Google shuts down YouTube Vanced, a popular ad blocking Android app

YouTube Vanced, a popular modification of the official YouTube Android app, has been discontinued. The project announce Stop it over the weekend. Project leaders being strangely shy About why the app is turned off, but the edge Confirm that the cease and desist message from Google is the cause.

YouTube Fanseed, created in 2017, is a modification of the Google YouTube Android app. Developers analyze Google’s official YouTube app added additional features and distributed the resulting code. Vanced’s primary feature was ad blocking (the name is YouTube “AdVanced”, but without “ad” – do you understand it?) and background running. Besides the copyright infringement of Google property token redistribution and YouTube trademark infringement, you can consider Vanced a form of piracy since it was basically a cracked version of the YouTube app that enabled most of the $12 per month YouTube Premium features for free.

However, Vanced not only blocked ads; It also added a bunch of community-requested features like a darker dark theme, SubsorBlock integration, and video quality preferences. In addition, Vanced re-enabled the “Dislike” button that was removed from YouTube and got rid of youtube short user interface. The Vanced team also released “YouTube Music Vanced”, which made similar changes to the YouTube Music app. Vanced, of course, wasn’t allowed on the Play Store, so the open source “Vanced Manager” app could check for updates, install both Vanced apps, and install a modified version of Micro G So you can sign in with your Google account.

Over his five years, Vanced was so famous that it was a coincidence Back In an official video from Samsung. It’s not clear why Google took so long to kill the app, and there are still plenty of popular alternative YouTube clients, like FOSS NewPipe, that Google isn’t pursuing. Just last month, Team Vanced did a provocative stunt involving the minting of a non-fungible symbol for the Vanced logo, and something powerful speculation It is this action that infuriated Google. Google mostly tends to leave the Android mod community alone, but taking advantage of your legally dubious approach is sure to get the lawyers out.