It seems YT started another attempt at blocking alternative clients. They changed something in their API and both SmartTube and Tubular (NewPipe fork) are completely broken. Apparently it started happening this past week, but we personally just felt it today.
Edit: SmartTube already has an update but still not working for 4K videos it seems. Tubular still not working but it might be due to the upstream (NewPipe) is still working on a fix.
We as a collective should be figuring out how to remunerate content creators on alternative platforms in non-shady ways (aka no crypto). I think it’s part of the reason content creators don’t put their stuff on platforms like peertube, dtube, or whatever else exists. With no monetary incentive, it’ll stay niche and we’ll be reliant on youtube until that’s resolved.
Like Nebula? I really enjoy it!
I should point out that this isn’t always “Google is trying to block adblockers” again!
Google can, will, and does simply change how the YouTube watch pages look, feel and operate behind the scenes quite regularly.
Thankfully we have people like those at the FreeTube, NewPipe and yt-dlp projects to sift through those changes and update the code to cope with the new output.
https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/issues/10397#issuecomment-2218346384
Looks like there’s several causes.
https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/issues/3766
I don’t know how soon Tubular or NewPipe can fix their app; but it seems like a few simple changes will do.
USE GRAYJAY
I dunno, I watch YouTube on desktop with a premium account.
Since they began experimenting with ad injection directly into videos a month or so ago, I no longer use YouTube really. Videos rarely load proper the first time. Often takes 7 or 8 reloads of the page to get a video to start, sometimes stopping mid video.
Clearly since I can get it to play, it feels like a Google problem. Could be because I’m on Firefox, or Linux though (maybe even an update to something else, but all other video streaming services work just fine). Turning off uBlock Origin and uMatrix do not help at all.
Even if it isn’t Google’s fault, it’s still causing me to not use their service anymore. Feels like they are just trying to drive away users in general.
https://github.com/yuliskov/SmartTube/issues/3606
It is an issue caused by a change that YouTube made. Grayjay and Clipious were the only ones apps that kept working.
SmartTube is back up and working. Just update it.
Smarttube next has a fix for now
found the issue of github: https://github.com/polymorphicshade/Tubular/issues/97
