I prefer to avoid sideloading modified versions of the official iOS apps. That feels unsafe to run untrusted code, and I personally don’t want to review the code myself or build from source if that’s even possible.
There is no need to fuss with all of that, when there are plenty of good options on the AppStore.
Yatte [1] is a third party client built from scratch in swift ui. It can connect either Piped or Invidous servers. It’s available on all Apple platforms included tvOS. It runs way better than the official YouTube app.
Safari Extensions - I prefer watching YouTube in the browser. These extensions are universal AppStore purchases and work just as well on mobile as they do on desktop Safari.
Vinegar [2] is a Safari extension that blocks YouTube ads and replaces the player with the default WebKit html player. It makes using YouTube in the browser so much more tolerable. It’s helpful to have when you want to watch videos in 4K - something most Invidious or Piped servers struggle with.
SponsorBlock [3] also has an official Safari extension available.
[1] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/yattee/id1595136629
[2] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/vinegar-tube-cleaner/id1591303...
[3] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/sponsorblock-for-youtube/id157...
Charging money for f/oss simply because sideloading isn't a thing is a scummy move.
Putting that one aside (GPL is hardly the only license on the OSS field after all), the App Store model is just plainly too prohibitively expensive to publish a FOSS app for unless you're planning to maximize value. It costs 100 USD every year to just keep an app published (they charge this via their dev license). With F/OSS, budgets often are almost non-existent, so those operational expenses aren't made since they're not justifiable from a hobbyist, donation-funded perspective.
This is also why the platform has so many money-sucking timewasting "games" to be clear. Apple created a perverse incentive to basically ruin the App Store with stuff that extracts as much money as possible, then started selling people a separate subscription service to actually get games people do want to use.[0]
By contrast, the Google Play Store (Androids closest equivalent, albeit slightly different since Android has a far more open model[1]) is just a single 25 USD fee to prove you're a real human and after that there's no financial barriers.
[0]: Thats what Apple Arcade is.
[1]: The one difference between the Play Store and a third party apk installer is that the Play Store gets to ignore the installation request popup. This can be circumvented with root and apparently Google is changing this process to make it uniform when the Digital Markets Act goes into effect.
VLC is in the app store (with telemetry, sadly) so I'm not sure where the whole "GPL isn't compatible with the app store" claim comes from.
The 100$ yearly publishing fee just straight up is a wall that prevents the OSS iOS ecosystem from thriving. It's just high enough that it's hard to justify putting an App out there unless you want to make a profit from it.
[0]: https://patreon.com/ajayyy
[1]: Or rather, most have been shamed into doing it and only pay the bigger projects. Anything smaller just falls to the wayside.
Oh really? I've never heard of it prior to this thread.
They had to dual license the iOS version of VLC to get it on the App Store:
> VLC for iOS is bi-licensed under the Mozilla Public License Version 2 as well as the GNU General Public License Version 2 or later. You can modify or redistribute its sources under the conditions of these licenses. Note that additional terms apply for trademarks owned by the VideoLAN association.
From the comments in the AppStore:
> Developer Response ,
> Appreciate the concern, but yes it is me uploading it here on my own will. I needed to pay the 100$/year apple fee and buy a mac to compile the extension
Seems only fair to me. Publishing on the AppStore has costs.
How though? I just spent the last hour trying to configure a source and it seems impossible to make it work.
It doesn't have "sponsor block" but it seems like a lot less of a hassle would be to use YouTube Premium. One of the few subscriptions I think are worth the money.
Gets a bit convoluted as they have their own gmail accounts as well. But it works :-)
I still have my original Apple YouTube Red subscription active!
I don't know how much that effects recommendations, but Google support claims that's has an effect.
Might be easier than the alternatives listed by sibling comments.
I travel outside of where it's "supported", or trigger their broken algorithms, and boom, it stops working. Meanwhile, my adblock software works 24/7.
https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/6307365?hl=en#zipp...
Travel to any country where Premium isn't supported (about half the world's countries) and, bam, it shows ads again.
Normally I can understand content licensing agreements per country, but that doesn't apply to YouTube mostly. So it seems like a real BS move indeed.
Downloading new videos is the one feature which usually goes away, though I remember embeds getting squirrelly too, but that may just be vanilla YouTube.
I also don’t really want to use ad blockers with YouTube, because I do want to support the small content creators I watch. But the volume of ads (and especially the unskippable ones!) is getting out of control at times, particularly in the app.
If they brought out a “YouTube Premium lite” or whatever at £6 a month I’d be in.
I don't feel guilty about this because I only want YT-Premium for blocking the ads, I don't need the music, videos etc that comes with it.
I tried the free month, and ran screaming. No way.
I have no problems at all, paying for streaming (I pay for quite a few channels). I just didn't like the YT Premium user experience. I suspect, if I was a lot younger, I might like it more.
Why not use the "Watch later" feature to add it to your queue? I use that feature all the time.
> Nevermind
–Emily LaTella
Sometimes a friend (you doesn't subscribe to YouTube premium) will show me a YouTube video on their device. I find it impossible to watch YouTube without a subscription. I don't understand how the average user can tolerate the amount of ads.
Even if you pay for youtube you get the sponsor spiels within the videos.
I wouldn't use youtube at all without sponsorblock.
Another option is to just VPN to Turkey when setting it up (Can be done with a UK account and UK card) and then it's about $1.5/month.
It's not available in the US either. The latest list I can find says it's being tested in Belgium, Finland, Norway, Denmark, Netherlands, Sweden, and Luxembourg.
SponsorBlock, ad blocking and playing videos in background were happy surprises that have significantly improved my YouTube experience.
I haven't had any major issue with AltStore. As long as I have the Mail/AltStore server app running on my Mac, it tends to just work. If I forgot to open Mail or AltStore after a restart, the apps stop working and I need to reinstall AltStore from my Mac, but it takes under 2 minutes and might happen a handful of times per year. That's less than the the time I'd waste on YT Shorts in a day.
Why not jailbreak? I want to remain on the latest iOS software, and generally speaking, hardware. Jailbreaking is just not an option for me if I want to stay up to date and I don't want to deal with tethered jailbreaks, which seem to be more common for the latest release versions.