GrayJay is a fantastic option for YouTube and Twitch viewing on desktop and mobile.

Recent GrayJay builds have been pretty solid on desktop, but the Android version had been quite stable and functional for many months now.  And it supports a ton of additional video platforms, all in one app. Especially with YouTube's recent crackdown on family accounts of all things, it may be time to give GrayJay a look, especially on mobile.

A quick reminder that the GrayJay app, while still technically alpha software, has been incredibly stable for me for many months now on Android. The desktop version (at least on Linux) has fully replaced using YouTube in a browser for me, and I even use it occasionally for Twitch as well. I only wish there were a Google, err Android TV version.

Since YouTube first raised its pricing for the family version of YouTube Premium a few years ago, I've been waiting to see if they actually gave us a better product in return. It seems that the answer is not only no, but also they are now going to crack down on 'sharing'. of the YouTube Premium Family Plan. You read that right. Sharing. On a family plan, the thing designed to be used by multiple people. I have two kids in college who live in another state. How exactly does that violate the spirit of what a family plan means exactly, YouTube?

Is my mobile provider going to tell me that my kids can't live somewhere else and use their phone, because they are on my family plan? I'd ditch them in less than 24 hours. Is my bank going to tell me that? Same thing. This is some medical-insurance-denial-letter level of corporate thinking, and I am not going to stand for it anymore.

And with GrayJay I don't have to. And I wont have to watch ads either. Like other open source apps like NewPipe, I can watch videos without ads, and even better, download videos that I watch more than once. This has the benefit of taking the awful burden of having to provide and run a video service off of poor little YouTube, who I would remind you is charging more and money just for the privilege of watching other people's content.

Further, having all your creators across the many platforms Grayjay supports in just one app is just incredibly convenient. It supports services I'd have not even thought of being able to have all in one place, like Patreon. It even supports the Fediverse's version of video sharing, PeerTube, something I really wish folks would put the time into understanding, if you really believe in freedom of information, and not just ingesting corporate-approved media.

Why might you not want to switch full to GrayJay?

One big reason people might want to consider staying on the full YouTube and Twitch browser sites is commenting and tipping creators. I like doing this, and occasionally I do still open the full website to post a comment here or there, report obvious scams that YouTube is incapable of detecting on their own somehow, and so forth.

Also, if you are one of those people who wants to use as much open source software as possible, it has been posited that GrayJay is not truly Open Source software. While I agree with this assessment, it is still source-available, and I'm going out on a limb that the FUTO group is going to inevitably have to deal with more than a few lawsuits on their hands over this software. So at the end of the day, I really do not mind giving them a few bucks. And the proof is in the pudding, I use this app on many computers and mobile devices, it's definitely worth the $10 they ask for in return.

I have not been able to get previews on videos when scrubbing forward or back while holding the time marker, so that's a bummer, but it's not something I do all the time. Remember this is alpha software.

Finally, because Youtube is constantly trying to play a game with cat and mouse with ad-blockers, occasionally a video stream will crash and need to be reloaded. This is a small price to pay for the benefits of GrayJay in my opinion.

And if someone is going to write some defence of a multi-billion dollar company which couldn't possibly get by without that ad revenue, my answer is: tell YouTube to stop altering the deal, if you don't want people to think you're Darth Vader. YouTube isn't YTTV, there are no extra licensing fees piling up every year, and the vast majority of people I know have cut the cord specifically because of this escalating licensing fee nonsense. I would not have expected that Youtube itself would be next, but here we are.

Maybe YouTube will finally put the clamps on and actually restrict alternate clients, so I'll need to go actually use some alternative streaming services, like the excellent Nebula, or LMG's Floatplane. Or actually read a book for the first time in years? I guess we'll see.