Is there a third party YouTube client that supports DeArrow and actually works nowadays?
from aprehendedmerlin@lemmy.dbzer0.com to privacy@lemmy.ml on 13 Apr 09:14
https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/42094587

Hi guys. Basically what title says I have been using YouTube revanced since the beginning but now I’m looking for replacements so that I can get rid of the last Google app on my phone and microg all together but I really hate sensational thumbnails and titles on YouTube and kinda got used to DeArrowed thumbnails

Edit: link for the people who might not know what DeArrow is and might be interested

#privacy

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Zagorath@aussie.zone on 13 Apr 09:34 next collapse

I’m not 100% sure about DeArrow, but ReVanced definitely still works, and it does support Ajay’s Sponsorblock, so I suspect DeArrow would also be supported.

aprehendedmerlin@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 13 Apr 09:42 collapse

Yeah I have been using yt ReVanced for years and you’re right it supports both dearrow and sponsorblock but recently I have gotten rid of all Google apps on my phone except yt ReVanced and microg and I’m looking to finish the job

takeda@lemm.ee on 13 Apr 09:54 next collapse

Could you list the replacements you use? I am especially wondering about Google maps.

Tundra@lemmy.ml on 13 Apr 10:26 next collapse

organic maps is great, also magic earth

aprehendedmerlin@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 13 Apr 13:26 next collapse

Try both Magic Earth and Organic Maps but none of them work flawlessly like Google Maps and you have to either give up on it or make concessions

FriendBesto@lemmy.ml on 20 Apr 18:43 collapse

I use Organic maps and if I “need” to use Gmaps, I use GWMaps, which is a privacy focused wrapper of the Google Maps site. Got it from Frdroid.

acockworkorange@mander.xyz on 14 Apr 00:10 next collapse

I’m not following your logic here. Why would you want to get rid of ReVanced? It’s not a Google product any more than other alternative frontends, right?

aprehendedmerlin@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 14 Apr 08:05 collapse

Because It’s modded official YT app with probably a lot of telemetry and phoning home in background

acockworkorange@mander.xyz on 14 Apr 17:37 collapse

I guess I just assumed they’d remove the telemetry, but yeah, shouldn’t assume.

ad_on_is@lemm.ee on 14 Apr 11:08 collapse

I did the same… ditched all google services, except maps and revanced. They’re just unbeatable right now in terms of user experience

Zagorath@aussie.zone on 15 Apr 06:08 collapse

Yeah I agree. I’d love to get rid of maps, but location history is just way too valuable to give up, and I couldn’t find anybody else who does it.

I also really like navigation that’s responsive to current traffic levels. Obviously even if someone else provided that, them having fewer users would mean it’s not going to be very effective, but I’d be willing to switch to someone else who at least was attempting to do that, even if their userbase wasn’t there yet.

Right now though…nobody that I could find even tries to do either of those crucial features.

whysofurious@sopuli.xyz on 13 Apr 09:52 next collapse

I love dearrow, it’s an invaluable tool. I wish grayjay (grayjay.app) will support it in the future.

Edit: there is a fork the YouTube source with dearrow support, but not official. github.com/netux/grayjay-source-youtube

VerPoilu@sopuli.xyz on 13 Apr 10:08 next collapse

The fork doesn’t look like it’s being maintained unfortunately.

whysofurious@sopuli.xyz on 13 Apr 10:27 next collapse

Ah true, stupid me I didn’t even look at the repo history or commits. Thanks for pointing it out :)

aprehendedmerlin@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 13 Apr 14:03 collapse

wow just what I was looking for and it’s abandoned

Cris16228@lemmy.today on 13 Apr 10:49 next collapse

Yeah I wish it was official! Love DeArrow and grayjay!

aprehendedmerlin@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 13 Apr 13:52 collapse

I have literally tried all of the YouTube Frontends I can find and grayjay is the most reliable of them all in my opinion but their YT plugin doesn’t support DeArrow. It seems like Louis Rossman doesn’t like these tools as he repeatedly said on his channel He’s not a fan of neither the SponsorBlock and nor DeArrow and understandably so after all he is a content creator himself. I wish instead of making a bunch of useless yt frontends someone would fork their plugin but I understand maintaining it would be hard work with YouTube constantly changing things in background and subsequent upstream updates need to be merged so who am I to judge I guess

whysofurious@sopuli.xyz on 13 Apr 15:17 collapse

Yeah I became aware of their stance on SponsorBlock while enabling it in Grayjay. TBH, if they are still giving me a choice, I don’t mind what their stance is on this. I (and this is my super personal opinion) much prefer to consciously donate than being served ads or passively contributing to the youtube sponsor hustle.

aprehendedmerlin@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 13 Apr 17:27 collapse

Yeah who cares as long as they have it. But that’s why I think they probably don’t have any plans to add DeArrow to their official YT plugin

VerPoilu@sopuli.xyz on 13 Apr 10:07 next collapse

SmartTube for Android TV

But I suppose it’s not what you’re looking for if you want ans it’s only for android smart TVs.

aprehendedmerlin@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 13 Apr 13:32 collapse

Yeah it’s the best YouTube Frontend for Android TV for sure

es_eskaliert@feddit.org on 13 Apr 10:19 next collapse

It says here that LibreTube works, and I just checked and can confirm. In its settings, choose SponsorBlock -> Enable DeArrow.

aprehendedmerlin@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 13 Apr 14:12 collapse

Yeah I know I tried this one recently too but with recent YouTube restrictions It doesn’t work for me anymore

ReversalHatchery@beehaw.org on 13 Apr 16:48 next collapse

did you try to change instance in settings?

aprehendedmerlin@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 13 Apr 17:20 collapse

There were some preset piped instances in it I tried some of them. I have to mention that I use a VPN to access YouTube and maybe that is my problem but I have to use a VPN since YouTube access is restricted where I live

MrSoup@lemmy.zip on 13 Apr 18:35 next collapse

I use LibreTube and I can confirm that with settings “Disable Piped proxy” and “Local stream extraction” enabled it works. Give it a try

aprehendedmerlin@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 14 Apr 08:11 collapse

Yeah someone else suggested that too I installed it again and to my surprise it works for now but I’m sure I tried the local extraction the last time too anyways thanks gonna test it for a few days with multiple VPN servers to see if it really passes Edit: it still doesn’t work with some VPN servers “confirm you’re not a bot” error

WreckingBANG@lemmy.ml on 13 Apr 20:27 collapse

The Dev is implementing a local only mode for the next version. It can be downloaded from the Nightly-Builds Repo if you want to try it.

This is the link to the nightly-builds: github.com/libre-tube/NightlyBuilds

Be aware that it is a Debug-Build so it will be a bit laggy

aprehendedmerlin@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 14 Apr 00:05 collapse

Thanks but How can it solve “confirm you’re not a bot” error without a logged in cookies?

richardisaguy@lemmy.world on 14 Apr 23:06 collapse

yeah, nowadays i think they changed their focus from watching directly from YouTube or piped to being a client for personal instances, quite a shame…

mybuttnolie@sopuli.xyz on 13 Apr 10:31 next collapse

Freetube

aprehendedmerlin@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 13 Apr 13:29 collapse

Yeah I have tried freetube android recently. It looked very alpha stage to me and lacking but promising

mybuttnolie@sopuli.xyz on 13 Apr 13:41 collapse

Nothing about it seems alpa to me, but it’s down quite often because youtube is fighting against it. I use pipepipe as a backup.

aprehendedmerlin@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 13 Apr 13:56 collapse

I meant their android port I use their desktop app that’s great

marauding_gibberish142@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 13 Apr 16:34 collapse

Funny how the desktop app doesn’t work for me either

aprehendedmerlin@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 13 Apr 17:22 collapse

Yeah sometimes it doesn’t work for me too but I think that’s because I use a VPN

FriendBesto@lemmy.ml on 20 Apr 18:41 collapse

Same. I usually will change the VPN servers to non-English speaking countries. That usually helps.

scheep@lemmy.world on 14 Apr 10:55 next collapse

Materialious has DeArrow, but apparently only the desktop and Android clients work. The web client is blocked by YT unfortunately :(

aprehendedmerlin@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 14 Apr 12:17 collapse

Public Invidious instances are kinda Dead at the moment

Saltarello@lemmy.world on 14 Apr 19:10 next collapse

Not a 3rd party front end as such but on android I use YT through browser with DeArrow, Sponsorblock & uBO. I never sign in to YouTube, subscriptions & “watch later” i handle via a specific note set up in Joplin. Also all tracking is removed first via Untracker. Takes an extra few seconds to add video links to Joplin but its become second nature & works well for me & of course this way let’s me save links to PeerTube content & any other sources too

aprehendedmerlin@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 14 Apr 22:55 collapse

Thanks Sounds good but I can’t access YouTube without a VPN so I’m gonna get the “login to confirm you’re not a bot” error the second I open YT on web

FriendBesto@lemmy.ml on 20 Apr 18:38 collapse

I use Freetube on both PC and Android which has DeArrow. There are also a few forks of NewPipe that have it, BavePipe is one of them.

aprehendedmerlin@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 20 Apr 23:24 collapse

You mean brave NewPipe?

FriendBesto@lemmy.ml on 21 Apr 00:39 collapse

It used to be called BraveNewPipe, yes. But the NewPipe folks want to trademark the name, so name got changed to BravePipe.

aprehendedmerlin@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 21 Apr 13:14 collapse

Thanks I checked it it has SponsorBlock but not DeArrow

FriendBesto@lemmy.ml on 22 Apr 01:02 collapse

Dang, apologies. Double checked. You are quite correct, my bad.

Freetube on Android/PC does have it, however. But it does have the many other options that a NewPipe derivative has.

Clipious is another one that does.

aprehendedmerlin@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 22 Apr 07:55 collapse

You’re right. Clipious and FreeTube and LibreTube all have both of them but they don’t have a solution for “sign in to confirm you’re not a bot” error which comes up a lot when you use a VPN. only third party client that fixed this for me was grayjay with passing auth cookies (yes you have to sign in for the cookies unfortunately)

FriendBesto@lemmy.ml on 22 Apr 16:53 collapse

I never get that message, say on Freetube, and I also use a VPN. May I suggest you rotate to a smaller country’s server? Specifically one that is well outside the West and that also does not use English as their main or secondary language. I noticed English speaking servers are far, far more likely to get flagged.

I have suggested this to others with excellent results so far.

I have gotten that error when I check invidious on FF, but I am able to get by with uBlock on and just making sure JS is enabled. Never had that happen on Android clients.

aprehendedmerlin@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 23 Apr 23:09 collapse

OK thanks I’ll try to connect to asian countries servers from now on for YouTube