bug(YouTube): Spoof client patch - various side effects

[kazimmt]

Bug description

Android VR spoof

• Subtitle / closed captions are not available
• Watch history does not work with a brand account
• Speed menu is missing
• Player fullscreen swipe gestures do not work
• No HDR video
• Low quality Shorts seekbar thumbnails
• No playback of videos intended for children
• Player download action button is always hidden
• Video resolution can permanently change after locking screen in background playback
• Video end screen cards are always hidden
• Paused videos can randomly resume playback

iOS spoof

• Subtitle / closed captions are not available
• Player fullscreen swipe gestures do not work
• Speed menu is missing
• No HDR video
• Watch history does not work with a brand account
• Higher video qualities may be missing
• Live videos do not work with audio only background playback (tap pip headphones icon)
• Live videos do not work on Android 8.0 devices
• Video playback excessive dropped frames (video stuttering)

Acknowledgements

• This issue is not a duplicate of an existing bug report.
• I have chosen an appropriate title.
• All requested information has been provided properly.

[0xrxL]

I think that iOS spoof should be the first thing to enable, because TestSuite it's too limited.

[LisoUseInAIKyrios]

iOS spoofing fails for some videos and Shorts. HDR videos seem to fail more often than other videos, and it's not known why.

Maybe there is a robust way to detect a failed playback, and retry the video again but switch from iOS to the test client. But the best solution is to figure out how to fix iOS playback so it's 100% reliable.

[oSumAtrIX]

I don't know if iOS supports HDR playback at all, but if it does, one of the request parameters may be responsible. For example currently the device type is still Android, things like that could be cause of the problem.

[0xrxL]

I don't know if iOS supports HDR playback at all, but if it does, one of the request parameters may be responsible. For example currently the device type is still Android, things like that could be cause of the problem.

It seems: https://www.iphoneincanada.ca/2018/05/01/youtube-ios-hdr-iphone-x/

...along with 60fps. Therefore the spoof should be improved, like you said.

[eldepor]

Hi. I don't know if this is spoof client patch side effect, but when I open a clip, YTRV plays the original video form the beginning, not the clip fragment.

[inotia00]

It seems: https://www.iphoneincanada.ca/2018/05/01/youtube-ios-hdr-iphone-x/

...along with 60fps. Therefore the spoof should be improved, like you said.

I was looking through the NewPipeExtractor repository and found a hint about this:
TeamNewPipe/NewPipeExtractor#680 (comment)

You can play 60fps video by spoofing the model name to iOS device with the modelName field of the InnertubeContext$ClientInfo class.

In YouTube v19.11.43, the modelName field name is w:

const-string v1, "iPhone15,4"
iput-object v1, v0, Lcom/google/protos/youtube/api/innertube/InnertubeContext$ClientInfo;->w:Ljava/lang/String;

Also, checking the response of clientName can be helpful in finding side effects that have not yet been discovered.

For example, the ANDROID client includes a response for availablePlaybackSpeeds, but the ANDROID_TESTSUITE client does not.

├─variableSpeedConfig
│    │    ├─[availablePlaybackSpeeds] (8)

: This causes spoofing with the ANDROID_TESTSUITE client makes the playback speed menu to be unavailable.

[oSumAtrIX]

That aligns with my assumptions. I set the field to a supporter iOS device but no 60fps or HDR playback was available.

[inotia00]

I may have missed something.
I will upload the code I tested to the repository.

EDIT:
https://github.com/inotia00/revanced-patches-test/commit/57a3fd30d54236ea0a614862c83522433ff313c6
inotia00/revanced-integrations@0231318
Test it when you have time and let me know the results.

Since this change was merged via PR, I removed the test repository.

[cyberboh]

On my old tab running android 8, all live stream are showing Video unavailable after turned on Client spoof patch.

But it works (even 480p only) on my android 14 phone.

[kazimmt]

On my old tab running android 8, all live stream are showing Video unavailable after turned on Client spoof patch.

Spoof client to iOS

[LisoUseInAIKyrios]

On my old tab running android 8, all live stream are showing Video unavailable after turned on Client spoof patch.

Spoof client to iOS

The Test suite spoof automatically switches to iOS for live streams.

[cyberboh]

@kazimmt @LisoUseInAIKyrios Spoof to iOS does not work. Live streams not available still like on my screenshot above.

[LisoUseInAIKyrios]

@cyberboh The issue might be fixed with #3220

[n1cKz1]

Are qualities and background play for live videos still not supposed to be fixed? I just tested the new iOS spoof and they seem to work fine on my end, can someone else try to verify? History is indeed still broken for brand accounts

Edit: seekbar thumbnails don't show for live videos though

[cyberboh]

@LisoUseInAIKyrios Still, live streams aren't playing in Android 8. Just tested new patches

[n1cKz1]

They seemingly work fine on A12, all qualities background play etc.

[Pamilg8]

Playback error when returning to app from background. Playback sometimes breaks when switching from background to app, but no error. But at certain times I see this error. Battery optimization is disabled for MicroG. Not live streaming. Android 12. Is there a solution?

[LisoUseInAIKyrios]

@n1cKz1 not all live streams have seekbar thumbnails, check the same video with unpatched app.

Background live streams play ok if the video is still playing, the issue is when switching to audio only mode.

@Pamilg8 turn on test suite spoofing.

[n1cKz1]

Does history work with Android VR?

[oSumAtrIX]

I tested and history works

[n1cKz1]

Is it possible to make history work normally on iOS client?

[oSumAtrIX]

Everything is possible, the question is redundant.

[SodaWithoutSparkles]

I think that, after spoofing to iOS clients, the automatically generated subtitles look weird

It would appear word by word before, now it was grouped into chunks. The chunk grouping also have no regards to sentence structure. So it often breaks the line with no regards for context. For example:

Src: https://youtu.be/VZ6RZaCpIyg

This makes it hard to comprehend

[Frosty-J]

Another issue I haven't seen mentioned is this appears to enable VP9 for all devices, resulting in many dropped frames at HD resolutions for devices lacking VP9 hardware decoding.

[LisoUseInAIKyrios]

For me, spoofing to iOS forced avc1 codec (mp4). It seems that my phone cannot handle avc1 being at 2x, so there's a lot of dropped frames

Spoofing to android testsuite(?) enabled av01 again which is much smoother even at 2x

It just happens sometimes and I dont know why. It seems to not be related to this upon further tests, please disregard

That might be fixed if the spoofed device is changed from the iPhone 15 pro. That device has Av1 hardware acceleration and older iPhones do not.

[SodaWithoutSparkles]

Upon more extensive testing, it does seem that using iOS spoof has a much higher tendency to get avc1. I am quite sure that it is at least 90%, matching what LisoUseInAIKyrios said.

The dropped frame issue was not showing up every time. I could not find a way to reproduce it reliably, but it was appearing very frequently. It would appear randomly, but may be resolved after clearing cache while the app is still running? And when it does happen, it would drop frames more than LTT drop things. Over 80% of the frames would be dropped.

[LisoUseInAIKyrios]

I think that, after spoofing to iOS clients, the automatically generated subtitles look weird

Android VR spoof has word by word auto generated subtitles, just like unpatched.

[inotia00]

The known side effect Player swipe gestures do not work in the Android Testsuite client or Android VR client can be fixed via the following commit:
inotia00/revanced-patches@0b35694
inotia00/revanced-integrations@41d50ae

[kazimmt]

@LisoUseInAIKyrios live videos do not play for me in Android VR spoof
Can you reproduce the issue?

[LisoUseInAIKyrios]

@kazimmt Android VR spoofed live videos work on my newer Android device (just checked now), and when I last checked it also worked for Android 8/9.

[LisoUseInAIKyrios]

@LisoUseInAIKyrios live videos do not play for me in Android VR spoof Can you reproduce the issue?

I ran into a livestream that did not playback with Android VR. Changing the client from Oculus to Oculus 3 fixed the livestream, but then audio only playback of regular videos fails to work.

The old code of detecting livestream videos could be brought back, and then use Oculus 3 client name only for livestreams.

Edit: Android VR livestreams seem to be fixed by #3316

[LisoUseInAIKyrios]

Perhaps this logic should be removed, and instead it always uses a non av1 iOS device.

The stuttering may be from the device overheating and throttling. Even though the Android device has AV1 hardware it might be too much to do av1 decoding and run the bloated stock YT code at the same time.

Or maybe the av1 YT stream has features found on iOS hardware but not on some android av1 devices, such as 10-bit depth color or 4:4:4 chroma sampling (both appear to be optional for av1 hardware decoders, and if present would force software decoding). Just speculation for this.

Edit: I just noticed this is for avc1 and not av1. So this might be fixed by checking if the device supports both avc1 and av1.