Used through all of the apps and personally there's little incentive for me not to use Firefox/Fennec. The only issue is that background playing is flaky, not sure it only works on my Poco F7 and not my S23, or if it randomly starts pausing the video when leaving de browser or even if it's a browser or OS power saving settings. But when it works it works flawlessly.
In any case, there needs to be a huge problem to justify installing an android app. I prefer to keep them to a minimum and focus solely on the browser. Browsers are the only OS-vendor-safe option which I can use to bail entirely on Google's Android or iOS and go some place else.
One of the reasons why I use an app to view YouTube is to disable suggested videos and comments. Basically, I want to have a personalized list of the channels I view as worth watching and I want to discourage continued watching outside of those boundaries.
I don't have a problem with compulsive watching, so for me the subscriptions view is good enough. I think there are be extensions for Firefox to customize the layout the way need, but it falls in the pitfall of relying on YouTube code for it to work, so it's bound to be flaky or have a short lifespan.
For the most part, I've been using the apps for so long that compulsive viewing is not an issue on my end either. That said, I do have my days and I don't want to slide into that habit. By sticking to my curated list, I am limited to a couple of hours of videos a week. Quite often it turns out to be less since I've grown much more selective about what I will watch from that list.
By far the easiest ones that would cause me to slide back into this habit come from channels I used to watch, then decided to stop watching. In a lot of cases, those channels produced videos I enjoyed. Yet I also found them hit-and-miss in terms of quality or the channel focussed upon long-form videos with too little content to justify the time watching them.
When I switched over to using an app, there was also a good chance that an algorithmically suggested video from an unfamiliar creator would capture my imagination. When I have looked at recommendations recently, I doubt that would be a problem today. Too much AI and human generated slop. Too many click-bait titles that barely give a hint on what the video is about, never mind why I should care about their take on it.
Then there are the days when I am both bored and exhausted. While I don't tend to watch much on those days, I have known myself to scroll through the recommendations to see if there is anything to occupy the time.
There are adblock filters and extensions for that fwiw.
YouTube does make some kind of changes significantly harder to build than simple scripting will handle though. I do definitely see some reasons for specialized apps, and video is a fairly prime example of where they're often more capable or more (power/time/whatever) efficient.
I use android so I'm already past that point sadly, but I'd be the first to dump my Google credentials as soon as that monopoly that's got a stranglehold on Android cracks
Indeed, but then I'd have to say goodbye to banking and thus NFC paying, which needs the banking app installed locally AFAIK to authorize the link. So yeah, it's doable but cripples the device to such a point that I'd only be able to use it at home. On the go access to banking is a must.
The block in degooglifying is usually region not lack of willingness. Some places are locked to Google by no fault of the consumer.
Since it's been a while I last tried a degoogled android I think I'll pull my old s10e, reinstall the firmware and see how far I can daily drive it. Maybe banking is a non-issue today and I'm just outdated.
That is mostly only google wallet that you can't use. But you can totally use most bank apps without a google account.
YMMV but I don't find having google wallet is that big of a deal nor a big enough conveniency to maintain a google account on my smartphone. A physical card is quite small.
NewPipe has a one-click download button. If one follows channels with mainly-audio content that one may want to listen to later, possibly away from an internet connection, that is super-handy.
NewPipe also lets you export your subscriptions (which is just a bunch of links to RSS feeds), so you aren't shackled to Android/RSS.
Can I somehow import my current subscriptions from Google into newpipe? When I tried newpipe what put me off was that I already had a list on the browser. I also couldn't sync the list between multiple devices. Also is there anything on Linux I can use to sync to newpipe and resume videos on my laptop if I'm tired of watching on my phone? Of if I saw something interest and I wanted to continue on Linux in order to take notes and make proofs of concept.
NewPipe does have a Share function for any video and there is probably some way to customize it to get the integration with your Linux laptop that you want. I believe (though I haven't tried in a while) that if one is watching a video on NewPipe and then clicks Share and passes the video to a media-center device running Kodi, Kodi will even start playing the video from that same timestamp, so Share is pretty powerful. Not sure what is available for passing vids from a Linux computer to NewPipe on the phone, though.
To add to the list, if you share the link over kdeconnect and select a linux device (mine is hyprland on archlinux) it'll open the link using the default $BROWSER. If there's a simple integration to sync subscriptions I think I'd give it another go. Fennec is good but as mentioned background playback stability would be really nice to have.
It's even better with a podcast app that can have a directory read as a podcast. Have to click once more though to have the"podcasts"refreshed to get it in my playlist. Still cool for podcasts that are only on YouTube and Spotify.
Solid take, these days most apps are just glorified browser wrappers and you don't miss out on anything. In fact, you could have a separate browser with all these saving modes disabled just for the youtube use case.
> Used through all of the apps and personally there's little incentive for me not to use Firefox/Fennec.
Your comment made me try Firefox for the Nth time right now.
And the rendering is still bad like I remembered it. Download the image locally and open it in an image viewer so you actually view the pixels 1:1, then see if you can tell which one is Firefox (I can): <a href="https://imgur.com/a/FsXuoa3" rel="nofollow">https://imgur.com/a/FsXuoa3
I mean, so is Edge. I can't say I feel more comfortable with them. Probably the most direct thing I can point to for Brave is that having cryptocurrency features in a browser doesn't give trustworthy vibes. And yes I realize there's a reason for it and there's a fairly high chance the vibes could be giving the wrong impression here, but when your entire digital life is at stake, that raises the bar for the risks you want to take. Whatever you think of Chrome or Google, the reality is that they're known quantities and I'm already using them, like most other people.
It always hurts me, when people basically say "I'm not giving up [something that has cornered the market] for the alternative, because [minor-grievance]", even though it is already clear that the monopoly is being exploited to make things worse for all customers.
I want to use Firefox, this was my Nth failed attempt at doing so. I just cited the first problem I saw again, not the only one as you're assuming. Mozilla has had years - literally over a decade - to fix such issues.
But hey, if there's one thing that's definitely going to convince people to do things they don't like, it's to diminish their grievances and guilt-trip them.
This whole debate is such a chestnut. Of course, you will do as you please, it's your right. But these choices do reveal values and priorities. Speaking personally (and, I suppose you will say, sanctimoniously), I choose to use Firefox despite its flaws because I don't want the internet to be privatized. I know what I'm missing out on. It's less important.
You're rather overconfident in your evaluation of people and not actually getting the sense of my values and priorities as you think you are. I care about these things and inconvenience myself a lot more than you realize.
When I do it it's because it is likely to make a difference in the ultimate outcome I want to achieve. I also criticize things when I think that criticism may have an impact on the ultimate outcome. What I don't care for is futility. In this particular case, it is absolutely futile to try to fight against big tech through shaming people into inconveniencing themselves for the sake of the free internet. You need to address the root causes to even stand a chance. Part of that is politics and legislation, and part technology. Getting Mozilla and other OSS to give a damn about the basic flaws in the user experience so their users actually want to use Firefox is going to have far more of an effect on the outcome you want to reach than shaming users for not inconveniencing themselves.
Use whatever, but that screenshot posted of your grievance is pretty telling. Whatever difference you're citing as unacceptable really puts the 'b' in subtle.
Also, no one is out to get you. You complained about failing to use Firefox, and folks are trying to explain to you that you can use it if you want to. But you assert that you fail to do so, despite wanting to, but for unspecified reasons. It makes it hard to assist, which I think is all people want to do. You keep bringing up guilt and shame, but you're the one that said you wanted something you keep failing at getting, so folks naturally want to help.
If you don't want to use Firefox, just use Chrome and move on. That's what everyone else does.
Thanks for asking. Depends what time period you're asking about. My memory's faded so there may be inaccuracies here or things may be out of order, but this is what I remember.
There was a long era (years) when I loved Mozilla and used Firefox -- and then even Waterfox, IIRC because it was 64-bit -- exclusively. (As well as Thunderbird.) I did not like Chrome. IIRC at some point they started feeling like every update made them more bloated, broken, and unbearable in various ways. I forget all the exact issues but I distinctly remember rendering was a big one for all of them (I think it happened around the obsession with GPU rendering), my extensions constantly breaking or getting disabled because of "compatibility" issues forcing me to keep toggling flags in about:config being another, my toolbar styling/customizations getting constantly messed on every damn update up being another, the tab bar getting moved up like in Chrome when that was very much one of the reasons I liked Firefox being another, and slowness/bloat being another. I wasted too much of my time into finding workarounds, but eventually I couldn't take it anymore. Giving up everything including extensions like Greasemonkey and Stylebot and having the ability to customize everything just so I could have a better experience was painful, but I bit the bullet and switched to (I think Chromium first? and then) Chrome.
After that I basically stuck with them though I kept a Firefox around and updated it once in a while to see if maybe they would come to their senses and start improving the UX. They removed support for old-style extensions which immediately was like a punch in the gut. Regardless, a few years ago I figured maybe times have changed so I spent probably weeks on it (if not longer) and even sank quite a bit of time into manually porting porting my custom local Chrome extensions to it just to make sure I was giving it a fair shot. The snappiness was maybe better than before but overall I just felt like they didn't give a damn about longstanding UX issues people have been complaining about for years, and were too focused on other priorities. So I've stopped wasting more of my time on it until it passes a couple litmus tests, which it failed again today.
And don't get me wrong, Chrome has had its own issues and frustrated me too (MV3 being the most recent and frustrating), but at least it's not completely defeating the very reasons that drew me to it in the first place.
But the point being: I believe I've given it a fair shot enough times in the past, but I also have better things to do than fight with a browser vendor over the very things that drew me to their browser. For Chrome the speed was probably the biggest factor, and for Firefox it used to be UX/customizability. One of those companies understood that and never compromised on their core strengths, but the other never seemed to get the memo.
agreeable argument. I am also running towards firefox, but keeping the firefox open, juggling between the tabs, especially the quirks YT poses on Firefox, these apps poses a usecase. Yes, download/subscribe/SB support etc. Currently using libretube mostly.
I'm with you here, it's a degraded user experience running stuff on mobile browser, intentionally so I'd risk saying. Best of both worlds would be to have an android app but it's just a webserver I connect using the browser, you know, like we've always done in linux haha, this way we could have newpipe-like apps targeting the browser running locally.
but for some reason google knows better and there is no efficient way to run local containerized web services.
But pipepipe runs on my phone and it's open source, so it's possible it has access to free infrastructure to build and distribute. I still don't understand which costs you are talking about. Is it YouTube's for storing and serving videos?
If this is the case you need to understand that all this is happening because YouTube is a monopoly. They lock-in creators and their userbase by requiring daily updates without which the algorithm won't promote the creator. This is surely to increase video volume, thus views and ad revenue, but a side effect is that effectively the content creator has no time to try to move the user base to another platform.
YouTube is a monopoly and one that's already abusing its position. These alternative apps and adblockers/sponsorblock hurts Google and it's good, a monopoly needs to hurt in order to break.
But the most important thing to remember is that this is self inflicted. Google could have played fair and opened up competition and instead of building a fortress they could have just... invested in making a better product to compete as it's how capitalism works. Monopolies destroy capitalism so it's morally justified for us citizens to club monopolies into smithereens by resisting corporation mandates.
Using alternative apps consumes less of YouTube's ressources than watching videos on their website directly. These wrapper apps download only the videos, thumbnails and texts - not the other resources, so the impact is actually less on their servers.
Mobile Firefox with background playing is really bad, do they just stop everything "to save battery?" I use Brave only to stream web radio while in the kitchen.
gchamonlive · · focus · HN ↗
In any case, there needs to be a huge problem to justify installing an android app. I prefer to keep them to a minimum and focus solely on the browser. Browsers are the only OS-vendor-safe option which I can use to bail entirely on Google's Android or iOS and go some place else.
II2II · · focus · HN ↗
gchamonlive · · focus · HN ↗
II2II · · focus · HN ↗
gchamonlive · · focus · HN ↗
II2II · · focus · HN ↗
When I switched over to using an app, there was also a good chance that an algorithmically suggested video from an unfamiliar creator would capture my imagination. When I have looked at recommendations recently, I doubt that would be a problem today. Too much AI and human generated slop. Too many click-bait titles that barely give a hint on what the video is about, never mind why I should care about their take on it.
Then there are the days when I am both bored and exhausted. While I don't tend to watch much on those days, I have known myself to scroll through the recommendations to see if there is anything to occupy the time.
Groxx · · focus · HN ↗
YouTube does make some kind of changes significantly harder to build than simple scripting will handle though. I do definitely see some reasons for specialized apps, and video is a fairly prime example of where they're often more capable or more (power/time/whatever) efficient.
landdate · · focus · HN ↗
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gchamonlive · · focus · HN ↗
The block in degooglifying is usually region not lack of willingness. Some places are locked to Google by no fault of the consumer.
hadrien01 · · focus · HN ↗
gchamonlive · · focus · HN ↗
throooooo · · focus · HN ↗
prmoustache · · focus · HN ↗
YMMV but I don't find having google wallet is that big of a deal nor a big enough conveniency to maintain a google account on my smartphone. A physical card is quite small.
TFNA · · focus · HN ↗
NewPipe also lets you export your subscriptions (which is just a bunch of links to RSS feeds), so you aren't shackled to Android/RSS.
gchamonlive · · focus · HN ↗
TFNA · · focus · HN ↗
gchamonlive · · focus · HN ↗
braiamp · · focus · HN ↗
shellwizard · · focus · HN ↗
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Latty · · focus · HN ↗
gchamonlive · · focus · HN ↗
dataflow · · focus · HN ↗
Your comment made me try Firefox for the Nth time right now.
And the rendering is still bad like I remembered it. Download the image locally and open it in an image viewer so you actually view the pixels 1:1, then see if you can tell which one is Firefox (I can): <a href="https://imgur.com/a/FsXuoa3" rel="nofollow">https://imgur.com/a/FsXuoa3
I'm staying with Chrome.
chrisweekly · · focus · HN ↗
dataflow · · focus · HN ↗
aktenlage · · focus · HN ↗
dataflow · · focus · HN ↗
But hey, if there's one thing that's definitely going to convince people to do things they don't like, it's to diminish their grievances and guilt-trip them.
bluebarbet · · focus · HN ↗
dataflow · · focus · HN ↗
When I do it it's because it is likely to make a difference in the ultimate outcome I want to achieve. I also criticize things when I think that criticism may have an impact on the ultimate outcome. What I don't care for is futility. In this particular case, it is absolutely futile to try to fight against big tech through shaming people into inconveniencing themselves for the sake of the free internet. You need to address the root causes to even stand a chance. Part of that is politics and legislation, and part technology. Getting Mozilla and other OSS to give a damn about the basic flaws in the user experience so their users actually want to use Firefox is going to have far more of an effect on the outcome you want to reach than shaming users for not inconveniencing themselves.
rpdillon · · focus · HN ↗
Also, no one is out to get you. You complained about failing to use Firefox, and folks are trying to explain to you that you can use it if you want to. But you assert that you fail to do so, despite wanting to, but for unspecified reasons. It makes it hard to assist, which I think is all people want to do. You keep bringing up guilt and shame, but you're the one that said you wanted something you keep failing at getting, so folks naturally want to help.
If you don't want to use Firefox, just use Chrome and move on. That's what everyone else does.
aktenlage · · focus · HN ↗
"You need to address the root causes" -- everyone who is in no position to do so
gchamonlive · · focus · HN ↗
dataflow · · focus · HN ↗
There was a long era (years) when I loved Mozilla and used Firefox -- and then even Waterfox, IIRC because it was 64-bit -- exclusively. (As well as Thunderbird.) I did not like Chrome. IIRC at some point they started feeling like every update made them more bloated, broken, and unbearable in various ways. I forget all the exact issues but I distinctly remember rendering was a big one for all of them (I think it happened around the obsession with GPU rendering), my extensions constantly breaking or getting disabled because of "compatibility" issues forcing me to keep toggling flags in about:config being another, my toolbar styling/customizations getting constantly messed on every damn update up being another, the tab bar getting moved up like in Chrome when that was very much one of the reasons I liked Firefox being another, and slowness/bloat being another. I wasted too much of my time into finding workarounds, but eventually I couldn't take it anymore. Giving up everything including extensions like Greasemonkey and Stylebot and having the ability to customize everything just so I could have a better experience was painful, but I bit the bullet and switched to (I think Chromium first? and then) Chrome.
After that I basically stuck with them though I kept a Firefox around and updated it once in a while to see if maybe they would come to their senses and start improving the UX. They removed support for old-style extensions which immediately was like a punch in the gut. Regardless, a few years ago I figured maybe times have changed so I spent probably weeks on it (if not longer) and even sank quite a bit of time into manually porting porting my custom local Chrome extensions to it just to make sure I was giving it a fair shot. The snappiness was maybe better than before but overall I just felt like they didn't give a damn about longstanding UX issues people have been complaining about for years, and were too focused on other priorities. So I've stopped wasting more of my time on it until it passes a couple litmus tests, which it failed again today.
And don't get me wrong, Chrome has had its own issues and frustrated me too (MV3 being the most recent and frustrating), but at least it's not completely defeating the very reasons that drew me to it in the first place.
But the point being: I believe I've given it a fair shot enough times in the past, but I also have better things to do than fight with a browser vendor over the very things that drew me to their browser. For Chrome the speed was probably the biggest factor, and for Firefox it used to be UX/customizability. One of those companies understood that and never compromised on their core strengths, but the other never seemed to get the memo.
thuruv · · focus · HN ↗
gchamonlive · · focus · HN ↗
but for some reason google knows better and there is no efficient way to run local containerized web services.
CarlJW · · focus · HN ↗
This has worked flawlessly for me on every phone I've used.
mitxela · · focus · HN ↗
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[deleted]
gchamonlive · · focus · HN ↗
mitxela · · focus · HN ↗
gchamonlive · · focus · HN ↗
If this is the case you need to understand that all this is happening because YouTube is a monopoly. They lock-in creators and their userbase by requiring daily updates without which the algorithm won't promote the creator. This is surely to increase video volume, thus views and ad revenue, but a side effect is that effectively the content creator has no time to try to move the user base to another platform.
YouTube is a monopoly and one that's already abusing its position. These alternative apps and adblockers/sponsorblock hurts Google and it's good, a monopoly needs to hurt in order to break.
But the most important thing to remember is that this is self inflicted. Google could have played fair and opened up competition and instead of building a fortress they could have just... invested in making a better product to compete as it's how capitalism works. Monopolies destroy capitalism so it's morally justified for us citizens to club monopolies into smithereens by resisting corporation mandates.
HungryYeti · · focus · HN ↗
hobo123 · · focus · HN ↗