Out of the box it can play audio in the background, and now that extensions are available you can block ads as well. You don’t really need constantly updating 3rd party clients or questionable firewalls anymore if you just want usable youtube on a phone.
Why install the app when all the same features work in browser? Not only did I save storage space, I also kept privacy as well as reduced CPU/RAM usage on my mid-tier phone on the browser that was already installed.
This is a pretty fair argument. It reminds me of the early 2010s when the sentiment everyone had was “we have an app for that”. We don’t need more specialized apps (which really aren’t that specialized - most of these do exactly the same thing), we just need intelligent solutions using what we have. Back in the day that was responsive layouts, today it’s browser extensions.
You kept privacy? How?
All apps send telemetry, this includes NewPipe. Your data is in that telemetry. The less apps you have installed, the less likely your data is sent to parties that leverage your information for profits.
Excuse me, did you even read what you have linked? The first link literally explains the privacy policy of “the NewPipe’s” website.
Also, what the fuck is even newpipe.app? https://github.com/TeamNewPipe/NewPipe The GH repo as well as the F-Droid release all link to newpipe.net and I couldn’t find any reference to the .app website there.
Hilariously untrue statement.
The link you’re using here is not telemetry. Telemetry is some sort of reporting on how the app is being used that’s “phoned home” back to the app creators. In the case of NewPipe, as the link you provided shows, there is none of that; and indeed, it only executes enough JavaScript to grab the video download link. Google still records a download, because they own the server (and any access of someone else’s server can be logged), but NewPipe is only sending it (1) the video page URL, (2) an anonymous user-string, required for every web request, and (3) a single, unidentifying query string parameter.
Some apps don’t even send that much, and you can prove it by checking their source code when available.
Not all apps send telemetry. Most free software does not. I’m not a user of it personally, but NewPipe is fully free under the GPL and it is very unlikely that it collects any private data from its users. If you have genuine information showing that it does, please relay that to F-droid so they can add a warning to its page there.