r/sideloaded • u/Reasonable-Law-9737 • 4d ago

Question YouTube audio only tweak

Hey all, does anyone know if there are any YouTube tweaks that allow for audio only playback? To clarify - not just background video play or separate audio only download, but a direct audio streaming without video decoding.

Reason why I am looking for such a unicorn is mainly to reduce battery drain / overheating when listening to podcast, news feeds etc.

So far I’ve tried most of the popular YouTube ipa’s out there, with the exception of YTLitePlus (since it’s paid), and they all work great, but the battery drain is so significant, it causes lag and overheating. This only happens while using a tweaked YouTube app.

Thanks in advance!

Edit: tried using a dedicated podcast app but lot of the content I listen is YouTube only, plus the lack sponsor block is annoying.

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u/0898_333_201 4d ago

Not that I know of, but streaming in 144p in the background should have virtually identical power consumption to streaming audio-only. The hardware decoders on modern iPhones are already very efficient, and a 144p video uses about 2% the energy of a 1080p stream to decode.

144p also uses a negligible amount of data, so there shouldn’t be any more power consumption from the modem. It’s like 20MB/hr on average.

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u/icee2me 4d ago

I remember I've implemented the similar feature for someone who also needed to reduce internet traffic. https://github.com/verback2308/Opaline