25
votes
YouTube Vanced is discontinued
@Vanced Official:
Vanced has been discontinued. In the coming days, the download links on the website will be taken down. We know this is not something you wanted to hear but it's something we need to do. Thank you all for supporting us over the years.
There's still Smart Tube Next as well. Open source, obliterates advertisements, supports sponsorblock, and does not need google services. Runs on pretty much everything except RokuOS-based televisions. I use it on my phone without issues.
It appears like existing versions will continue to work unless/until google changes the API. So thats somewhat good news...
Perhaps I'll explore the other options mentioned in the reddit/HN threads...but more than likely I'll simply give up youtube on mobile. The web is a horrid place without an adblocker.
Another name to the Google Graveyard. This time it's not even something they've built.
Less impactful to me considering that I've already moved away from using Android. The only device I have that runs Android (and Vanced) is an Amazon Fire tablet I have around from a couple years back. I don't think I will ever go back to anything hardware made by or powered by Google. Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice...
On a note about Youtube Ads, it's a real ugly mess. On platforms that I don't have blocking enabled (namely when I want to Chromecast something), I get 15+ mins mid video ads from none other than PragerU. Absolute garbage that is amplified using Youtube's ad platform.
I assume you are using iOS, is there any reasonable way to have a tolerable user experience on YouTube with iOS?
I think everyone who uses YouTube regularly should pay for premium. It is quite cheap all things considered, especially if you can get a “family” group together to split the cost.
In addition, you can install this: https://github.com/qnblackcat/uYouPlus/
This is an app that bundles a bunch of jailbroken features into the stock YouTube app. You do NOT have to be jailbroken to install it. The easiest way is with AltStore. The AltStore website has a pretty good walkthrough, but feel free to pm me if you run into any issues.
$10/m for YouTube Premium. Should work the same on iOS as other platforms.
It's surprisingly hard to find this information, so: what exactly was YouTube Vanced, and why was it valued by its users? What did it bring that YouTube didn't provide?
Modified version of the YouTube app with no ads, sponsorblock (automatic skipping of sponsored segments in videos), audio only mode, a much darker amoled night mode, just generally cleaned up the interface and gave users the power of choice again.
So it skipped even ads made by the content creators as part of their videos?
Yup. It works by querying a user-submitted database of sponsored section timestamps.
https://sponsor.ajay.app/
I see...
I have been using adblock for, IDK, two decades? I don't know how I feel about that. This kind of advertising doesn't seem so egregious to me, and many small-time YouTubers rely on that revenue.
There are many more who rely on YT ads because they're too small to get sponsor deals. Part of my income comes from Youtube ads, which is why I'm very happy to hear Vanced is being shut down. I couldn't put a number on how much money I've not earned because of people watching my videos using adblockers because that's not a metric Youtube Studio gives you - but it's definitely some.
Ripping off youtube has always felt like one of the shittier forms of piracy to me, I suppose partly because I tend to watch smaller creators for whom every paid view counts more, not the big-money people who can afford to lose some revenue. I'm not above downloading the odd movie or TV show myself, or bypassing the occasional paywall, so I'm not judging anyone's choices on this front. Everyone freeloads to some extent and it's a personal choice where you draw the line between "OK stealing" and "not-OK stealing".
YouTube advertising is pretty annoying because you cannot skip them, but sponsor deals doesn't really bother me. I actually pay for YouTube nowadays...
Edit: but I have AdBlocked YouTube in the past.
Linus from LTT mentioned on a stream how views from paid Youtube accounts count for significantly more money than free accounts.
I also pay for Youtube and have 0 qualms cutting sponsorship segments, partially because it's starting to hit TV-level ratios of time waste between intros, ads, and outtros.
Comment from @lou
Comment from @mat
[quoted both since the question pertains to both]
As someone that doesn't make videos for youtube, can anyone/you chime in on if the youtube stats show how many people are watching each particular section of a video? For example, do the stats show that '1,000 people watched today, but 250 skipped minute 4 to minute 5 which is where your sponsorship was'?
You could probably read that data off this chart, as long as you knew where you'd put your sponsorship content.
There are more analytics available but this is probably the most relevant one.
I assume if you made the video you'd know where you put it. Question is now how they define "viewers still watching", does skipping a section by using their 5s skip by 30 seconds drop the "viewers still watching" statistic for that time or does it remain steady because they're technically still in the video watching/didn't leave?
Yeah, good point. I had a bit of a dig around on some of my other videos and I did find some where the retention graph went up as well as down over time (I picked almost the worst example I could to screenshot, just by chance), so presumably that would show people skipping because I think the "still watching" does actually mean "video is playing in a tab which has focus" rather than "video is being skipped in a tab which has focus".
Here's the chart, with youtube's explainer text included. This video is very skip-friendly in that there's a section in the middle where I'm basically just showing a clock counting down. I assume that's what is happening in this chart, I could dig even deeper and find if I'm getting incoming referrals to specific moments but I very much doubt that's the case because this video is very niche.
Last line seems to be the key point "Dips mean viewers are skipping or leaving your video at that specific part." so a large number of users using the skip feature at a certain point would show a definite dip.
If that's the case then SponsorBlock will show a dip that the sponsor segment is being skipped, assuming enough viewers are using it and since more than 70% of views come from mobile devices, it likely won't be a noticeable dip from SponsorBlock. So the question about the ethics of using SponsorBlock's to skip a sponsor section comes down to one question: Do sponsors pay based on views or based views during the period of their sponsorship? And everything I've found says it's $X per 1k views over the first 30 days.
So I'm not seeing an issue with using SponsorBlock (as @lou has) as the creator is getting the view count needed to meet sponsor obligations and it's no different than muting the TV and playing with my phone when a commercial comes on. The only way it would be a problem is if sponsors paid by the number of views during their sponsorship segment and the only way to get that info is for the creator to do the sponsorship with promises to get paid later, which isn't going to happen.
If I were a sponsor there are two metrics I'd care about - views and more importantly, clicks/traffic. I don't imagine they're asking people to dig into their analytics and try to find out actual viewers for the sponsorship segment. The bigger sponsors are almost certainly aware of Sponsorblock etc and know how to compensate for them to get real figures, if they care at all.
I don't, personally, have much of an issue with sponsorblock. If I had sponsors and they didn't care about it, neither would I because all I care about in terms of sponsorship is getting their money. People skipping bits of video might be interpreted by the algorithm as being negative and downgrade your video slightly, but it might not. Gaming the algorithm is mostly guesswork, and a moving target anyway. Personally I'm nowhere near big enough a youtuber to worry about that anyway.
I do think that using adblock to avoid youtube ads is a bit yucky, because that hits creators who don't have sponsors (ie, me) proportionally harder than those who do. But I do get why people do it, adverts are annoying.
One way to make ads more bearable is to make them predictable. YouTubers usually place sponsor breaks in roughly the same point at every video, and in the same amount. On TV ads come by the end of regularly timed blocks. When I wasn't a subscriber, YouTube ads felt random, and random feels unfair (I know they're not truly random, but that's how they felt like).
Not too surprising, they were providing an apk that was decompiled, modified, and repackaged. Surprised they didn’t get the hammer from Google earlier for that matter.
Use to be a heavy vanced user, and still have an android phone although it’s not the daily driver anymore, but I’ve been a pretty happy Yt premium subscriber for the last year and a half, which nets most of what I wanted from vanced.
RIP.
Expect someone to be putting out instructions on how to modify your latest YouTube APK to have Vanced functionality.
Good threads already on HN and Reddit, but I'd be interested in the dialogue here as well:
HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30663739
Reddit: https://old.reddit.com/r/Vanced/comments/tdazfr/discontinuation_of_the_vanced_project/