I can't recommend this enough. The difference between this and the official YT app is:

- Blocks YT ads, even without a YT Premium

- Presents a consistent view of a channel, rather than having to hunt around for wherever the creator hid the recent uploads

- Does not play the next video when asked not to.

This last one was a huge factor for us. My wife is a YT Premium subscriber and has a creator she finds comforting and likes to play one of their videos at bed time to fall asleep. EVEN WHEN THE SETTINGS SAY TO NOT AUTOPLAY, the official FireTV YT app will often autoplay. This leads to some loud obnoxious video waking us up at 3am. SmartTube actually stops playing when asked and we get a good night's sleep.

So we use this app in preference to the official app, even though my wife pays for YT Premium

WARNING:

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My development environment was infected by unknown malicious software, as a result of which a few builds may have been affected. Once the issue was detected, I secured everything with a full disk wipe, restored a clean setup, and now all builds are scanned with VirusTotal. The F-Droid version will also be verified before release.

Public keys may have been compromised, which is why I am sharing this issue. You can download the new version and the new public key below, and instructions for restoring backups are provided.

No extra actions are required since the app uses one-time connection codes. These codes have very limited permissions (for example, they cannot change your password). Still, you can revoke them if you want full peace of mind.

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This is from the GitHub page you linked

Ahh. So this only works on TV devices. I was hoping for something like this for iOS or iPadOS.

Google's fault for their confusing branding. OP's headline is one of the two perfectly understandable parsings: (YouTube (TV Clients)) vs ((YouTube TV) Clients)

It's really confusing honestly.

I've gone ahead and changed the line to be "YouTube for TV app"

to block ads there is uBlock origin.

Downloading the podcast via a computer or vpn in a low income country will remove almost all dynamic adverts (which is most podcast advertising)

I lived in Tanzania for a few years and most podcasts wouldn't play adverts while I was there.

Crowdsourcing doesn’t work for Podcasts because most providers cut in ad segments based on your location. Those differ in length so the sponsorblock approach would not work. I slopped up a small go app that uses whisper API to transcribe and then uses Jev-compatible API to classify ad segments. Works great and costs like $0.01 per episode.

Like the sibling comment, I rolled my own (local Parakeet + Gemini), but this uses the same approach and is actively developed: https://github.com/podly-pure-podcasts/podly_pure_podcasts

Ironically, the best answer is to see if the podcast is available on YT and use sponsorblock.

I went as far as to write a YouTube downloading app, that uses ytdlp, but presents the downloaded mp3s in a feed that can be picked up by antennapod.

You link it to the YouTube app as a remote controller/chrome cast. The communication between it and YouTube app happens through YouTube APIs.

That would be the best use case for AR.

I watch a channel with a guy who runs a car negotiation business and streams it, because car dealerships are annoying to work with.

Car dealerships and salespeople often offer similar objections to his business as well as customers who want a good deal.

They’ll say things like “we’re losing money on this car” or “a business needs to make a profit.”

And his objection to that is always the same: the customer doesn’t care about that, and it’s not their problem. If your business model delivers something that people see value in, you’re more likely to be able to make a profit. Customers obviously don’t see much value in the car dealerships.

I certainly don’t want my favorite YouTubers to go broke, but their business model is not my problem. The fact is that I refuse to watch ads. I don’t see value in watching an ad. In some cases I’m willing to pay for that privilege, like how I can get sponsor-free viewing from many YouTube channels on Nebula.

But, sorry, if I’m allowed to skip forward in a video to skip an ad, I’m going to do it. And if I’m not allowed to skip around in a video platform to the part of the video I want to watch, I’m probably not going to be using that video platform.

The reality is that most YouTube sponsors already know that a certain percentage of viewers will skip their sponsor segment, even manually without a tool like this, or using YouTube Premium’s included Skip Ahead feature, just like a TV advertiser knows that a certain percentage of viewers will change the channel during ads, mute the TV, or go to the bathroom during an ad segment.

I have a friend who refuses to buy premium versions of popular streaming services like Disney+ and actually prefers to have the advertising. They even said “my kids will see ads” almost like they want their kids to experience the childhood they did. It’s a bit of a strange philosophy to me but I kind of see where they’re coming from: advertisements are something of a cultural experience, like how you can play back a super soaker advertisement for me and I’ll get some intense nostalgic feelings.

I have it set up to skip on button press and usually listen to each sponsor product pitch once (at least up to the point where I know what the product is about). I've even signed up for Onshape through one of the creators that promoted it. But I'm not going to listen to the 100th repeat of an ad for a sketchy VPN or US-only meal delivery service or malware browser extension or microtransaction-infested MMO.

And the regular ads can get fucked until the platforms manage to keep the scams out.

I know creators doing comics who don't live off ads, just voluntary patreon pages, merch, and the like. They make as much money as most people working "regular" jobs. Of course they don't make "buy a content house in LA and pay a team of 3 to 8 people" money.

I think there's too much chasing big success. People see giant creators who made millions and so chase every potential growth opportunity or monetization technique, a lot of them could probably settle into a stable one person operation making good enough money.

They can find another way to earn money. Patreon, etc are much better ways. Sponsors and ads are objectively irritating.

Strange, since the whole "content creator" thing grew up while we had significantly less ads.

So maybe the issue aren't the few tech guys blocking those ads but greedy investors wanting more and MORE.

Such tools are a direct result of this greed.

It only mutes the audio.

Valid point of confusion. Can you think of better wording for the description of the service?

There would never be a way to do this on YouTube TV proper as it airs live.

3 months is abandoned?