NewTube+ is a fork of NewTube by
@aleixrodriala, the phone-only YouTube client built on
SmartTube by @yuliskov.
It keeps everything NewTube does and changes how the app looks, moves and previews videos.
Note
NewTube+ is an independent fork, not NewTube. It installs as its own app next to NewTube and takes its updates only from this repository. The YouTube engine, sign-in, SponsorBlock, DeArrow and the rest come from NewTube and SmartTube; see Based on.
- Frosted-glass bars. The top bar, bottom navigation and mini-player blur what is behind them live, as it scrolls and as tabs slide past.
- Accent colour everywhere. Pick an accent and the progress bars, play logo and "+" take it as a gradient; the mini-player and seek bars match, with a solid scrubber dot.
- Tab slide with memory. Swipe between tabs and the page slides with you. Each tab keeps its scroll position and its thumbnails, tapping the tab you are on scrolls to the top, and tapping again at the top refreshes.
- Playlists in two columns, with loading placeholders that match.
- New app icon and splash: a red play circle, and a splash in your accent colour.
- Ambient glow and vignette around the player that follow the picture, in light and dark.
- Wave progress bar. A One UI-style waving seek bar for music, with its own options under Settings → Playback: waves for music and for other videos, wave humps, and where the colour comes from (accent, the video, or the thumbnail). Mark any video as a song from its gear menu.
- Black-bar detection and crop. Letterboxing and pillarboxing baked into a video are cropped and the player fits what is left, in the player, fullscreen and the mini-player. It looks only during the first 2.5 seconds, can be turned off, and Detect black bars / Undo crop are in the player's gear menu.
- Player box in the video's own shape, with a smoother mini-player glide and landing.
- Autoplay previews. In a one-column feed the video at the reading line plays muted under its card, with a speaker toggle and a seek line you can drag. Settings → Playback → Feed autoplay turns it off, or limits it to Wi-Fi (the default).
- Settings opens with a spinner while the page builds, instead of a blank screen.
| Your device | File |
|---|---|
| Almost every phone from the last ~8 years | NewTube_<version>_arm64-v8a.apk |
| Older 32-bit phones | NewTube_<version>_armeabi-v7a.apk |
| Not sure (any ARM phone) | NewTube_<version>_universal.apk (bigger) |
| Older x86 devices and emulators | NewTube_<version>_x86.apk |
- Requires Android 7.0 or newer. Allow "Install unknown apps" when Android asks. NewTube+ has
its own package name (
io.github.steeben.newtube), so it installs next to NewTube, SmartTube and the YouTube app. - Coming from 1.0? 1.0 was a test build with a one-off signing key, so uninstall it first and install 1.0.1 or newer. From 1.0.1 on, updates install over the app.
- Verify what you install. Releases are built by GitHub Actions from this repository and signed
with one key. Its certificate SHA-256 is
69:6f:ba:66:e8:07:e6:bc:a5:ca:ea:e2:25:1f:25:ad:19:16:ca:01:e0:32:ec:28:6f:72:ba:42:be:8d:72:f5. Check it withapksigner verify --print-certs <file>.apk. This key is not NewTube's, so neither app can update the other. - Distributed on GitHub, not on Google Play.
NewTube+ checks this repository's latest release (Settings → About → Check for updates, or the dot on the You tab) and installs the update over the app. It never looks at the original NewTube's releases.
NewTube+ is built on other people's work:
| Project | By | Used for |
|---|---|---|
| NewTube | @aleixrodriala | The phone app this is forked from: touch interface, player, offline saving, settings |
| SmartTube | @yuliskov and contributors | The engine, accounts and integrations: everything under the hood |
| SponsorBlock · DeArrow | Ajay Ramachandran and contributors | Segment and title data (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) |
| Return YouTube Dislike | RYD contributors | Dislike counts |
| androidx Media3 | Google (Apache-2.0) | Playback |
Inside the app, Settings → About → Based on NewTube by aleixrodriala lists the original project's links. Everything NewTube does that is not listed above (account sign-in with a code, background playback, offline saving, SponsorBlock, DeArrow, subtitles, gestures and the rest) works as it does there; see NewTube's README for the full list. Full notices are in THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md.
NewTube+ was built with AI coding assistance (Claude); each change was tried on a real phone by its owner before release. It has no analytics, crash reporting or ad SDKs, like NewTube. Build instructions are in docs/BUILDING.md, and the changelog lists each release (entries before 1.0.1 are NewTube's).
MIT, the same as NewTube and SmartTube. © yuliskov (SmartTube), aleixrodriala (NewTube) and NewTube+ contributors.
NewTube+ is an independent, unofficial project. It is not affiliated with, funded, authorized or endorsed by Google LLC, YouTube, NewTube's developer, or SmartTube's developer, and it hosts no content. Save only what the law and the platform's terms allow you to. YouTube, Android and Google are trademarks of Google LLC.