I’m a very avid YouTube user, I’ve payed for Premium for the last couple of years but am becoming less and less comfortable with it.
YouTube is actually the last Google-service (besides Android, but there are plans to ditch Google there using something like /e/OS) I’m left using after switching to Proton Mail (instead of GMail), Here WeGo (instead Maps), TransIP Stack (instead of Drive) and a self-hosted Memos (instead of Keep).
I tend to watch YouTube on my TV by setting up a queue of videos on my phone and then casting them to my TV. This is all ad-free because of my Premium subscription, but of course everything is tracked.
Is there a way for me to watch YouTube, preferrable on my TV with my phone as remote control, without having a Google-account? I found NewPipe on FDroid, but that sadly does not provide casting (I managed to get it partially working by using VLC, but no queue and no sound whatever I tried)
There are also things like Inoreader that people use, but I believe that does not have queueing and casting as well, so it would not really work in my situation.
Sidenote: I like the idea of creators receiving at least a bit of the payments I make as a reward for the content they post, but I reckon that with something like NewPipe/Piped an ad-blocker in place those would be lost.
Anyone got some ingenious solutions working?
Edit: my TV currently is an Android TV, but that may be up for change sometime later this year, so any external solution like a stick or RPi or something would also be up for consideration.
Since you’re using Android TV already, I’d recommend configuring it to remove the ads via the use of a custom launcher, and install SmartTube Next for an ad-free, account-free YouTube.
In the case of the Hisense TV I picked for my grandparents, I found that Android TV kept wanting to revert to the default launcher, so used Launcher Manager to keep Projectivity Launcher as the default. While you can uninstall system apps via ADB, they tend to come back automatically, making the ‘hide app’ option of Projectivity Launcher useful to remove bloatware from the menu.
There’s also apps that can remap the remote buttons to open custom apps. Couldn’t get it to work on the Hisense TV due to there being a glitch with enabling accessibility options, but seemingly it works in most cases. Also note that unless you’re able to root the Android TV installation (also couldn’t do it for the Hisense TV) and install the SmartTube Bridge app, the Google Assistant button will still try to send all voice commands to the default YouTube app, so voice searches need to be done in the SmartTube app directly.
If you also want movies and TV shows, I’d also recommend installing Stremio with the Torrentio addon. While it needs a paid debrid account to be useful (about 3€ a month in the case of Real-Debrid), it’s a suitable catchall replacement for Netflix, Disney+, and other streaming services.