Skipii

An ad-free YouTube player for Android, built in Material 3 Expressive.

No ads. Use it signed out, or sign in with Google to get your own recommendations, subscriptions, history and playlists, with likes, subscribes and watch history syncing back. Sponsor segments get skipped with SponsorBlock.

Search	Player	Mini-player

Download

Skipii.apk: always the latest release. Open it on your phone and allow installs from your browser. Updates install over the previous version.

Publishing a new build (same link): bump versionName/versionCode in app/build.gradle.kts, then run scripts/publish-apk.sh.

Features

• Search YouTube with no sign-in.
• Playback up to 1080p, with video and audio fetched as separate streams through generated DASH manifests (avoids YouTube's throttling).
• Player controls on the video: skip ±10 s, a play/pause button that changes shape, a draggable scrubber, and controls that auto-hide.
• Mini-player that morphs into the player: the video grows out of the thumbnail. Swipe the player down to minimize it (it follows your finger) or swipe the mini-player up to expand.
• Background audio with a media notification; the mini-player shows the live video.
• Queue: press and hold any video for Play next / Add to queue.
• SponsorBlock: per category, Skip (with an audio fade and Undo), Ask (a Skip button), Show on the scrubber, or Off. Settings are in the account sheet.
• Comments with replies, a quality picker (Auto or any height YouTube offers, remembered), and landscape fullscreen by rotating the phone or tapping the fullscreen button.
• Google sign-in (optional): Home recommendations, subscriptions feed, history, Watch later, liked videos and playlists. Likes, subscribes, Save and watch history sync to your account. The session is stored encrypted with an Android Keystore key. Note: Google can suspend accounts used with unofficial clients; a secondary account avoids risking your main one.
• Wallpaper colors (Material You), Ledgii-style floating nav capsule, and no tap ripple.

Roadmap

1. ✅ Shell, search, playback, overlay controls, mini-player, background audio
2. ✅ Mini-player ↔ player morph; swipe down to minimize, swipe up to expand
3. ✅ Comments, quality picker, landscape fullscreen
4. ✅ Google sign-in with full sync
5. ✅ Queue, comment posting, SponsorBlock, Castii-style tab bar
6. Downloads, audio-only mode, captions

Building

Requirements: Android SDK (compileSdk 36) and JDK 17+. Android Studio's bundled JDK works:

export JAVA_HOME="/Applications/Android Studio.app/Contents/jbr/Contents/Home"
./gradlew assembleDebug      # app/build/outputs/apk/debug/app-debug.apk
./gradlew assembleRelease    # shrunk with R8, signed with the debug key

Judge smoothness on the release build; debug Compose runs unoptimized.

Project layout

app/src/main/java/com/decio/skipii/
  YouTube.kt          search + video details (NewPipeExtractor), stream cache and selection
  PlaybackService.kt  Media3 session service, DASH/merging media sources
  PlayerState.kt      UI-side playback state over a MediaController
  PlayerUi.kt         watch screen, overlay controls, scrubber, mini-player
  MainActivity.kt     app shell: tabs, floating nav capsule, player sheet
  Screens.kt          Home, Subscriptions, Search, Library
  UiKit.kt            shared components and expressive shapes
  Theme.kt, Motion.kt, Net.kt
docs/
  design/             approved mockup (open mockup.html in a browser) and iterations
  screens/            screenshots of the running app
CLAUDE.md             product decisions and working rules for AI-assisted development

Credits

• NewPipeExtractor: YouTube data, GPL-3.0
• AndroidX Media3: playback
• SponsorBlock: sponsor segments, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 (planned)

License

GPL-3.0. See LICENSE. Required because NewPipeExtractor is GPL-3.0.

Skipii is not affiliated with or endorsed by YouTube or Google. It's a personal project for sideloading, not distributed through the Play Store.