Play Youtube Videos without Needing Google Play Services with NewPipe

by Ben Madison · March 11, 2016

Many of you fear of those Android apps that are not available on Google Play and I totally get you. It’s all about that terrible risk you take when downloading an app not from the Play Store as it may be infected with malware. However, many others are prepared to give up Google Play Services and if you are one of those who want more privacy, then this app is for you.

NewPipe is an open source Android app available on F-droid (F-droid is a library of open source Android apps) which practically means that anyone can look through the code themselves and determine if it is safe or not. And the fact that it can only be found in one place as an apk file is another sign that you can take it with no worries. After all, F-droid is some sort of a catalogue of Free and Open Source Software applications for the Android platform considered to be a safe site.

So, if you are also thinking that it’s time to find an app to watch YouTube videos offline, I can strongly recommend you giving a try to NewPipe. I know that you must be disappointed about the YouTube app on Android due to the inability to watch videos offline, or to download videos. I don’t want either to use precious mobile data each and every time I watch a video on YouTube and there’s where NewPipe comes in.

As I have told you, this is an open sourced, lightweight, YouTube client that becomes more popular each day. The app might look broken when you first open it due to the lack of a splash screen or start page, but don’t let yourself fooled by that. On the contrary, it does what you want it to do: it can easily play Youtube videos without needing Google Play Services to work and allows its user to download not only videos, but also just the audio of the videos.

However, you should know that the app does not support 1080p (or 4k) at the moment, but it does support 720p MPEG-4 viewing and downloading and in most cases, this will do just fine. Unlike the official YouTube app, it cannot keep the video running when you move onto a different app either, but it can play audio in the background and I am OK with that too.

Do you also want to give it a try? Even though the app’s development is still in progress, it has only a few bugs and it is perfect for everyday use.

NewPipe can be downloaded from here via the F-Droid app store.