1.7.2 - YTLite is now Opaline

YTLite is now Opaline

The name was too close to YTLite, a popular paid tweak for the official YouTube app, and the two kept being mistaken for each other. This project is unrelated to it, so it has been renamed — new name, new icon, same app.

Your account, settings, downloads and watch history are untouched: this installs over your current version like any other update.

Please check your sources

• Jailbreak (Cydia, Sileo, Zebra) — if you added verback2308.github.io/ytlite, that address no longer works. Replace it with https://verback2308.github.io/repo/.
• Sideloading (AltStore, SideStore, LiveContainer) — nothing to do, your source keeps working.

Everything else about this release is unchanged from 1.7.1.

1.7.1 - Comments rework, legacy devices performance, iOS 12.0-12.1 launch fix

New Features

• Comments are reworked. Under the video you get a preview of the top comment; tapping it slides up a panel over the player instead of pushing the page around. Swipe it away — in landscape too
• Replies open inline in the same list, no separate screen
• Comments can be sorted by Top or Newest

Improvements

This one is mostly about the app feeling quicker on older devices.

• Opening the Subscriptions screen used to freeze for most of a second with a lot of channels — the avatar bar now builds only the avatars you can see
• Scrolling feeds does less work per card: no logging on the thumbnail path, cached title measurement, cancelled prefetches for cards you scrolled past, and watch progress written in batches instead of a queue hop per cell
• History, playlists, search and subscriptions rows no longer run a full layout pass each — the height is arithmetic now
• Opening a video does less: side effects run once instead of twice, related channel info loads as cells appear rather than ~20 requests up front, and new comments append instead of rebuilding the whole list
• The player stopped rebuilding SponsorBlock markers, the time label and the subtitle scan ten times a second while the controls are hidden

Bug Fixes

• The app installed but never launched on iOS 12.0-12.1 — the ad-hoc signature was killed on launch with no crash log. Release builds are re-signed with ldid now (#32)
• Reduce White Point, Night Shift and True Tone had no effect on the video while the controls were hidden — the video was going straight to the display's video plane and skipping them

1.7.0 - Playlists, video menus, timecodes, reworked channel screen, iPhone UI/UX overhaul

The project is now under GPLv3. Fork it, change it, ship it — but the source has to stay open and stay GPLv3. Nobody gets to close it up, stuff it with ads and sell that.

New Features

• Notifications: there's a bell in the top bar now. So far it only tells you about app updates, with the release notes inside the message. Channel upload notifications are next — this release is what they'll run on. Settings → Notifications
• Save to playlist works from the player. Playlists the video is already in are ticked, tap again to remove it
• Every video card has a ⋮ menu: play now, add to queue, watch later, add to playlist, share. Inside a playlist there's also remove
• Timecodes and links in descriptions and comments seek the video.

Improvements

• Reworked how recommendations refresh. The feed no longer reloads and reshuffles every time you open the app. Subscriptions too
• Reworked the channel screen — smaller header, tabs for Videos, Live and Playlists
• Reworked the icons: one family, one weight, one size
• Haptics on buttons, and a checkmark after actions like, subscribe or save
• Went through all eleven translations against the official app and fixed 106 strings
• Added the old "Favorites" playlist to Library for accounts that have one
• Resuming a paused video doesn't flash the spinner anymore
• Improved the order of related videos

Bug Fixes

• Fullscreen on iPhone rotates for real instead of faking it with a transform (#7, #32)
• On iOS 12 and 13, PiP no longer starts on its own when the system isn't ready for it — that's what used to open a black window with sound behind it. You get background audio instead, same as when PiP isn't available at all. And ✕ now stops the video instead of leaving the sound running (#31)
• Related videos on iPhone are one column with a header, like the rest of the feeds, instead of two narrow ones. iPad keeps two in portrait
• Fixed AVPlayer complaining about bandwidth on every video — the generated playlist wasn't counting the audio track
• Scrolling the related list no longer opens a video when you lift your finger
• Leaving fullscreen no longer shoves the layout up and then back down
• The app no longer reported your position to YouTube every 15 seconds while the video sat paused — it kept the radio busy and drained the battery for nothing

1.6.5 - UI fixes & improvements

Fixes

• Empty tab bar segment (#30) — An extra, blank tab with no icon or title could appear next to Library after the app window was resized (Slide Over / Split View / multitasking). The player panel is no longer attached to the tab bar controller, so the tab bar always shows exactly its three tabs.
• Player layout in narrow windows — The progress bar sat right under the transport buttons with a wide gap down to the timestamps; it now sits just above the time labels, which keeps the controls evenly spaced in Slide Over without changing the layout on iPhone or full-screen iPad.
• Playback pausing in multitasking — Dragging the app into Slide Over next to another app made iOS pause video and audio. Playback now resumes automatically after that system pause, while a pause you triggered yourself stays paused.
• Layout warnings — Cleaned up the Auto Layout and collection-view layout warnings logged while the app window was being resized.

1.6.4 - BotCheck recovery, PiP discrepancy fix, UI/UX improvements

Fixes

• Picture-in-Picture (#28) — PiP now works the same on iPhone and iPad and follows the setting: turn it on and leaving the app moves the video into a floating window; leave it off and you get background audio as before. The player's PiP button always works regardless of the setting. The button no longer stops working after opening Control Center, and playback no longer pauses when returning from PiP to the mini player. On iOS 12, iOS can't keep background audio and PiP available at once, so the app rebuilds the player when PiP is needed again — you may notice a brief buffering pause after listening in the background. On iOS 14.2+ this doesn't happen
• Bot check recovery — when YouTube answers a playback request with a bot check, the app no longer fails with a generic error. It renews the session identity and retries once on its own, showing a short "renewing session" status; in most cases the video just starts. If the retry is blocked too, the message now says what actually happened
• Related videos in landscape (#29) — the first card in the related-videos sidebar no longer slides under the navigation bar (visible on iOS 26 and on Mac with "Designed for iPad")
• Seeking — double-tap seeking now accelerates: consecutive taps in the same direction step 10s, 20s, 30s and then 60s each, so three taps cover a minute, and a fast burst counts every tap instead of losing the ones that land mid-seek. The time label no longer jumps back to the playing position while you drag the seek bar — it follows your finger until you let go
• Feed crash — fixed a crash when loading the next page of videos in a feed

1.6.3 - Autoplay toggles, better channel notifications

New Features

• Autoplay toggles (#26) — autoplay can now be turned off in Settings, separately for "Up Next" suggestions and for mixes/playlists. With autoplay off, playback simply stops at the end of the video

Fixes

• More reliable new-video dots (#13) — some channels never got a dot because YouTube's subscriptions feed omits part of the fresh uploads. Detection now uses a source that lists uploads in publication order, so dots no longer miss new videos. Also works in all interface languages now and respects the Show Shorts setting

1.6.2 - subtitle sync fix, 繁體中文 and Taiwan region

New Features

• 繁體中文 (#25) — the interface now speaks Traditional Chinese, bringing the total to 12 languages, and Taiwan joins the region list for trends and recommendations. As always, it follows your system language, with an override in Settings → Language

Fixes

• Subtitle sync (#14) — after a brief network hiccup mid-playback, subtitles could end up lagging a few seconds behind speech until you seeked manually. The player now realigns its clock automatically the moment playback recovers
• The Done button in Settings now follows the in-app language

1.6.1 - New-video dot on subscriptions, auto-hiding top bar, Italiano

New Features

• New-video dot on subscriptions (#13) — a channel's avatar gets a dot when the channel has a video from the last 7 days that you haven't watched yet. Watching any of the channel's recent videos clears the dot — and since it's driven by your synced watch history, watching on any device (phone, TV, youtube.com) clears it here too
• Italiano — the interface now speaks Italian, bringing the total to 11 languages. As always, it follows your system language, with an override in Settings → Language

Improvements

• Auto-hiding top bar — on all list screens the top bar slides away as you scroll down and returns the moment you scroll back up, leaving more room for content
• Re-tap the current tab to go back: it pops to the root screen, or scrolls the list to the top if you're already there
• Fixed the tab bar turning see-through over content on iOS 15+

1.6.0 - Dubbed audio, interface localization

New Features

• Auto-dub — videos in a foreign language start dubbed in yours automatically. If the original audio doesn't match your language and a dub exists, playback begins on it right away — no flash of the original. Configure in Settings → Dubbing: pick the dub language (follows the app language by default) or turn it off; AI-generated dubs are skipped by default with a toggle to allow them
• Audio tracks — switch dubbed audio on multi-language videos from the player menu, on any playback source; AI auto-dubs are marked "(AI)"
• Localized interface — YTLite now speaks 10 languages: English, Русский, Українська, Deutsch, Español, Français, 日本語, Português, Türkçe and 简体中文. Follows your system language, with an override in Settings → Language
• Content in your language — video titles, search and feeds follow the app language (translated server-side by YouTube, like the official app); the region for trends and recommendations can be set separately

Improvements

• Video tiles keep view counts and dates readable in every content language

1.5.0 - Recommendation screen, 4K playback, video zoom, search filters, Control Center next/prev

New Features

• Pinch to zoom in fullscreen — snaps to fill the screen, keep pinching to zoom up to 200% (#8)
• Zoom to Fill setting (Settings → Playback) — every video automatically fills the screen in fullscreen, with a smooth animation; pinch still overrides it per video
• 2K/4K playback on devices with hardware AV1 decode — pick 1440p/2160p in the player quality menu or set as Default Quality (#8)
  • Older devices (no AV1 hardware) stay capped at 1080p — that's a YouTube codec limitation (higher tiers are VP9/AV1 only), not an app bug
  • "Auto" default quality still starts at 1080p to save data — higher tiers are opt-in
• Search filters (#8) — sort by relevance / rating / upload date / view count; filter by upload date, type (video / channel / playlist) and duration
• Smart category chips on Home — categories are read from your feed's shelves and filter it in place; tap a chip to see just that shelf, scroll to load more of it. Browse destinations (Live, News, Gaming, Sports, Learning, Fashion) sit at the end of the bar
• Endless home feed — recommendation shelves keep loading as you scroll
• Next / Previous video in Control Center, on the lock screen and via AirPods gestures — next plays the queue or top suggestion, previous goes back through your watch history (#8 comment)
• Stats for nerds overlay (player gear menu) — actual decoded resolution, codecs/itags, connection speed, buffer health, dropped frames
• Live stream quality picker built from HLS variants, respects the default-quality cap (#10); live streams now also work on the MWeb source

Improvements

• Home feed opens instantly from cache and refreshes in the background, so recommendations are always fresh
• Home layout options simplified to plain grid or TV-style rails
• Player menus are bigger on iPad — easier to hit on the mini
• Unified look for all player menus; system edge-swipes no longer exit fullscreen

Bug Fixes

• Playlists no longer stop at 15 videos — the full list loads as you scroll (also fixes Watch Later)
• Channel pages: video durations and About info restored after YouTube layout changes