The NewPipe development team has announced the release of the new version 0.22.0 of the free and open-source alternative app for YouTube on Android.
NewPipe is an application that allows users to stream YouTube videos, and it works without the need to use any of the Google framework libraries or YouTube API, which enables the application to work without the need to have Google Mobile Services (GMS) on the device. This makes the app an excellent solution for devices that do not have these GMS, such as recent Huawei phones. Also, NewPipe does not need a YouTube account to use it, so it is a workable solution for people who are looking for a privacy-preserving YouTube alternative.
In addition, the list of channels you have subscribed to in the YouTube app can easily be transferred (or imported) into NewPipe, and you can also subscribe to channels you like directly within the app. The application does not contain any ads and does not show YouTube ads in it, and it also allows downloading videos and playing them in the background or in picture-in-picture mode.
NewPipe Version 0.22.0 comes with a bunch of new features, the first and most important of which is a new YouTube-like rewind and fast-forward behavior, which means that now, after double-tap to rewind or forward a video, you don't have to keep double-tapping to execute every single jump in time. Instead, you can start this action with a double-tap, then every single tap after that executes another jump in time until the animation finishes.
This version also brings the search capability into the settings, a nice pin icon next to a pinned comment below a video, and support for opening the FSFE-Tube PeerTube instance from outside the app.
The new NewPipe version also contains several improvements and bug fixes, such as a silent system notification when an error occurs to make it easier to report application errors, an accessibility tweak to prevent screen readers from repeatedly telling you there is a "video preview thumbnail" when scrolling through menus, and an adding an improvement for people with slow internet or those who are experiencing a period of poor connectivity, that was causing the player to lock up with an error (speak: crash) if it takes too long to buffer during a Livestream.
Furthermore, a bug has been fixed that causes the playback to restart from the beginning when switching from one player type to another, the order of local search results from the search history has been fixed to be ordered by creation date instead of alphabetically, and a new hashtag #respect has been introduced in the app to allow the player to respect cutouts (such as notches) when playing in multi-window mode.
The developers also fixed a bug that sometimes caused the keyboard to stop working when using the search field after closing the video page, as well as fixed a network error that appears if you try to view the channel page for a queued item that you haven't seen its channel page before, and fixed an issue that makes the app would suddenly abandon that stream and start playing the first stream in the queue instead, if a stream other than the first one in the queue was playing, and its resolution was changed, or the player type was changed.
Finally, and due to Google's policies, this NewPipe app is not available on the Play Store, but it can be downloaded either from their official website, or from their GitHub repository, and if you're using F-Droid, you can add the app repository from here to always get the latest NewPipe version on your phone.