Playlist for iOS
brave.comFYI, There is a really cool design project here: https://refresh.study/ that also explored the 'playlist' feature.
I've been building a browser the past year (https://synth.app), and have learned a few things from it (including implementing media players like this). Really makes you realize how little our browsers are currently doing for us.
I can see a lot of interesting new ideas in Synth! "Smart Bookmarks & History" sound great on their own but "Auto-Roam" is what nailed my own itch. Are you still working on it?
Thanks -- Yes, full time! It's been the only browser installed on my computer the last few months. We have a bunch of friends using it exclusively but are still polishing a things for a broader release.
Sorry if this was asked already but is Synth chromium based?
No problem. It is. I an curious how you feel about that. The engine is a bit agnostic of the rendering layer (we will have a similarly powerful iOS app at some point too).
I dislike it because chromium is almost a monoculture and Google controls it. I’m not diametrically opposed to chromium based browsers but I might be more hesitant to switch.
I was excited for a moment, when I saw that someone was working on a new browser, then I admit that I felt a bit disappointed to read this. I think we need more rendering engines out there, or at least wider distribution of the current ones to get chromium‘s market share down.
I like this if it gives me access to my chrome extensions- can’t live without some of them. Non-chromium is a non-starter because of this
I generally oppose anything Chromium, because it's ushering in a return to the shitty days of "this site is best viewed in Microsoft Explorer."
But... not sure what an independent developer is to do about that.
Firefox is just as (or more) open source as Chromium. If I wanted to fork a browser that’s where I’d start.
Stock pictures never cease to amaze. What a mind-bending collage: https://brave.com/static-assets/images/optimized/playlist-pl...
No better place to learn how to make eggs Benedict than on a plane.
Learning how to make eggs Benedict in a large plane flying at low altitude between skyscrapers in a city while somehow connected to 5G. Hmm.
Also, look at all that legroom. What a fantasy.
The future is now.
Wendover productions on Youtube uses a lot of really great stock photos in his video essays, they really never cease to amaze me
This will get shut down very soon. I am actually surprised Apple even approved this.
I essentially built the same thing for myself (music player that combines/searches multiple sources, use youtube-dl server to stream optimized mp3 only), I had to skip app store and sideload it.
Apple reviewer likely didn’t notice the new features. They spend minutes on each app and this feature is not very obvious, especially when it’s just a feature in a big browser app.
This clearly violates YouTube TOS and Brave knows it, I wonder what’s their plan is.
Curious to know: Why are Brave subject to YouTube’s TOS?
Brave is a subject to AppStore terms and conditions that it forbit what Brave did
I understand why Brave are subject to the Apple AppStore TOC.
What I am not clear about is why Brave would be subject to YouTube’s TOC.
as pointed by the user layoutIfNeeded it's this point of TOC
>5.2.3 Audio/Video Downloading: Apps should not facilitate illegal file sharing or include the ability to save, convert, or download media from third-party sources (e.g. Apple Music, YouTube, SoundCloud, Vimeo, etc.) without explicit authorization from those sources.
Even if, hypothetically, Apple doesn't pull it, how long until Google blocks it? Is Brave big enough to be sued if they continue circumventing Youtube's terms?
Probably soon if this comes to Android, since it basically removes all value from YouTube Premium as it is right now.
Google never allowed alternative YouTube clients that had this exact feature set on the play store.
Are you sure we are doing what got others in trouble?
This is like NewPipe, just more convenient. And you can't find that in the Play Store, right?
Plus, it needs almost weekly updates to function because Google (my guess!) intentionally breaks some API slightly, just to make this sort of thing more difficult.
Not “like NewPipe” in crucial regard.
Care to explain?
The YouTube ToS clearly says players shouldn’t play audio without video (aka background audio).
Does scrapping via youtube-dl make it legal?
I just read through the relevant parts of https://www.youtube.com/t/terms again; nowhere in there does it say you cannot play audio _without_ video. Users with less bandwidth shouldn't be punished :)
Will this feature be in the Android version on Google Play also? I use iOS anyways but am curious. And if you get banned from Google Play, will you guys fight back?
Every app that does background play of youtube videos seems to get shut down shortly after gaining any traction.
Isn't it about time we asked what the hell is wrong with this picture? You can't even use your own device to consume content the way you want.
The DOJ needs to break apart Apple. If not the DOJ, then Epic's court case.
Apple literally became the monster in their 1984 commercial.
Apple should be broken apart by the government because YouTube abides by the government’s copyright rules?
Sure, the current situation isn’t what I’d want either, but this line of thought makes no sense.
You're shifting the argument.
Of course Google will protect their copyright. That doesn't mean Apple should prevent video download software from being on their platform. There are an unlimited number of legitimate uses for it.
The disrespect and hubris Apple has to control the behavior of its users is astounding.
Brave will get a cease and desist from YouTube anyway.
This seems to be bypassing all the ads in YT? Basically we can get Youtube Premium for free here? Wondering what's the legal implication for brave.com to make such as app?
edit: I could be completely over thinking this.
Youtube-dl also gives you this ability. My sense is that Google doesn't like it but doesn't want to deal with the PR fallout of banning tools like youtube-dl at the moment. Perhaps if this gets popular enough Google will do something.
NewPipe isn't on the Google Play store. I assume that this app can't be either.
Brave already blocks ads on YT (on mobile and desktop).
Actually, I should have catch up a bit about what brave is. For those who have just heard about this like me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OG981gXqdU4
From the FAQ:
> Brave Playlist supports most open web standards. However, it does not currently support Digital Rights Management (DRM) tools or media delivery services (e.g. Spotify or Netflix).
Other than that, seems like a handy app, especially now that travel is on the upswing again.
If this gains any kind of traction I will be shocked if Google doesn't squash its ability to access YouTube videos. Google can't be ok with this.
Offline videos is a YouTube premium feature.
Neat. It feels like there’s space for browsers to “browse” non-html content. This is a great example. So much of my browsing is media based, it makes sense that the web browser should have media controls and features.
I wonder if generating/editing media could also use some love. For instance, basic audio/video editing so you can clean stuff up before you post it.
> Audio and Video can be saved for offline mode, for playback when you don’t have internet, but they cannot be downloaded and moved to a separate device.
The missing download and export function seems like an obvious and very annoying omission.
Hopefully it can be added in the future.
It is probably to make it harder for Google/Apple to remove the app, or for Youtube to justify blocking the app from working with their videos.
Are you able to drop in your own local MP3 files to Playlist? I miss having an offline audio player not connected to a streaming service. Anyone have any Android recommendations?
I think creating BAT was one of the smartest things Brave did. How is that relevant?
It has > $2billion market cap. They don't need Google's money like Mozilla.
This feature allows you to download a youtube video and watch it offline. It also lets you play it in background mode so you can listen to audio with the screen off. Google doesn't let you do that unless you pay for youtube.
And on the bottom of this announcement, I see a link to another Brave project, a search engine: https://brave.com/search/
> I think creating BAT was one of the smartest things Brave did. […] This feature allows you to download a youtube video and watch it offline.
That feature is unrelated to BAT.
Also: Brave has a built-in functionality to violate YouTube's ToS (sections 5B and 5C)?
While I can't be sure of what they were trying to say, my guess would be they were referring to the fact that Mozilla earns money from partnering with Google, while Brave doesn't need to do that, they have BAT, and so Brave might not be as hesitant to modify YouTube functionality as Mozilla.
yes exactly, you said it better than me. Brave has more freedom since they don't need to concern themselves with biting the hand that feeds.
Alright, glad I could help!
I don't understand this. Who is buying BAT, and why, to make it worth two billion dollars? Just speculators like the other cryptocurrencies?
Is that $2billion in spendable money for Brave? If people use BATs to pay publishers, that's not Brave's money.
They hold 13.3% of all BAT.
How many US Dollars can they extract from that before all the selling crashes the price?
Tens of millions per year if managed correctly. It's a development fund; spending it to grow the ecosystem is arguably a good thing for BAT holders.
I used to use Brave a lot, not so much now. They seem to be trying to become a privacy-friendly alternative to Google, which I respect, but I'm not sure why, I thoroughly dislike their Brave Ads.
Not because their (edit:they're) intrusive, but they're basically saying "We're going to block ads from Google, but we're going to show you our own ads, because ours are privacy-friendly!" They are adding a subscription feature though, so that might hopefully be a solution.
But you can easily disable the ads if you don't like them
Of course! And while that is a valid point, my issue is not that you can turn them on or off - it's the fact that they are there.
Again -I totally understand they have to make money. This is only my opinion - that's all - but it just seems wrong to replace someone else's ads with your own.
> it just seems wrong to replace someone else's ads with your own.
I can see how it might feel scummy to do this, but on the other hand, from a rational perspective I'm having a tough time seeing what's wrong with it. If it's because it's taking away revenue from the party serving the ads, then replacing the ads is no worse than blocking ads entirely. If it's because the organization blocking the ads is directly benefiting as a result, I'd argue that's already happening just by blocking ads, just not necessarily in a direct monetary manner.
> I'm having a tough time seeing what's wrong with it
I block ads so that I will not be manipulated into buying things I don't want or need. I'm defending myself from an assault on my ego and self worth. I'm not making money, I'm just consuming content that people have chosen to make public.
When Brave replaces the ads of a website they are just stealing the content and selling it.
Blocking ads and serving up new ads are entirely different procedures. It would be entirely technically possible for brave to show brave ads in addition to the existing ads on a page. It is also possible for users to turn off ads entirely (including the brave ads). You can't just lump these two separate steps together, they are independent, and the only part of it that might directly harm the original site/page creators is blocking the original ads. Serving up new ads is no different than what the site creators themselves are already doing for their own work.
>Serving up new ads is no different than what the site creators themselves are already doing for their own work.
It is different because you are collecting money that would otherwise have gone to the sites creator?
(assuming a non ad blocking reader)
Update: I think I see where you are coming from, that as a _reader_, blocking ads in Firefox is the same as choosing to use Brave and willing watching Brave ads so that the Brave company can make money that would otherwise not have gone anywhere. The _reader_ generates no money for the content producer.
But as a _publisher_, an ad blocker reader in Firefox is just somebody who chooses to ignore the ads, but the Brave company is directly monetizing your content without your consent.
I my mind, the difference is that in scenario A. the use wants to be free of ads, in scenario B. the user doesn't mind ads, just not the ads you have chosen to show. And Brave is making money from that.
> I my mind, the difference is that in scenario A. the use wants to be free of ads, in scenario B. the user doesn't mind ads, just not the ads you have chosen to show. And Brave is making money from that.
Or it could be that in scenario B the user does not mind ads if they are done in a privacy respecting manner.
Alternatively, the way I see it is that brave ads are entirely separate from the content you have requested. I'm honestly not sure exactly how the ads are displayed in brave but as far as I'm concerned, brave could show ads on a blank new tab page with no content whatsoever and still make money from it. It makes no difference what (if any) content is loaded at any given time.
And back to my original message - even if Brave the company was "only" blocking ads - it might not be directly monetizing someone else's content, but by blocking the ads they are still benefiting as a company by gaining the good will of their customers by blocking those ads (or we could create a hypothetical scenario where eg brave blocks ads that happen to be for google chrome or mozilla firefox, in which case they have not directly benefited in a monetary way but have suppressed their competition).
Don't get me wrong - I see how it looks grimy given a certain framing. I guess you could say I just don't particularly care given the overall situation.
That's a very fair point, I had not thought of it in that way at all. I guess they are two ways of approaching it -
1. Brave is replacing Google Ads with their own ads. 2. Brave already blocks Google Ads, they might as well make some money while doing so and add their own.
Funnily, I don't find either of these wrong, so I'm not sure which one to believe. I'd love to hear your opinion on it though!
There's a lot of ways to look at this and I could easily write a few essays on it. At least for myself though, I don't personally view it as a bad thing. Blocking ads is the only questionable part of the story, but in my view that's just a matter of not displaying the full contents of the page so I find it hard to incriminate. Anything after that (including displaying other ads) is unrelated.
At the end of the day I hope the brave model catches on - not only are the brave ads more ethical since the ads are served locally (ie no user tracking server side), but my understanding is you can also fill up your wallet with your own money and then use that for the micro-transactions given to each site you visit, which gives you the choice to still support the ecosystem but without ads being necessary. Unfortunately brave is not easy for me to use for other reasons but if it ever got big enough maybe they'd make a Firefox extension or something so I could at least plug into the payment system without all the other blocking/brave ads features.
I thought the point of those ads wasn't that Brave make money but that you accrue those Brave tokens as a representation of your attention and get to send those tokens to publishers of your choice via the browser?
Also, I turned them off as these ads are quite annoying and have a "cheap feel" to them.
Brave does make money off of them - they get 30%, you get 70%, I believe.
And yes, the idea of sending BAT to websites directly was excellent. The website needs to have registered for the BAT wallet though. (Not a big deal, of course)
I think it’s a matter of perspective.
Those who serve ads might see them as a way to fund their services.
However, we see this being abused on a near daily basis, by not only service operators, but by ad networks themselves.
The flip side is, from a user perspective, nobody has a right to run ads on my machine I don’t want.
Brave solves for that. Shows me ads I opt into, and gives a mechanism for service operators to get paid.
Is it perfect? No, but I think it hits close to the target.
I think it's a valid point for discussion but they deliver the ads through a different mechanism (system notifications). So it's a bit different than replacing the ads of other web pages.
Not disputing your point at all - genuinely! But would you be fine if Google started serving you ads in your notifications?
I'm just rephrasing it, because for some reason it would be creepier for me if Google served ads in notifications - but that may just be me.
It seems pretty common for tech companies/projects touting openness and freedom becoming that which they fight against. Witness all of the issues Firefox have fallen prey over the years. I remember a decade ago when Ubuntu first added Amazon integration into search results. CyanogenMod losing its way, the company behind it commercializing it and signing the partnership with Microsoft. Seems like it happens a lot.
Absolutely - I have noticed the same in effectively all startups. I'm not even out of high school yet, so take my words with a pinch of salt, but my guess would be all companies may start out as 'enthusiast' brands, of sorts. Since their market is well defined and not very large, once they outgrow their market, investors who want higher returns and more revenue probably push them to expand outside their original market, thus reducing their focus on the original market.
Feel free to correct me if I am wrong. Also, what is CyanogenMod? And why did Ubuntu add Amazon products to its search results?
Put bluntly: We live in a world that success is most often, and routinely, measured in currency. If a company can't convert users into direct paying customers (e.g., I give them money, they give me a service, not talking about ads means you the product type customer) in one way or another, they may instead either turn the customer into the product (ads, for instance) or seek profitable partnerships to sustain the organization and themselves
I can't always blame them, really, families need to be fed, people need to feel like it's worth it, and so on. In so many ways, it really does suck because I feel like it stifles innovative ideas, particularly ones that need long term execution. Look at Redis and licensing, it's the same thing, really, in terms of struggle.
If we had a separate way for engineers / companies to fall back where they did not have to worry about this in the same way, then I believe this wouldn't happen the same way, if at all, in many of these circumstances.
It's just jarring because a lot of these projects I'm talking about straddle the line between mission-driven nonprofits and companies trying to monetize that space. Mozilla is both. Canonical is a company, it just happens to be based around a mission-driven open source product. Ditto for CyanogenMod, or Brave.
I thought the AppStore didn't allow apps that download videos from YouTube:
>5.2.3 Audio/Video Downloading: Apps should not facilitate illegal file sharing or include the ability to save, convert, or download media from third-party sources (e.g. Apple Music, YouTube, SoundCloud, Vimeo, etc.) without explicit authorization from those sources.
So either they have permission from YouTube, or will be promptly removed from the store....
You can't share or convert the media. Technically you're saving it, but it's only accessible on the device on which it was saved and only using the software (Brave browser) that saved it. It's an interesting grey area. Hopefully the folks at Brave have already talked this through with Apple and Google and have their support.
I think this is funny since NewPipe does this already and is open source.
brave is open source too https://github.com/brave/brave-ios/
IOS isn't open source and there isn't a version for Android from what I can tell.
Working on Playlist for other OSes.
This is a wonderful feature, including the ability to use picture-in-picture with YouTube videos.