NewPipe, the open-source YouTube client for Android, is a great alternative to the YouTube app for those of you who don't have Google Play Services on your phone or don't want to see ads on the platform without paying for YouTube Premium. The client doesn't use YouTube's APIs and simply parses the Youtube website to extract data and play any videos you want, without any restrictions or ads. However, the app's interface looks a bit dated compared to the official YouTube app and its overall user experience isn't as fluid. To address this, the developers behind NewPipe are now testing a new Unified Player UI with support for seamless fullscreen switching, and more.

A test build with the new UI is now live on NewPipe's GitHub (via /r/FOSSDroid), and here's a quick rundown of everything new in the build:

  • Main, background, popup players now connected via one service, one view, one fragment, one activity, and one gesture listener
  • Main player located in a view with comments, descriptions, etc. So you don't need to open another window for viewing a video. Everything in one place
  • The playback position is synchronized between players. Easy to switch from one to another
  • The expandable player at the bottom of the screen has a new cool animation and additional features like long-click to open channel of a video, play/pause/close buttons, and swipe down to dismiss
  • In-player integrated buttons for opening in the browser, playing with Kodi, sharing a video have been added
  • Better background playback that can be activated in settings. Allows to automatically switch to the audio-only mode when going to background and then switching to video-mode when returning to the app
  • Player service will be stopped automatically when the user removes the app from the recent apps menu
  • There are two different behaviors related to orientation changes:
    • with locked global orientation the player will change orientation to landscape and will change it back after pressing back
    • with enabled global autorotation, the player will detect orientation changes and will change UI to fullscreen or default size
  • Previous features like brightness control, open popup player when going to background, action chooser when clicking on a link, etc are working as expected
  • Tablet screens are now supported

Our Editor-in-Chief, Mishaal Rahman, tried out the latest test build on his device and has shared the following screenshots:

In case you like what you see and want to try it out on your device, you can download the latest APK by clicking on "2020-09-22" here.