Comment by beala
2 months ago
I'm also a premium subscriber, and have struggled with the same issues on the iPad app. I try to keep some shows downloaded for my toddler, and the download feature never seems to work on the first try.
I finally got so fed up, I bought a Samsung Galaxy Tab A7 off ebay for $50 and flashed it with LineageOS. I can now load whatever media I want onto the 1 TB sdcard I've installed in it. The 5 year old hardware plays videos just fine with the VLC app. And, as a bonus, I discovered that NewPipe, an alternative YouTube client I installed through the F-Droid store, is actually much more reliable at downloading videos than the official client. I was planning on using yt-dlp to load up the sdcard, but now I don't even need to do that.
This is exactly why Google is clamping down on running your own choice of apps on Android, as well as pushing things like remote attestation on both phones and browsers.
It's time to milk the entire userbase for every cent they can get out of them by any means necessary. The future is bleak.
> This is exactly why Google is clamping down on running your own choice of apps on Android, as well as pushing things like remote attestation on both phones and browsers.
Yes, Google is doing this; but I don't believe Google is doing it to squeeze an inconsequentially small boost in YT Premium subscriptions from former-account-sharers - I believe they're doing it because they want to demonstrate that YouTube is a "secure" platform for large, Hollywood-like, production studios to feel comfortable publishing first-runs of new TV content directly to YouTube - and those production companies are famously paranoid, luddite, and comically ignorant of cryptography fundamentals (i.e. they believe DRM can simultaneously allow legal subscriber Alice but deny evil pirate Bob from watching protected content when Alice and Bob are in-reality the same person (it's you, me, us!).
..and if not Hollywood studios, then certainly the major sports leagues. [The NFL's lawyers seem like real fun at parties](https://publicknowledge.org/the-nfl-wants-you-to-think-these...).
All they have to do is uptick their DRM scheme a la Netflix and Amazon and YouTube would be indistinguishable from either platform from the eyes of rightsholders, and studios have no problem releasing to either platform.
They will probably start requiring SecureBoot as well. So at some point running Linux will also pose a problem. It's not impossible but the extra steps are a pain in the butt.
"Secure" boot is mostly a red herring, as there are lots of hardware options these days. Remote attestation takes away your ability to run libre Linux on any device if you want to interact with Google (or other surveillance company) network services. It completely repudiates the idea of the mutual-consent-based protocol.
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I use yt-dlp inside of a-shell on iOS, then play files using VLC.
Doesn’t solve VLCs suckiness on iOS. No PiP support when it’s been in iOS for years now…
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i use this for things i repost on IG with commentary. i would rather not have a huge folder of downloads of random stuff i'm not even sure i want to revisit. (and i'm bad about clearing out space on my phone.)
Nice trick I'll have to try this. Thanks!
What shell app do you use?
It's literally "a-shell"
https://github.com/holzschu/a-shell
NewPipe is incredible. If Google ever stops signing apps like that, I'll be switching to a Linux phone.
I use another app from F-Droid called Skytube for occasional downloads. I like it.
https://f-droid.org/en/packages/free.rm.skytube.oss/
https://f-droid.org/en/packages/free.rm.skytube.legacy.oss/
What do you mean by signing? Application signing on android is done by the developer, with their own key. Or by fdroid, in the case of apps built by fdroid in the default repository.
Things have changed.
Google is doing what Apple does and implementing Gatekeeper-like signature checks to ensure only apps by Google-approved developers can run on Android.
Microsoft does something similar with Windows Defender: you need to buy a developer certificate that can be revoked at any time if you want to distribute your app and have users be able to run it.
We're at a point where we need permission from trillion dollar companies to run the apps we want on the hardware we own.
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as soon as they have a map app that works with car play i'm switching to linux phone.
There are boxes you plug to your CarPlay enabled car that run Android. Run Google Maps on that and you're golden. No need to carry/connect your phone to the car anymore
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Don't car play and android auto rely on proprietary libraries? I doubt it will come to Linux phones unless they take off or something like microg reimplements the proprietary parts.
GNOME Maps is good enough for me. I don't know what Carplay is and at this point I'd rather not ask.
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"If Google ever stops signing apps like that, I'll be switching to a LInux phone."
Is this another way of saying, "I will keep using it until it stops working"
Use Tubular, which is basically NewPipe with Sponsorblock. (And has really nice Android Auto support which I learned after a while)
>, I discovered that NewPipe, an alternative YouTube client I installed through the F-Droid store, is actually much more reliable at downloading videos than the official client.
NewPipe is so good and so useful. It can even play 4K and watch livestreams now.
Tangential.
The TIDAL app is absolute trash, it has this same issue all the time; not just that, but also, if a download fails it just hangs there and does not download the rest of the album/playlist.
Also, why would you want to download things in the first place? To watch them offline, right? Well, guess what happens when you open the app w/o an internet connection ... it asks you to login, so you cannot even access your music. 900k/year TOC genius work there.
The only reason why I haven't canceled is because I'm too lazy to reset my password in order to login and cancel, lol. Might do it soon, though.
When I try it for a month, the worst part.. your entire download queue fails forever unless you manually remove hundreds of items one by one
There is no way to remove the stuck item if it's been pull from streaming library or you in country that -- such traveling etc -- does not have r ights to it. You simply cannot open the track to undownload it
Also tried Tidal once with their trial, tried playing some music videos and it was just straight up blurry throughout. Not once did the music video played HD.
One thing I like about Tidal though: you can download everything, DRM-free, using tidal-ng.
But with TIDAL I cut them some slack because they're not a multibillion dollar behemoth.
I do wish they'd improve their CarPlay search results though. I hate asking for a well known song and getting some obscure EDM remix.
Oh, but they are.
It was founded by Jay-Z and then bought by the Twitter dopey guy.
Premium subscriber here.
Download feature on iOS always works flawlessly whenever I need to hop on a long haul flight (several times a year).