SmartTube – an advanced player for set-top boxes and TVs running Android OS

I&#x27;ve been using this for a couple of years now, and it&#x27;s utterly fantastic. I highly recommend it. I honestly have a hard time imagining using YouTube without it, because without it (or something similar that can be installed on a TV), I&#x27;d have to find videos I want to watch on my PC, download them manually with yt-dlp, and then copy them to a USB stick or put them someplace where I could watch them with Jellyfin, just so I can watch them on the TV.<p>As the warning says, you need to install it directly from the github site. There&#x27;s a helpful how-to that details how to do this on a typical Android TV using the &quot;Downloader&quot; app, listed as the &quot;easiest&quot; method here. It&#x27;s really not hard, but obviously more work than just installing an app from the Play Store.

SmartTube is amazing for many, MANY reasons. The first obvious one is that it blocks ads AND embeds SponsorBlock by default. The second is that ads aside, it has a better UI and UX than the official YouTube app. One single unpaid guy does a better work than Google at making a TV app. The third is that SmartTube comes with tons of useful features:<p>- remote control to be able to cast on SmartTube, <i>directly from the official YouTube app</i><p>- there’s a plugin to use a crowdsourced version of thumbnails<p>- you can hide Shorts<p>- and basically everything is configurable<p>Just install SmartTube, even if you’re a YouTube Premium user it’s worth it.

While a lot of folks are touting SmartTube for avoiding ads, I will install it to finally have a way to change the YouTube playing speed on the TV. Thanks for posting.<p>Press and hold for 2x playback is one of the more useful features of the YouTube premium experience and the lack of speed adjustment on TV is quite annoying.

Smarttube is amazing especially as YouTube ad duration, skipability, and quantity are completely abusive on TV devices. It is completely frustrating experience versus YouTube in a web browser.

&gt; Do not download SmartTube from any app store, APK websites or blogs; these were uploaded by other people and may contain malware or ads. SmartTube is not officially published on any app store. Sadly, the Google PlayStore does not allow ad-free Youtube apps using unofficial APIs.

This app is the only reason I bought a FireTV Stick 4k. For everything else (Netflix, Infuse), I use an Apple TV. App works great, can recommend.

For people with non-Android smart TVs there are similar apps (with adblock and sponsorblock) both for Tizen [0] and webOS [1].<p>[0]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;reisxd&#x2F;TizenTube&#x2F;">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;reisxd&#x2F;TizenTube&#x2F;</a><p>[1]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;webosbrew&#x2F;youtube-webos">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;webosbrew&#x2F;youtube-webos</a>

It is not available on play store, but that is to be expected. You cannot be there with a such product.<p>It is not available on f-droid, which is a bummer, because I use f-droid.<p>Installing things from a webpage like an old barbarian. I cannot find nowhere sha for the builds on page. The same is for their &#x27;releases&#x27; on github.

Is there an easy alternative to the standard Android version running on Sony TVs? In the past year, the home screen now shows ads and it can’t be disabled.

Would Google be able to detect I&#x27;m using this app and outright nuke my Google account and literally all of my digital existence?

GPLv3, nice. Is this a Newpipe fork or totally new codebase?

does any of these have a microphone array? I&#x27;m still looking for a high-quality smart speaker with TV output and the ability to connect to GPT

We use this app all the time. I love it.

It&#x27;s another life, a life without ads.