Nathan Drescher / Android Authority
YouTube has been a part of my life since its early days in the late 00s. It’s no secret that today’s YouTube is a far cry from what it used to be. YouTube was free back then; free from subscriptions, free from ads, even free from terrible video suggestions. It was raw and real. Now when we open the app we’re bombarded with pop-ups and ads and the algorithm is awful at surfacing stuff we want to watch.
So like many of you, I went searching for a replacement. I was looking for something calmer and more focused. There really is no replacement for YouTube, but there is a great client that harks back to the YouTube of old. It’s called NewPipe, and it has become my go-to way to watch YouTube.
How do you watch YouTube? 108 votes I pay for YouTube Premium 42 % I use a third-party client like NewPipe 37 % I just accept all the ads and use the official app 19 % I don't watch YouTube 3 %
What makes NewPipe different
Nathan Drescher / Android Authority
This isn’t a YouTube clone like YouTube Vanced. It’s a stripped-down viewer built around Google’s YouTube app, which keeps it cleaner and faster. NewPipe is an open-source streaming client for Android developed back in 2015 and maintained by a small team of volunteers. The app is hosted on F-Droid. It doesn’t collect user data or track anything in the background.
What sets NewPipe apart from other clients is how little it asks of my phone. The developers designed the app to be lightweight, fast, and efficient. I can report that they succeeded, because NewPipe barely sips system resources. And yet it plays videos without pop-ups, ads, or pre-roll interruptions. There’s no user account, so there’s no algorithm or tracking. I can even download videos for offline viewing
The app supports multiple streaming platforms beyond YouTube, as well. You can watch videos from PeerTube, SoundCloud, Bandcamp, and media.ccc.de, making it more than a simple YouTube alternative. This also makes it a useful tool for exploring independent content outside the YouTube ecosystem.
It’s a player for decentralized media.
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