This combo is amazing, haven't looked back ever since I deployed it with docker.
Hopefully Yattee will make a native visionOS app in the future.
Though, I'd recommend people try self curating a list of subscriptions and discover new videos a more organic way (friends making recommendations, or seeing videos on HN or Reddit). I personally have found my YouTube experience to be less distracting when I started using Invidious.
I personally think iPad YouTube app's touch is not too bad; but in general (not limited to YouTube), I think the UI design of web video players are all too fixated on the existing design.
For example, when not in fullscreen mode, I don't see why all the controls need to be confined to the video frame and disappear when not hovering. While this design choice has its benefits, it also presents significant drawbacks: it obscures the actual content when you're interacting with the controls (a problem that's particularly acute on smaller screens), and performing quick, repetitive actions becomes difficult because the controls aren't visible until you hover over them, among other issues. This approach to web video player UI has been a pet peeve of mine for some time.
It's especially "interesting", when the slider allows to navigate to the exact frame you want (that happens very rarely) and the information you want to see is in the subtitles burned into the video - the ones not shifting with UI controls. The UI obscures that and I have to make tens of attempts with increased sloppiness due to frustration to take it all in.
Most often it's something I keep mishearing and need subtitles to actually understand what's being talked about. For example, I keep hearing "Hello awful person" in Anton Petrov's videos. https://youtu.be/PyRf7B1Ji4A?si=bIA7S8qB_WLdLgVs&t=45
https://www.versionmuseum.com/images/websites/youtube-websit...
Worst though is YouTube shorts where you can’t rewind
YouTube Premium offers Premium Controls which is a sidebox with the controls like you are asking for.
What's the right trade-off here in your mind then? Leave the controls always-on/visible? On a small screen, it takes a lot of real estate (except in portrait mode), and small UI controls are a pain to use so you need to make them big enough. I struggle with this, I really don't know what is the right trade-off here.
Accept it and you will be less frustrated.
It even forces its own built in screensavers to run instead of the OS one if the app is left paused. Who approves that?!
What Steve Jobs said about Microsoft in the 90s applies to Google today: They have no taste.
Their Apple TV app is basically a web view which doesn’t conform to any of AppleTV’s UI principles. Same as their YouTube TV app. It’s sad.
Eh? YouTube is my most-used app on Apple TV by a country mile and I’ve never seen this, I get the tvOS screensavers. Is it because I have YouTube Premium maybe?
I agree though, it is a garbage app. Everything on a TV, from the built-in apps to Roku boxes to Apple TV use basically the same app (certainly the same layout) and it’s really quite bad.
Only bug seems to be a black screen for a second when I close the app (maybe a bug with suspend?).
Install it, and delete the janky "native" app. Now Youtube is a webpage that does everything it does on a regular browser. PiP? Audio with the screen locked or in the background? Yes and yes.
But it's bizarre to me how bad the PiP experience on iOS is. When you press play on your bluetooth headset it will pause the video you're playing instead play whatever was on your Music app.
If you lock your screen, it will stop playing the youtube video and then you have press play again on the lock screen to resume.
Contrast that to either third party youtube clients on Android or (Re)vanced, and it's not even close.
And it seems every app has its own PiP issues. Every iOS I'm secretly hoping that Apple will address this issue, but it never happens ...
With that, YouTube single-handedly forced me to move browsers on all my devices – from Safari to Orion, where I get to use uBlock Origin. uBlock seems to have stayed a step ahead of YT since.
I get it for small time apps, but Meta is clearly big enough to give it the little amount of attention it needs.
https://mastodon.social/@UP8/111049822586450100
30 years ago somebody who wanted to develop a "new object you can use to distribute music" had to spend $100 million on some project like
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Compact_Cassette
today it is very simple because almost everyone has a player in their pocket that connects the card to software which runs in the cloud. It wouldn't be technically difficult at all for me to host the music file in S3, R2 or Azure storage and the storage and network costs are insignificant so far as I expect these cards to be distributed. If I did that I could get in trouble over copyright, so a link to YouTube is a safe and easy solution w/ the disadvantage that people in many geographies can't view licensed music videos.
Fortunately that QR code is a redirect and I can send it to another service. I demoed the cards with quite a few people and found that they usually felt it was a letdown to go to YouTube (maybe because they go to YouTube all the time and there is nothing special about it) but that there was more satisfaction with a link to SongWhip which might send them to YouTUbe in the end but gives them a feeling of agency at the expense of another click.
From the 1960s-80s magazines came with "flexidiscs" which could play entire songs.
I make all sorts of small apps and utilities because to improve usability of services i consume. It doest mean I'm some lackey to big corp.
It's the copyright that's the problem. You would be annihilated, not by YouTube's lawyers, but by UMG and Sony's lawyers, immediately after getting even a small amount of traction.
Nobody would care about Youtube if it wasn't seeded with millions of movie clips and music videos years before the copyright holders got their act together.
Most devs work on projects that don’t actively compete with large companies on their own ground.
Or do you mean alternative to watching video on Vision - I suppose youtube still works via safari, is that not the case?
Peertube is one distributed option[0].
Many content creators have started hosting videos on other services like Patreon because of Youtube's censorship and demonetization policies. Which doesn't entirely avoid the centralization problem but it's better not to put all of your eggs in one basket.
It's also possible (although obviously not always feasible) to self-host or torrent.
Ie work in a way that doesn't require the giants shadow, as the giant may move unexpectedly. The shade can be quite lucrative though, if you're nimble.
Anyway YouTube aren’t going to disable embeds. So don’t see it being turned off
Anything that isn't a client to proprietary platforms?
Also, Christian can’t help himself but attach his apps to large companies that can cut him off overnight. Haha.
I don't think the Youtube product managers really care enough about Vision Pro to prioritise making an app for it. That doesn't mean they strategically disgree with the product and actively wish to hamper it.
Indepedently of Vision Pro, I think they just might not be that enthusastic about third party youtube apps.
I'd say the lesson here is NOT to rely on official APIs.
However, upon reading this blog post, it does seem he's using the official API so I guess he thinks he'll be fine as long as he doesn't block ads. Time will tell.
I still grumble every time I use the Reddit app. RIP Apollo.
It would be quite the precedent for Google to shut someone down who is technically playing by all their rules.
(Yes I'm sure the ToS allows them to do this if they want to - but it would be a bad look).
No, seriously. I would.
Here's the basic problem:
* I wouldn't mind spending $10 on something which I know I'm using.
* Most apps sit on my phone unused. Most are horrible. I have no idea before I buy whether it's good or horrible for me.
* I often don't mind spending a buck or two on something to see if I'll use it. $10 is right above that threshold.
* No apps do a decent free trial. I'm busy, so one of the 30-day things doesn't work for me. I'll install it, and when / if I get around to using it, the trial is already done. My life doesn't revolve around the app. Likewise, many apps will limit functionality to where the free trial is basically an advertisement, and I don't see if it's something I'd use.
I think what would work for me (n=1) is:
* The app is free for the first 40 hours of actual use. Or perhaps some annual quota.
* Continuing using it beyond that costs e.g. $20 for something simple like a video player and e.g. $100 for something complex like a video editor.
That aligns incentives right too.
For a video player, I don't think I'd use one without the option for an ad blocker. I'm not getting Youtube Premium no matter how cheap or expensive it is, since I don't think it'd be unethical for me to do so (it's a bit of a broken social contract by Google). That's another story (and I'm not trying to push my values on anyone else).
I'm still missing Apollo quite a lot. Narwhal2 is good and comes close but it's not exactly there.
I just realised that a new product means new eco system, means less/no customization possibilities.
What a wonderful world...
"Here is an option to support a platform you use without watching ads". HN: Go fck yourself!
It probably would require a huge dev effort to support, but that's definitely a miss compared to the offical Quest app.
I'm not sure this is a good idea. YouTube (Google) intentionally didn't want to put up their app on the AppStore. They had their reasons. Ignoring their reasons and creating an app using their APIs and putting up an app in the AppStore against their will, just doesn't seem like a good move here.
I suspect Google already doesn't like what you're doing. They chose to make their own app unavailable on the AVP even though it sounds like it would be trivial for them to do so. Whatever their reasons are, I doubt they're keen about a third party stepping in with an alternative.
Fast forward to 2020 the US election cycle broke me. I could not stand the amount of political ads that were being shoved down my throat. My kids were perma home due to COVID and we were running out of things to watch. I finally caved and got YouTube Premium. I told myself OK after this shit show of an election cycle ends I will cancel and yet here I am still paying for it. It is that good.
Yes I realize that I am part of the problem. I just got my first Amazon Prime ad tonight trying to catch up on the train wreck Wheel of Time show they are putting out... and I am going to upgrade to not have them because I simply DGAF about whatever bullshit that they are filling advertisement slots with.
$2.99 a month is worth it. Kill me now.
Sounds like Stockholm syndrome, to be honest, with Google laughing all the way to the bank.
Also, do you really think that any platform as big as YouTube can remain free forever? I will pay for things that bring value to my life. YouTube Premium brings value almost every day. I am pretty sure you pay for things that bring value or make thing easier for you in life, so maybe don't post these kinds of responses in the future as they are cynical and bring no value to the conversation.
(Assumptions: I watch 10 hours of YouTube videos per week, YouTube shows 30 seconds of ads per 10 minutes of video)
$13.99/mo is at streamer levels who spend millions on production on top of infrastructure cost and allow you to share (within same household).
$23/mo for family is just plain robbery.
There are business models where venture funding is unsuitable as there will never be hockey stick growth or unit economics or competitive moats etc, traditionally companies usually small operate here, they are not startups, just SMB doing non flashy stuff.
Similarly also many business models unsuitable talented product teams to risk on , that are perfect for a highly talented freelancer such as Christian Selig - like third party API dependent ideas.
He is amongst the best indie developers in the Apple ecosystem and doesn't have to worry about competition quality too much in these ideas.
These are four main ways that I know of, to be a professional talented product developer -
1. Become a founder, raise funding, chase growth and do things you don't really like anymore
2. Freelance and do boring consulting work, trying to keep customer happy
3. Work in a big bureaucratic tech company and be frustrated constantly with everything from politics to red tape.
4. Pour your heart and soul into a early stage startup and watch it either outgrow you or crash and burn.
He instead gets to build products at a massive scale without having any overhead of an organization, and also making decent amount of money (upwards of few million/year with Apollo), what more can a developer aspire for ?
so if it's the official YT site with css customisation then why is there a need to embed video like it's an external site?
The reason I don't have premium (and one of the reasons I block ads) is that I don't want YouTube tracking my viewing habits, which I cannot prevent if I'm forced to log in to access premium.
It has nothing to do with monetary cost. I'm always surprised when I see statements like this one that appear to be completely ignorant of this aspect.
...but seeing as that isn't the case.
Sideloadly + ApolloPatcher was surprisingly easy to set up. Who knows how long it'll last, but it's basically set and forget once you create the Reddit+imgur API keys and enable wifi sync/auto refresh.
This is the impact that a single developer can have.
If that's not inspirational, then I don't know what is.
Having recently tried to watch Youtube on iPad without an adblocker, I discovered Youtube advertising. It's insufferable. Ads appear every few minutes, and they're not like the TV ads of yore. They're exclusively get-rich-quick schemes with people explaining how they're able to earn $10,000 a month doing nothing -- all one has to do is go to that website and subscribe to a shady course.
Fortunately Brave still blocks ads successfully, even on an iPad. Without it, it would be unusable. I wonder who puts up with this.
There are plenty of cool 3rd party youtube clients. SmartTube, NewPipe and Invidious come to mind. Youtube Revanced could be considered as 3rd party youtube client as well.
Yet. Just like with Apollo and Reddit API, at some point there weren’t any.
Is this true? I have never seen an ad on my embedded youtube player. Which I was honestly kind of bummed about, as I wanted some way to give back to the creators of the tutorials I was rendering.
I'm sure they'd be happy to take direct donations. Many have Patreon accounts you can subscribe to. Those creators aren't getting any meaningful revenue from ads; that's why they all added those annoying sponsor segments.
I’d love if folks could use my site as a 0-guilt alternative to watching the same videos on youtube (plus lots of AI-enhanced goodness), but with the ads stripped away its not quite the same.
looks good though! Won't be adopting the apple vision pro for awhile. but the developers pushing their apps to this ecosystem will definitely be awarded for early adoption until "native" apps are made available.
pump out a AVP app. early adopters of AVP likely to buy ($5-$10). Rake in that easy money while the big companies take their time in building their own app. Big companies then throttle or block those apis used by indy developers or require fee to use them. Indy developers likely to halt development and thus people end up on the official apps.
Once YouTube releases support for the Vision Pro, either Google will get Juno banned as an unauthorized third party app or make the API expensive to use even if Juno becomes popular.
> pump out a AVP app. early adopters of AVP likely to buy ($5-$10). Rake in that easy money while the big companies take their time in building their own app. Big companies then throttle or block those apis used by indy developers or require fee to use them. Indy developers likely to halt development and thus people end up on the official apps.
Precisely. Unfortunately the creator of Apollo has not learned anything about what happened to his reddit client and the same will certainly happen with this YouTube client.
