Vinegar - Tube Cleaner

Description of App

Vinegar is a Safari extension that replaces the YouTube player with a minimal HTML video tag.

It removes ads, restores picture-in-picture, and keeps videos playing in the background.

Note: The "can read information from webpages" text in the permission section is just unfortunate wording. Vinegar needs access to the web page to find the YouTube player and replace it. It's not doing anything creepy!

(By the way, check out Vinegar's companion app, Baking Soda. It's basically a less powerful version of Vinegar, but it works on all websites other than YouTube.)

Version

2.2.4

Free or Paid

Paid

Apple Watch Support

No

Device(s) App Was Tested On

iPhone

iOS Version

15.3.1

Accessibility Comments

The companion app simply tells you how to enable the Safari extension, so there's nothing of note here.

Configuration of the extension is done in Safari itself (under ā€˜page settingsā€™). Unlike some other extensions where the configuration screen can sometimes be less than perfect with VoiceOver, everything is 100% accessible and easy to configure here.

VoiceOver Performance

VoiceOver reads all page elements.

Button Labeling

All buttons are clearly labeled.

Usability

The app is fully accessible with VoiceOver and is easy to navigate and use.

Other Comments

Boy is it great to not have ads!

I've now removed the Youtube app from my iPhone and simply use the website. Combined with this extension, the experience is much better for my use case.

Developer's Twitter Username

@zhenyitan

Recommendations

1 people have recommended this app

Most recently recommended by Scruffy Ted šŸ§ø 2 years 9 months ago

Options

Comments

By Bruce Harrell on Monday, February 21, 2022 - 13:27

Just a head's up. You will be unable to download this app if you are running IOS 14.

By Cliff on Monday, February 21, 2022 - 13:27

Hi there! Thanks for posting this great extention! :)
I bought this one and tested it out, and man, it's a blast to just watch everything without adds!
However, I'm having problems using playback controls in the format the extention presents the video in. I can't swipe up or down on the time progress bar to skip back or forward. It doesn't work to double-tap and hold on it and then drag finger left or right either.
I found a button for "skip ahead 10 seconds" and the same for backwards, but the buttons doesn't seem to do anything.
Play/pause button doesn't work for me either. So if I lock the screen during playback, the video stops, which I actually didn't think it would do since this extention should enable picture in picture mode for youtube videos. Anyways, when unlocking the screen again, I want to start the playback from the current possition again, but there's no way for me to get the video started again. Only way is to refresh the page and start playback from the top again.
Same happens when I get a phonecall in the midle of the video, which of course pauses the playback. I then can't resume playback again after the call has ended.
So all in all, it's great to start youtube videos without the dreadful adds all the time, but I'm really not sure if this benefit outways the drawback of having no access to playback controls...
Do you have any ideas of what I'm missing here? Cause I'm sure that I'm missing some crusial element here :)
And I have to mention that I'm currently on the latest dev beta of iOS 15.4, so it might just be that this extention wont work exactly as it should on this beta.

By Scruffy Ted šŸ§ø on Monday, February 21, 2022 - 13:27

I typically use ā€œenter full screenā€ from the VoiceOver rotor when focus is on the video. The resulting screen provides a better experience in my opinion, and also has the controls behave more as expected.

My guess is that the issues with the playback scrubber are with iOS rather than Vinegar itself, , as the extension supposedly simply changes how the video file is recognised and handled by iOS. I don't believe that it is adding or using its own media player.

I could be wrong though šŸ˜•

By Cheryl on Monday, March 21, 2022 - 13:27

I tried this out and found it great if I donā€™t need to use the controls. It will not keep its focus on the button to go to full screen so that I can , hopefully, have better access to the controls. Scruffy Tedā€™s suggestion to enable full screen through the rotor sounds great, but how does one enable that option in the rotor? I am using this on my iPad and do not see this option.