Is there a way to alter what tapping on a YouTube link does?

I use NewPipe when viewing YouTube videos but is it possible to set it
as the default app without rooting the phone?

Dex <vaidam@nospam.today> asked
> I use NewPipe when viewing YouTube videos but is it possible to set it
> as the default app without rooting the phone?

Hi Dex,
I'm pretty sure (see below) that it's easy to set NewPipe as the default.

BTW, as a PSA, in my humblest of opinions, anyone using the YouTube client
(or the Google Play client) is wasting their valuable time.

That's because alternative privacy-based clients (NewPipe & Aurora) are far
more functional in almost every way possible than those Google apps are.
https://newpipe.net/ (fully replaces the Youtube client app)
https://auroraoss.com/download/ (fully replaces the Google Play client)

Likewise with ditching Chrome for ungoogled browsers for privacy reasons:
https://github.com/ungoogled-software/ungoogled-chromium-android/
https://github.com/bromite/bromite

Anyway, with that PSA taken care of, back to your question (tested below).

> Is there a way to alter what tapping on a YouTube link does?

Good question.

When I tapped inside of PulseSMS on a video link sent to me from afar,
PulseSMS gave me (in the message) the youtube http URI plus an image of the
video with the title inside of PulseSMS (which I think has a setting to
allow that video image to show up in addition to the URI).
PulseSMS:Settings > Advanced > Use Internal Web Browser = on
("Turning this off will also disable link previews within message lists.")

Then when I tapped on that youtube-sms/mms message, Android came up with
"Open With" containing a long list of "things" I can open it up in, namely
a. IntentTask
b. YouTube <== mine can't be deleted or disabled, unfortunately
c. NewPipe
d. Samsung Internet
e. Aloha Lite
f. App Manager
g. Brave
h. Bromite
i. Duckduckgo
j. Epic
k. Firefox Focus
l. Opera
m. Tor Browser
n. Ungoogled Chromium
etc.
And then on the bottom is a choice of "Just once" or "Always".

From that, I would "presume" that it's a normal default setting
which you may have previously set to "Always" bring up "YouTube".

To test what a typical browser would do, I copied that URI which had been
sent to my MMS/SMS app and pasted it into a typical web browser, Ungoogled
Chromium. That brought up the video inside of the ungoogled browser itself.

On 15/09/2021 16:47, Robin Goodfellow wrote:
> Dex <vaidam@nospam.today> asked
>> I use NewPipe when viewing YouTube videos but is it possible to set it
>> as the default app without rooting the phone?
>
> Hi Dex,
> I'm pretty sure (see below) that it's easy to set NewPipe as the default.
>
> BTW, as a PSA, in my humblest of opinions, anyone using the YouTube client
> (or the Google Play client) is wasting their valuable time.
>
> That's because alternative privacy-based clients (NewPipe & Aurora) are far
> more functional in almost every way possible than those Google apps are.
> https://newpipe.net/ (fully replaces the Youtube client app)
> https://auroraoss.com/download/ (fully replaces the Google Play client)

Had used Aptoide in the passed, it borked my phone downloading beta and
other builds that were not compatible with MIUI v11 (Android 7), so I
will stick with Play Store.

>
> Likewise with ditching Chrome for ungoogled browsers for privacy reasons:
> https://github.com/ungoogled-software/ungoogled-chromium-android/
> https://github.com/bromite/bromite
>

I use DuckDuckGo browser, but will try them out, thanks.

> Anyway, with that PSA taken care of, back to your question (tested below).
>
>> Is there a way to alter what tapping on a YouTube link does?
>
> Good question.
>
> When I tapped inside of PulseSMS on a video link sent to me from afar,
> PulseSMS gave me (in the message) the youtube http URI plus an image of the
> video with the title inside of PulseSMS (which I think has a setting to
> allow that video image to show up in addition to the URI).
> PulseSMS:Settings > Advanced > Use Internal Web Browser = on
> ("Turning this off will also disable link previews within message lists.")
>
> Then when I tapped on that youtube-sms/mms message, Android came up with
> "Open With" containing a long list of "things" I can open it up in, namely
> a. IntentTask
> b. YouTube <== mine can't be deleted or disabled, unfortunately
> c. NewPipe
> d. Samsung Internet
> e. Aloha Lite
> f. App Manager
> g. Brave
> h. Bromite
> i. Duckduckgo
> j. Epic
> k. Firefox Focus
> l. Opera
> m. Tor Browser
> n. Ungoogled Chromium
> etc.
> And then on the bottom is a choice of "Just once" or "Always".
>
> From that, I would "presume" that it's a normal default setting
> which you may have previously set to "Always" bring up "YouTube".
>
> To test what a typical browser would do, I copied that URI which had been
> sent to my MMS/SMS app and pasted it into a typical web browser, Ungoogled
> Chromium. That brought up the video inside of the ungoogled browser itself.
>

It is in other apps like DuckDuckGo, Wakie, TikToc etc. they all open
with the YouTube app. It's blocked in the firewall I use so always have
to copy and paste into NewPipe, which gets annoying at times.

It's time for a new phone anyway so hopefully it might work in a higher
version of Android.

Dex <vaidam@nospam.today> asked
>> https://auroraoss.com/download/ (fully replaces the Google Play client)
>
> Had used Aptoide in the passed, it borked my phone downloading beta and
> other builds that were not compatible with MIUI v11 (Android 7), so I
> will stick with Play Store.

My first question to you (after spending my time suggesting a solution) is
whether you considered trying to solve the problem as I had suggested, which
would go something like this:
a. Reset the default YouTube client
b. Then when you click on a link inside your messenger app it will ask
c. Then set the default YouTube client to the NewPipe YouTube client
<https://newpipe.net/>

I don't know if you've tried the suggestion though, so all I have to go on
to help you further is you said above that a random open source app store
client borked your phone by downloading apps which weren't compatible with
your version of Android.

I have downloaded _thousands_ of APKs and I've never "borked" my phone.
<https://i.postimg.cc/bN875p8b/apk01.jpg>
Hence I suspect it wasn't "Aptoide" per se that "borked" your device.

Personally, I don't use Aptoide because Aurora does all that I need in that
it's no different than the Google Play client (just as a Ungoogled Chromium
is no different than the Chrome browser).

As with any browser, it's just a client of the _same_ underlying database.
<https://alternativeto.net/software/android-market/>

So the apps downloaded with the Aurora client are from the Google Play repo,
just as a web page visited with Ungoogled Chromium is the same web page
visited with Google Chrome.

Hence if an app "borked" your Android, had you used Aurora it would have had
_nothing_ to do with the client that you used to download the app since the
app you get with the Aurora Google Play client is the exact same app
(literally) as the app that you would have gotten off of the Google Play
client. (It's the same app, same hash, same location, same everything.)

After having said that, I googled for what "Aptoide" does that's different.
"In Aptoide, unlike the Android-default App Store, there is not a unique
and centralized store; instead, each user manages their own store."
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aptoide>

Testing it out, I downloaded "Aptoide" from https://en.aptoide.com/
and noticed it has 16 trackers but I installed it anyway, to run my test.

The Aptoide APK installed easily on my Android 11 phone, but I was horrified
to see advertisements within the GUI.

I know there are good SMS backup apps, which was what I was also going to
suggest to you as we covered this with Steve in the past since he wanted to
backup to his PC (as I recall anyway).

So, in keeping with the theme of this thread, my first search was for "SMS
BACKUP", where, again, I was horrified by the results which contained
advertisements and a whole bunch of other crap.

To test if Aptoide could get a Google Play app, I searched for PulseSMS,
where my current version is 5.5.2849 (which likely isn't even the latest as
I don't upgrade unless I need to), and again, I was horrified that the
PulseSMS found by Aptoide was a "Downgrade" to version 2841 (at least it
literally had a button called "Downgrade", which, if you think about it,
solves a problem some people have had in downgrading to an older version.

I picked another app that I already had, "Adobe Acrobat Reader for PDF",
which did have an "Update" button (to version 21.8.0.19312 from my current
version of 21.4.117706), so at least it _can_ add a more recent version.

I selected "Apps" on the top and, again, I'm horrified at seeing the ads but
on a lark I picked a "suggested app" of "Polarr" and, again, I was horrified
that there is more advertisement than there is information about the app.

I wondered what app repo Aptoide used by default, where pressing "Followed
stores" on top didn't help but pressing "Stores" on bottom allowed me to
"follow" what looks like the choices of individual unknown people.

I tried to find the search filters, but they almost didn't exist
(the search filters are actually worse than those at Google Play!).

I ran a few more app searches (wi-fi analyzer, map navigation, apk analyzer,
homescreen launchers, app drawer apps, file managers, etc.,) and found
nothing of any value whatsoever (compared to Aurora anyway) in Aptoide.

I deleted that Aptoide APK as it's completely different from the Aurora
Google Play client in so many ways that I won't even begin to list them.

Suffice to say Aptoide isn't worth anything but Aurora is fantastic.
Aptoide https://apkins.aptoide.com/aptoide-latest.apk
Aurora https://auroraoss.com/download/
--
I personally install and test all the apps that I write about on Usenet.

On 16/09/2021 16:39, Robin Goodfellow wrote:
> Dex <vaidam@nospam.today> asked
>>> https://auroraoss.com/download/ (fully replaces the Google Play client)
>>
>> Had used Aptoide in the passed, it borked my phone downloading beta and
>> other builds that were not compatible with MIUI v11 (Android 7), so I
>> will stick with Play Store.
>
> My first question to you (after spending my time suggesting a solution) is
> whether you considered trying to solve the problem as I had suggested, which
> would go something like this:
> a. Reset the default YouTube client
> b. Then when you click on a link inside your messenger app it will ask
> c. Then set the default YouTube client to the NewPipe YouTube client
> <https://newpipe.net/>
>

I do not get the links on the messenger app, I get them on the browser,
Wakie and others.

> Suffice to say Aptoide isn't worth anything but Aurora is fantastic.
> Aptoide https://apkins.aptoide.com/aptoide-latest.apk
> Aurora https://auroraoss.com/download/
>

I'll stick with Google Play.