Want YouTube Premium features for free? This app makes it happen

Youtube has been trying to push users toward Premium for a while now, dangling all kinds of benefits ranging from ad-free viewing to extra features like downloading videos for offline playback and playing videos in the background while using other apps.

That all sounds nice, but some people are never going to pay to remove ads on YouTube. Lots of valid reasons for that, including the fact that Google likes to quietly hike up prices — so much so that YouTube Premium currently costs $13.99 per month (or $22.99 for a family plan that supports up to five family members). In this economy? No thanks.

One possible alternative is YouTube Premium Lite, which is far cheaper for the extra features but still has ads. But Premium Lite isn’t yet available in the United States and many other countries. In that case, what else can you do? Well… you’d be surprised.

Premium features without the price

Turns out, you can unlock the premium features of YouTube without paying for a subscription — in a way that’s free and legal. It’s all made possible by a free Android app called NewPipe, which you can simply download on GitHub (or on the alternative app store F-Droid).

NewPipe has everything that YouTube Premium has, which means you can watch YouTube videos without ads, download for offline playback, minimize and keep playing in the background, watch with your screen locked, and more.

In addition, NewPipe is a good option if you care about data privacy, as the app doesn’t use Google APIs and only saves the data you want offline on your device. That makes it lightweight and faster, too.

Battery consumption is also lower than with the official YouTube app, plus all the details you normally see (like comments, likes, descriptions, etc.) are displayed as usual. There are no compromises here.

What’s the catch?

It all sounds almost too good to be true. If there’s one downside to using NewPipe, however, it’s that you can’t simply take over your YouTube account with all the channels and playlists you’re following. This means the first time you use NewPipe, you’ll have to re-subscribe to everything and/or create new playlists from your old ones.

The look of the NewPipe app is also somewhat simpler than normal YouTube. But that’s purely a matter of taste. Some might even prefer the “tidier” experience on top of all the premium features for free.

Apart from that, NewPipe also offers some of its own special features, like data sharing with other devices. Even if you don’t care for YouTube’s premium features, these might be unique selling points to themselves.

Is NewPipe legal?

NewPipe is essentially just a pure media player app that lets you access services like YouTube and Soundcloud without logging into your own accounts. It streams data from those services, either via APIs or scraping, and presents it to you. It’s completely legal to use.

The app doesn’t interface with Google’s API, which is why it can’t be listed in the Google Play Store. However, it’s very easy to download via GitHub or F-Droid if you have an Android device.

That said, even if the app isn’t technically illegal, it’s certainlyl a thorn in Google’s side. The company may occasionally try to block YouTube alternatives like NewPipe, but open-source apps like this usually come back under different names and start working again.