submissions with titles other than the actual title. How can you tell if the submitted title is other than the actual title? That's easy. You read the one and read the other and compare the two and see if they're different. (Which is another way of restating the previous paragraph.) In this case: they are. (Or at least were at time of writing! Since you'll be reading this in the future.) Hence my complaint.

The vertical video thing? That was just my little joke. OF COURSE I KNOW THAT VERTICAL VIDEO MEANS PORTRAIT VIDEO. And, yes, I have visited youtube.com, and have had a big pile of portrait shorts shit up the feed, same as everybody else. I am not completely... wait, hang on. I am completely stupid. Because I thought it would be so obvious that it was a joke, that nobody would bother to quibble. They'd just chuckle at my attempt to amuse the reader, or roll their eyes at it and ignore it, and then go on to moan at me about some other part of my post. Though, reading my post again, more fool me perhaps. I guess I didn't leave people enough other material to complain about.

Sorry. I'll try to do better in future.

by tom_

2/15/2026 at 9:35:35 AM

Hey tom_, usually they say that explaining a joke makes it worse, but I think you crafted the rare exception!

I did in fact intend to share NewPipe as an antidote to the "en-short-ification" of YouTube after reading a couple of threads earlier today from other Hackers complaining exactly about that. And yes, calling it "vertical video" is a sloppy way of expressing that.

I too will try to do better in the future.

by nvader

2/15/2026 at 2:34:08 AM

There's also Freetube, which is a fantastic desktop client.

https://freetubeapp.io

by biglyburrito

2/15/2026 at 3:02:14 AM

is this just a way to browse youtube without ads or tracking, or what?

I'm looking to just hide Shorts, but I want my recommendations. Not sure what's out there for that.

by pmarreck

2/15/2026 at 3:28:17 AM

I'd recommend stayfree. It works great on mobile android with feature blocking (shorts and reels) and we'll as time based and scheduled blocks. You can remove the blocks by retyping a long prompt.

by user_unique

2/15/2026 at 2:38:51 AM

For some reason I always preferred having tabs on desktop, so I can having stuff paused to be watched later.

by digiown

2/15/2026 at 2:41:33 AM

Thanks, I've bookmarked it for later.

by nvader

2/15/2026 at 1:45:23 PM

and Grayjay

by WithinReason

2/16/2026 at 6:15:28 PM

The biggest issue with it is that watching a few videos in a row will result in YouTube soft blocking your IP for an hour or so. They're really cracking down on watching videos without a login

by igneo676

2/15/2026 at 3:11:50 AM

The issue is I like the algorithmic feed, as well as having all my subscriptions there. I believe that's not available in NewPipe without manually adding all subscription channels.

by satvikpendem

2/15/2026 at 3:16:23 AM

NewPipe can parse a Google data export dump and import all of your subs.

by okanat

2/16/2026 at 7:20:30 PM

That's too manual, I have tons of subscriptions and subscribe to new channels often. Maybe there could be auto syncing via a Google data export through a cron job or something.

by satvikpendem

2/15/2026 at 2:18:25 AM

I've been using and loving NewPipe since 2015 or 2016--whenever it first showed up on Fdroid. Really like the ability to play songs from bandcamp too. Although there's one bug in the bandcamp workflow that I wish was fixed: If you search for an artist then tap the artist page in the results this will take you to the albums screen. Click to the album, then if you either use the back arrow or swipe back you're returned to the search results rather than the list of albums on the artist page.

by simon666

2/15/2026 at 3:08:43 AM

I see no mention of not playing vertical videos on their website.

by _HMCB_

2/15/2026 at 3:56:16 AM

It absolutely works with YouTube shorts. It just doesn't put them in your subscriptions or let an algorithm feed them to you.

by CivBase

2/15/2026 at 4:22:55 AM

What's an algorithm?

by cxr

2/15/2026 at 3:52:26 AM

Been a long time user of Newpipe. It do occasionally break but not that huge of a deal breaker for me.

Only complaint is I can't select a livestream quality/resolution. I want to catch up to some news live and put those on background but it would use too much bandwidth since it's locked to a higher resolution. In such cases, I would just open them on Firefox, set to desktop mode, and listen from there. Afaik, Invidious doesn't support livestreams.

by alskdj21

2/15/2026 at 8:06:31 AM

I revived a once popular Youtube frontend called Cloudtube. All the Youtube media url deciphering is still done by Invidious and I use it more like a frontend for invidious.

https://github.com/rhee876527/clean-youtube/

by s_ting765

2/15/2026 at 2:27:25 AM

What's the difference of NewPipe to ReVanced?

by bryanhogan

2/15/2026 at 2:28:42 AM

Revanced is a mod for the official Android app, where NewPipe is an original app.

In practice this means that Revanced will be much more feature complete than NewPipe.

by charcircuit

2/15/2026 at 8:09:22 AM

NewPipe has many features that the official app doesn’t, such as speeding up videos up to 5×.

by xigoi

2/15/2026 at 9:05:56 AM

Revanced supports up to 5x too.

by charcircuit

2/15/2026 at 2:33:24 AM

It also means revanced is legally dicey whereas newpipe is essentially a legal frontend/scraper of YouTube.

by 2OEH8eoCRo0

2/15/2026 at 2:40:48 AM

Revanced is only distributed as patches, probably to avoid being susceptible to the claims against the original Vanced.

Worth noting that ReVanced has a lot more patches than just YouTube.

by digiown

2/15/2026 at 7:59:31 AM

Not that I care about it but I'm sure you are also violating some terms of service by using NewPipe

by ksynwa

2/15/2026 at 2:23:54 PM

A trained monkey to operates the controls for me.

by 2OEH8eoCRo0

2/15/2026 at 12:35:22 PM

NewPipe always works while the weird revanced route worked for me exactly once out of the several attempts on two phones.

by subscribed

2/15/2026 at 1:38:25 PM

Top comment right now says "newpipe breaks every few weeks or so", but revanced builds in my experience last for at least a year before a new build is required. Personally I'd prefer more upfront steps and get a stable result, rather than something that works quickly but breaks often.

by cypherpunks01

2/15/2026 at 5:46:12 PM

Other comments claim it keeps working for me. Works for me as well (except the last week or so).

I wouldn't mind working a bit for the permanent solution but revanced worked for me once, required a weird microg or a weird play services replacement installation, and then spending endless hours trying to build an working apk.

by subscribed

2/15/2026 at 7:56:43 AM

Newpipe is awesome. If you're on firefox, you can block the main-page feed with the following filter in ublock-origin,

"www.youtube.com##ytd-browse[page-subtype="home"]"

Sadly, you can't do this on Chrome/Chromium anymore with manifest v3.

by akssri

2/15/2026 at 1:15:24 PM

It’s possible to disable history in YouTube’s settings. This will turn off algorithmic feed replacing it with a reverse chronological feed of channels you’re subscribed to.

by scott01

2/15/2026 at 1:36:04 PM

There are YouTube settings that seem to get unset periodically. Even some that their documentations says should be sticky, like caption preferences.

by zeckalpha

2/15/2026 at 6:37:43 PM

Maybe yeah. Though I doubt they’d reset data collection settings like that.

by scott01

2/16/2026 at 2:51:27 PM

They do. I am currently in a weird middle where I have personalization off but ads are shown based on "videos you watched recently".

by zeckalpha

2/15/2026 at 3:52:05 AM

I don't use YouTube much nowadays. It's better for your mental health. I mostly use a fork called Tubular that has sponsored block

by catify

2/15/2026 at 3:49:30 AM

If only it worked. We need a good alternative to YouTube that still let's creators feed themselves...

Though I don't think it will ever happen...

by cermicelli

2/15/2026 at 3:52:37 AM

Brilliant? Nova? It won't happen if you don't support it.

by fragmede

2/15/2026 at 3:57:34 AM

What's Brilliant?

by cermicelli

2/15/2026 at 4:51:01 AM

https://brilliant.org/

> an online, interactive learning platform designed to teach STEM subjects—math, science, and computer science—through active problem-solving rather than passive, pre-recorded video lectures

https://nebula.tv/ was the other one I was thinking of.

by fragmede

2/15/2026 at 12:48:01 PM

How is that relevant to YouTube? Same for nebula?

Nebula is an exclusive invite only platform where no creators outside of English mains and hard left ones are present.

I am not on the right to be specific but I speak other languages and would like more non English content as well.

Same for the exclusivity. Small creators don't exist on either of them.

Ideally we need a video delivery and servicing platform where I can pay like 10 usd per month for my small audience of friends and to view with the convenience of YouTube and good features...

All platforms like these are exclusive for my tastes. I don't sub to any channels with over 100k subs and rest are just programming adjacent content.

by cermicelli

2/15/2026 at 4:02:14 AM

I primarily use NewPipe, but I'll also throw out Grayjay as a client with similar benefits. They work a little differently and since Google sometimes pushes out breaking changes to YouTube's API, I'll switch to Grayjay while I wait for the eventual NewPipe update. In my experience, the Grayjay player also tends to work better with live streams.

by CivBase

2/15/2026 at 5:50:24 AM

newpipe used to work great for me. but for the past month or so I can't watch a video without being prompted to sign in. this is despite constantly switching vpn servers. others don't seem to have this problem. I wonder if my device has been fingerprinted and blocked somehow.

by homeslice69

2/15/2026 at 4:10:57 AM

SwizzTube for iOS is also great

by iCstyle

2/15/2026 at 2:32:04 AM

I love newpipe I've watched hundreds of hours of videos on my shield tv with it.

by 2OEH8eoCRo0

2/15/2026 at 2:56:30 PM

I use Tubular because of sponsorblock.

by jeena

2/15/2026 at 1:35:54 PM

Is there anything comparable for ios?

by Asparagus7426

2/15/2026 at 4:42:27 PM

I used to use this & just ended up paying for premium for my family to get over the headache of bugs & risking any IP associated with our google accounts lest Sundar wakes up on the wrong side of the bed

by villgax

2/15/2026 at 11:47:30 AM

NewPipe works good enough, learned here that "was able to get it working again immediately by simply changing the www.youtube.com IPv4 address", is a fix for it breaking, not that it fusses me as watching vids is a very low priority for me, though sometimes a video that tells me which wire to cut first, is invaluable and has saved my sorry ass.Which sometimes I wish there was a similar way to make, edit and upload videos useing nothing but a cheap phone.

by metalman

2/15/2026 at 4:27:56 PM

[dead]

by goodbeech

2/15/2026 at 6:06:21 AM

[dead]

by imposter

2/15/2026 at 2:24:36 PM

[flagged]

by maximalthinker

2/15/2026 at 7:40:09 AM

Please just buy YouTube Premium and support content creators on the only platform that gives a fair deal.

by TechSquidTV

2/15/2026 at 8:04:57 AM

Even with premium, the official YouTube app has a much worse UX than NewPipe (and is proprietary).

by xigoi

2/15/2026 at 7:44:11 AM

I do this and I am still considering going third party if I can’t turn off shorts soon

by y-curious

2/15/2026 at 7:52:49 AM

The problem with this is that views from third-party clients don't seem to be counted correctly. Lots of creators now have ads in their videos, in addition to YT ads, so presumably, the lower view counts also hurt their own ad sales.

I don't really want to use the official YT client, or give Google any money, so I just buy some merch from my favorite creators once in a while, or support them on Patreon.

by InsideOutSanta

2/15/2026 at 9:10:59 AM

This is the way. If a user does not have YT Premium, watching 500 hours earns the creator from $0.5 to $5. Patreon/merch is way more effective in supporting your favorite authors.

by KORraN

2/15/2026 at 4:06:00 PM

No this is just an excuse. Not all content creators are full time or have audiences. Sometimes people just make valuable content, and deserve to be paid under the agreement that they give you free content, you watch an ad. If you don't like the service, do not use the service.

by TechSquidTV

2/15/2026 at 11:31:12 AM

I'd gladly pay for Premium (I'm already paying for YT Music, the price difference is minimal) if they allow turning off shorts. But they won't. They see time spent in app goes up when they hypnotize the users. They're too Goodhart'ed to realize that quite a lot of users don't enjoy being hypnotized.

by ackfoobar

2/15/2026 at 8:22:51 AM

Fuck Google. Knowingly providing a platform for scammers and flooding the recommendations with absolute garbage should not be rewarded. If valuable channels don't have a way to support them outside of Youtube, then so be it.

by 948382828528