Best YouTube Vanced alternatives for Android, after its shutdown
Bad news… The developers of https://alternativeto.net/software/youtube-vanced/ have announced the end of development of the application and download links. A decision caused by the actions of Google.
It's hard to be surprised by this change of situation for YouTube Vanced. The Verge tells us that the application will be removed in the next few days. Available on the official website of the application until now, the download links will disappear in the next few days and the development will stop.
But there's good news: there are plenty of other YouTube clients for Android with more or less the same features. And here are some of the best.
NewPipe is a YouTube client that does not use any Google-dependent library or YouTube API. The application only analyzes YouTube itself to get the necessary information. This mainly means that you can use this application on any device, even those that don't have Google services installed. The downside is that you can't log in with your Google/YouTube account, so you'd have to export/import your subscriptions.
NewPipe is very lightweight, has a built-in ad-blocker, and supports downloading videos and playing them in the background. And if you miss SponsorBlock, there's even a NewPipe fork that has this built-in.
SkyTube is another open source YouTube player for Android. Many features like ad-blocking, subscriptions import, video downloading, and more can also be found in this app. Some highlighted features are the ability to block unwanted videos, blacklist/whitelist entire channels, filter languages, or block videos with few views and many dislikes. Like NewPipe, it doesn't allow you to log in with your YouTube account since the app is not dependent on GAPPS/Google Apps.
SongTube is a fast and functional YouTube client with a nice and polished design. It's privacy-friendly (no Google services or trackers), it blocks ads by default, and it's focused on listening to music with playlists at its heart. It also incorporates an audio converter & tags from MusicBrainz.
MusicPiped is a full-featured music player that streams from YouTube instead of playing local files. At its core, this app uses NewPipeExtractor to get streams from YouTube. It features built in search over YouTube, an adjustable playing queue, custom playlists, background playback with notification controls, and more. It does not stream video and only fetches audio files, thus eliminating heavy data usage of videos. MusicPiped does not track you. In fact, there is no tracking system at all; you don't even need Google APIs to use the app.
VueTube is a new, simple, and open source YouTube client. Compared to the apps above, it can seem a little bare-bones, but if you don't need advanced features, this app might be a good fit for you. It features light, dark, and OLED themes, a basic search function, and a video player. VueTube is a newcomer, so new features like a custom video player, a customizable UI, an advanced video search, and even the ability to sign in with your Google account are expected to be added as the project matures.
LibreTube is an alternative frontend for YouTube on Android. It's also pretty recent, and is currently in beta (so you might expect bugs). But don't let this stop you, as it already has many interesting features like user accounts, subscriptions, playlists, search, suggestions, subtitles, and more. Other functionalities like filters and comments are currently being developed, so keep an eye on this project.
YMusic is a convenient little app that lets you enjoy music from YouTube. It only plays the audio of the video in background to save up consumed data. With YMusic, you can download videos from YouTube (as MP3s), and it integrates with Last.fm for retrieving artist images and descriptions. On top of that, it features a customizable interface, smart playlists with fully customizable rules, custom equalizers, gapless playback, home screen widgets, and more.
Finally, if none of the apps mentioned above suit you, you can also just use a regular web browser that supports extensions, like Firefox (or Mull or Fennec F-Droid ). You can add uBlock Origin for blocking ads, SponsorBlock to skip the sponsored segments, and Video Background Play Fix to play videos in the background, and just use the YouTube web player at youtube.com.
Comments on 'Best YouTube Vanced alternatives for Android, after its shutdown'
You should add Invidious, which is a front-end, privacy friendly web client for YouTube. I've also heard good things about FreeTube (which is an actual app) but I've never used it
This post only lists the alternatives to Vanced that are available on Android. Invidious is a website, and FreeTube is a desktop app.
Ohhh gotcha.
I'm a big fan of NewPipe (x SponsorBlock) but have interest in LibreTube since it uses Piped instead of YouTube directly. Still early for my daily usage for now
I prefer this : https://www.youtube.com/premium More ethical, more legal, and a small amount money