20210508-gaming_youtube.txt
WARNING: A bit rambly.
It's been a while. I don't feel like I've had much to say.
Recently I got into a mode, I guess. Maybe a mood. Whatever. I got
sick of my phone's browser crashing or going sluggish when I was
playing videos. My browser Via is actually pretty darn good, if only
for the resource sniffer: that thing is great. It seeks out embedded
video (and audio, I believe) and will generate a link to it. What's
great about this is I can "pipe" that link to be played in a video app
(VLC in this case).
VLC is awesome at videos. So I got to thinking: what about Youtube?
Well, I started digging around and got into a bit of a rabbit hole. I
found streamlink on my laptop first. It's garbage, IMO. Copy/paste all
the time. No seeking in VLC when it doesn't crash. It reminds me of
VHS. Fine. I look on the Google Play Store and find nothing but Google
for Youtube. Big surprise. So I look at my favorite non-Google apk
repo: F-Droid. Several options.
1. WebTube - works but it's just a webview app. That's what a browser
is for.
2. Youtube Stream - Absolutely broken; probably not updated to address
the YT shenanigans that is them screwing with how their site works all
the time. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. But Google can't fix its
own stupid.
3. Skytube - YES! For one whole video. Hang, crash. You suck, Skytube.
4. NewPipe - Bad name, IMO. EXCELLENT app. It's amazing. Not only is
it natively displaying the video and not using a webview, but it can
pipe the videos to VLC, play in the background, no ads or tracking
(and no commenting, liking, which is fine).
I'm so happy. This is awesome. Now back to Linux. Surely I can do this
on Linux Mint, right?
I tried red-app, but that was trash. It was a snap-pack or whatever
which involves too much BS to satisfy reqs. I look around and land
nicely on FreeTube. This is what I want. Such good stuff, and it also
cuts down on my commenting, which is mainly just me getting into dumb
arguments.
