NewPipe: the free and ad-free alternative to YouTube

March 18, 2022 Joe Kenehan

In recent years, YouTube has been a bit too forced on the presence of advertising on the videos it broadcasts. It must be said that this allows the baby of Google to earn absolutely colossal income. It’s great for Americans but a bit difficult for visitors who have the impression of finally watching TF1. You can of course save yourself the inconvenience by subscribing to YouTube Premium for a few euros, but there is one thing you cannot defend yourself against: the analysis of your views by Google. As we don’t really like to be tracked, we offer you today a short tutorial to install NewPipe, a free alternative to the red square ogre.

NewPipe: no ads in the pipes

A few months ago, you were bragging about the advantages of YouTube Vanced, but the program was caught by the Google patrol, which has just succeeded in banning it. As the program will no longer be updated, it may thus give rise to security vulnerabilities. The time has therefore come to find an alternative and it is called NewPipe!

In its operation, it is similar to YouTube Premium. Its biggest advantage is of course that ads disappear from videos and you will be able to enjoy the viewings without being polluted by these untimely advertisements. You will be able to follow the accounts you want to follow without needing a Gmail account. There is also in the options a way to transfer data from your official YouTube account. On the other hand, posting a comment on the videos is not possible, even if you can still read those of others. Another interesting possibility, you can download videos directly into the application in several available MPEG-4 qualities and save them on your phone’s hard drive. You can do the same just for audio (in .m4a) or subtitles (in .srt).

The possibility of floating the video to be able to play it while you do something else on your smartphone exists but, during our test on Pixel3, it then made the touch screen inoperative. However, you can play audio from videos even when the screen is locked. Something to make you happy for music without draining your battery.

Reading to follow

As you can imagine, you won’t find NewPipe freely available on the Play Store, Google not particularly liking applications that make it lose money. You will therefore have to go either to the official website of the alternative appor on a parallel store like F-droid.

First, click on the box that allows you to download the app to your phone. If this is the first time you’ve done this for an application from outside the Play Store borders, a window will open to warn you of the risk involved. It will thus be necessary that you open the rights to this kind of download on your device. Once done, authorize the source, get the file and then install it. A new window will appear confirming the success of the operation and that’s it.

There you have it, free YouTube Premium features for you! If this will greatly facilitate viewing, do not forget that some accounts only live from advertising that helps them in their professional life. If you really want to support those you appreciate, don’t hesitate to take a look at the official app to give them a “Like” and force yourself to watch an advertisement here and there.