NewPipe is awesome... when it works. In my experience of only a few months, "occasional" is an understatement, unfortunately.

If you're using F-Droid, it helps to switch to NewPipe's own repo, since the default F-Droid repo tends to be a bit slow with updates.

How can i do that?

Here's their instructions: https://newpipe.schabi.org/blog/announcement/f-droid/pinned/...

I use the app every day - if memory serves they've usually had a new version out within 24hours of breaking changes on youtube.

Thank you

download apks directly from github

NewPipe is generally very rarely "down" - I think the youtube-dl upstream issues are impacting them, or they're playing dead for a minute until the RIAA fucks off.

NewPipe doesn't use youtube-dl. It uses its own library for downloading from Youtube.

playing dead avoids drawing attention to it

In my experience, NewPipe Legacy is more stable than NewPipe. Its intended for Android versions <5 but it works fine on my Android 9 device.

AFAIK NewPipe does not even use API, it parses UI, so it breaks when the UI changes.

I never looked into how NewPipeExtractor worked, I guess a hint was in the name.

NewPipe is also open source and very easy to sideload from F-Droid.

NewPipe is okay but I prefer Vanced Youtube

Careful with that one if you use some other Google service: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21247759

>apart from occasional breakage due to API changes

I agree, but I thought they were just scrapping YT and using YT-DL.

What about Vanced?

That's just a mod of the Google YouTube app, if memory serves. It probably still relies on normal Play Services, and is likely nonfree anyway.

It actually works just fine on Chinese Android roms without Google services.

Edit: Vanced relies on MicroG for logging in, and requires it to be installed along Vanced even on phones that have the "real" Google Play services.

Edit 2: I took "Chinese Android roms" as an example for Google-less roms. Of course, Vanced can't help in bypassing the Chinese firewall to contact Google servers.