What free Android emulator do YOU use on Windows for running F-Droid APKs?

/nIn , Ant
wrote:

Even with a tutorial, they skip the steps I already did to set up
VirtualBox and they skip the steps to integrate the mouse, screenshots, and
clipboard.

For example, the guest additions iso won't load.
http://i.cubeupload.com/7nCcyp.jpg

Yep, it is not easy. It looks like it is still not easy. BlueStack is
still the best to me.

As I said, the huge expense of freeware is in the mistakes until you find a
good one.

I think BlueStacks would have been a better approach, but I had *thought*
that since I already have VirtualBox running with ubuntu, that it would be
*easy* to just add Android.

Sigh. If I don't get the VirtualBox Android to run well, I'll try BlueStack
next, and if that fails, then Nox.

/nIn , Ant
wrote:

BlueStack was the best one that worked for me.

This is a tutorial for Bluestack which I will try if I don't like running
the Android ISO inside of VirtualBox on Windows.
https://www.howtogeek.com/97920/how-...th-bluestacks/

Apparently BlueStack is faster than the way I'm doing it now.

Joe Scotch wrote:

/nIn , VanguardLH wrote:

I didn't bother to analyze the rest of your very long list as it is
evident you have not inspected those Android apps to see if there are
Windows equivalents or even a need on a PC for Android functions related
to hardware features of THAT platform (smartphones).

It would take too long to go through that list.

I went through the installed apps and already characterized that the main
things that are on Android but not on Windows on my phone are
a. Simple sand timer style quick 10-minute timer apps
b. Simple photo manipulation where you swish your finger over the photo
c. Powerful Wi-Fi signal strength debugging tools (better than inSSIDer)

All in all, I would agree now that I've done the same kind of survey you've
done, that the software on Android doesn't have a lot over the software on
Windows.

The only two that I can think of that I want to port are the sand timers
and the New Pipe YouTube Red clone.

Maybe a few calculators - but that's about it.

You mentioned AirDroid but that doesn't need an Android emulator to run
on Windows. In fact, the point of using Airdroid on Windows is to bring
over the phone's screen. That lets you manipulate your phone using your
PC, like taking call on your PC. It's also easier texting on a real
keyboard on the PC.

For NewPipe, "Lightweight YouTube frontend that's supposed to be used
without the proprietary YouTube-API or any of Google's (proprietary)
play-services. NewPipe only parses the YouTube website in order to gain
the information it needs". Screen scraping or element parsing is an
iffy method to interface to a web site. It requires the underlying
program or site to not change. Google will keep changing their services
which means NewPipe has to catch up. I ran into the same situation with
other screen scraper or element parsing softwa the moment the source
changes, users are dead until the author gets around to making a fix
which could be hours or many days or weeks. When something changes at
YouTube, I've read where NewPipe users start complaining ""failed to
decrypt video URL signature" or other problems. The same user
complaints appear when Google changes YouTube and then programs that use
youtube-dl (https://rg3.github.io/youtube-dl/) starts failing.

At one time, I used YPOPs (YahooPOPs) to gain access to Yahoo Mail (in
the USA, they discontinued POP access unless you paid). YPOPs worked as
a local proxy: your e-mail client connected to the YPOPs proxy as though
it were the mail server and YPOPs connected to the real server
pretending to be the client. When Yahoo changed their web page layout
(so screen scraping failed) or changed the definition of the object
(elements) within their web pages (so element parsing failed) then YPOPs
stopped working. All the YPOPs users had to wait until the author had
some free time to work on his program to determine why it started
failing and how to fix it. I've QA'd enterprise screen scraping sofware
(to merge medical databases from different HMOs) and the requirement was
the screens couldn't change on for the underlying programs that were
getting merged. If the screens changed, it was pretty easy to redefine
the new UI change but a change did have to get registered to get the
screen scraping to work again.

How big is the development team for NewPipe? Just one guy or a
multi-member team that is worldwide (different timezones so different
waking periods)? "Built by F-Droid" doesn't really say how many dev(s)
are assigned to working on this project. F-Droid is a repository, not a
software dev. Volunteers come and go. https://newpipe.schabi.org/
mentions "Team NewPipe". Well, we all know Internet lets entities bloat
themselves. So just how many are on this "team"? From what I found in
their blog, "Christian Schabesberger, initiator and maintainer of
NewPipe". So it's just one guy. Well, he works, eats, and sleeps so he
won't be available at all times to work on his app and being just one
guy means it'll take longer to analyze the change that makes his app
fail and time to implement a fix. Since his app is not distributed via
the Google Play Store, you won't be getting an automatic update if and
when a fixed version is available.

Google's service APIs are free. Don't know why the author didn't design
a different UI to YouTube but continue to use the API interface which is
stable and well defined. No site publishes documentation on the
construction on their web pages (because the web page is the document).
Seems the author doesn't want to rely on local libs nor write his own
own code to issue the commands to the service API. The YPOPs author had
to use screen scraping because Yahoo didn't have a service API for mail.
He got stuck having to scrape Yahoo's webmail client to deliver and send
the e-mails to/from a local e-mail client. With a service API
available, that seems the more stable method to access the service while
providing whatever custom UI you want for your client. Parsing a web
site is not the most reliable method to access that site.

"NewPipe is a YouTube player that does not use Google Play Services or
YouTube API". Hmm, so the author thinks they need to use the
client-side library to issue commands to the service API? Since Windows
programs can issue commands to the YouTube API, and since neither Google
Play Services or the YouTube app are on Windows, the service API gets
used by the Windows software. Not only can Windows programs access the
service API, so can web sites (so they can present YouTube videos at
their site). See https://developers.google.com/youtube/v3/. Present
whatever UI you want for your custom player while accessing content from
YouTube using the service API.

I've seen several times where NewPipe is listed as ad-free. That might
only apply to the app itself. At one time, if you use a video stream
capture tool (e.g., Jaksta or Applian Replay Media Capture), it would
recognize separate video streams: the movie stream would get halted to
play another stream for the in-movie ads. A stream capture tool would
snag the streams separately so you could capture the movie without any
ads. As I recall, Google changed that (I know other sites did) where
they merged the ads into one stream. Since there was only one stream,
you got stuck with the ads in the captured movie. One of the features
of NewPipe is offline watching of a video. That means capturing the
video. There are TONS of web browser extensions or proxies that can
capture streamed video on Windows. I gave up on extensions and paid for
a more robust and highly maintained proxy - which also means it will
capture the stream as fast as the server will deliver plus I don't need
to leave the web browser (or whatever client connected to the stream)
constantly loaded. A 4 hour movie probably takes 10 minutes to capture
and I can be doing other stuff with the web browser or even close it
during the capture. I know lots of other users employ extensions in
their web browsers to capture media streams (mostly from Youtube).
However, with in-movie ads where the movie and ad streams are merged, no
capture tool is going to avoid the in-movie ads. They can still perform
separate capture of separate streams, like when the movie and ads are
different streams.

VanguardLH wrote:

You mentioned AirDroid but that doesn't need an Android emulator to run
on Windows. In fact, the point of using Airdroid on Windows is to bring
over the phone's screen. That lets you manipulate your phone using your
PC, like taking call on your PC. It's also easier texting on a real
keyboard on the PC.

Well, said another way, you don't need an Android emulator on your
Windows host if all you want to do is see and use apps on your Android
phone but on your Windows host. Enable USB Debug Mode, plug the phone
into a USB port, and AirDroid running on your Windows host can see the
phone. You can then use the AirDroid UI to use phone apps. You don't
need to root your phone, either, to use AirDroid (requires the AirMirror
plug-in on the phone and USB Debugging to send/receive data to the
AirDroid program on the Windows PC).

There are similar Windows programs to bring the phone's screen to the
Windows host but I decided on AirDroid. It worked well. The apps were
running on the native platform (hardware+OS) for which they were
designed at at full speed (not inside an emulator). I eventually
dropped AirDroid because my Android smartphone sits on my desk where is
my Windows host. I could see the apps inside of AirDroid running on my
Windows host or I could just pick up the smartphone and use it. Was
simpler to just pick up the phone to use it. There is a web interface
using AirDroid so you could be on any host running a web browser to
access your Android phone wherever it happens to be. Instead of
installing software on your Windows PC, you use whatever web browser is
already on it. I suspect a client app must be installed on the phone so
the web service can access the phone. Obviously response will be
dictated on the Internet access speed the phone has at the time. The
USB connection was always fast.

John Doe is a known troll: nymshifter, starts bait threads, insulting or
flippant replies, attacks respondents that don't agree, feeds other
trolls, cross-posts into dump/garbage/unrelated groups.

In alt.comp.os.windows-10 Joe Scotch wrote:
/nIn , Ant
wrote:

Even with a tutorial, they skip the steps I already did to set up
VirtualBox and they skip the steps to integrate the mouse, screenshots, and
clipboard.

For example, the guest additions iso won't load.
http://i.cubeupload.com/7nCcyp.jpg

Yep, it is not easy. It looks like it is still not easy. BlueStack is
still the best to me.

As I said, the huge expense of freeware is in the mistakes until you find a
good one.

I think BlueStacks would have been a better approach, but I had *thought*
that since I already have VirtualBox running with ubuntu, that it would be
*easy* to just add Android.

Sigh. If I don't get the VirtualBox Android to run well, I'll try BlueStack
next, and if that fails, then Nox.

Yeah, I gave up on Android VMs. I also thought it would be easy like
Linux and other OSes. Please kindly let us know your progress.

--
Quote of the Week: "The world flatters the elephant and tramples on the ant." --Indian
Note: A fixed width font (Courier, Monospace, etc.) is required to see this signature correctly.
/\___/\ Ant(Dude) @ http://antfarm.home.dhs.org
/ /\ /\ \ Please nuke ANT if replying by e-mail privately. If credit-
| |o o| | ing, then please kindly use Ant nickname and URL/link.
\ _ /
( )

In alt.comp.os.windows-10 Joe Scotch wrote:
/nIn , Ant
wrote:

BlueStack was the best one that worked for me.

This is a tutorial for Bluestack which I will try if I don't like running
the Android ISO inside of VirtualBox on Windows.
https://www.howtogeek.com/97920/how-...th-bluestacks/

Apparently BlueStack is faster than the way I'm doing it now.

Way faster and easier. Also, there are a few annoying things for free
users. It likes to install apps to make up the costs.

--
Quote of the Week: "The world flatters the elephant and tramples on the ant." --Indian
Note: A fixed width font (Courier, Monospace, etc.) is required to see this signature correctly.
/\___/\ Ant(Dude) @ http://antfarm.home.dhs.org
/ /\ /\ \ Please nuke ANT if replying by e-mail privately. If credit-
| |o o| | ing, then please kindly use Ant nickname and URL/link.
\ _ /
( )

/nIn news
There are similar Windows programs to bring the phone's screen to the
Windows host but I decided on AirDroid. It worked well.

I tried *all* the possible solutions, from Kies to AirDroid, but what I
ended up using, which works for me, is this:

a. I rooted the phone using KingoRoot (because the USB port is broken so
the phone can never be tethered successfully).

b. I put F-Droid "FTP Server (Free) on it (which has a payware knockoff on
Google Play) after testing *all* (and I mean all) the FTP servers on
Android (dozens - maybe even two score).

c. I "can" use the Windows networking URL "ftp://192.168.1.2:2121" but I've
found out, over the years, that WinSCP and then FileZilla were far more
reliable than Windows in the situation where I turn on and off the FTP
server and I come back and re-use an old connection.

Windows file explorer just screws up completely in those circumstances,
where both WinSCP and FileZilla work fine (so it's just Windows screwing
up).

Since the phone is rooted, I copy the HOSTS file easily from Windows to
Android, and since all the phones in the LAN have the FTP server and App
Backup & Restore freeware, I easily copy any APK from one phone to another
so that I can install them even though I myself don't have Google Play or
anything Google on my phone that I could delete as root.

/nIn , VanguardLH wrote:

You mentioned AirDroid but that doesn't need an Android emulator to run
on Windows. In fact, the point of using Airdroid on Windows is to bring
over the phone's screen. That lets you manipulate your phone using your
PC, like taking call on your PC. It's also easier texting on a real
keyboard on the PC.

I agree with you in that you've convinced me that there really isn't much
on Android that isn't already on Windows.

About the only thing I can say, interestingly enough, is that the
functionality of New Pipe isn't yet on Windows.

The functionality of New Pipe is on Windows in multiple pieces, but not in
a single app (as far as anyone knows).

For NewPipe, "Lightweight YouTube frontend that's supposed to be used
without the proprietary YouTube-API or any of Google's (proprietary)
play-services. NewPipe only parses the YouTube website in order to gain
the information it needs".

I agree that seems to be what it does. NewPipe uses the public API.

I think that's why Google hasn't shut them down, since it would be simple
for Google to read the New Pipe source code and then just change things on
the Google side so that New Pipe fails to work.

Screen scraping or element parsing is an
iffy method to interface to a web site.

That's probably true. But it has been working for years now.
And Google certainly knows about it and can read the source code.
And Google certainly knows how many hits they get from new pipe users.

It requires the underlying
program or site to not change.

Yup.

Google will keep changing their services
which means NewPipe has to catch up.

I've been using New Pipe for years, so, they've been keeping up.

I ran into the same situation with
other screen scraper or element parsing softwa the moment the source
changes, users are dead until the author gets around to making a fix
which could be hours or many days or weeks.

Yup. Look at how Google killed that free phone app years ago?
Was it "Viber"? I forget which app it was, but a single change in the API
by Google killed their business model (as I recall).

When something changes at
YouTube, I've read where NewPipe users start complaining ""failed to
decrypt video URL signature" or other problems.

Oh. Hmmm.... you seem like an accurate poster so I believe you.
New Pipe has had hiccups (they call it beta after all).

And you have to realize there are *knock offs* to New Pipe.
Let's not confuse the knock offs with the original source-code app.

The same user
complaints appear when Google changes YouTube and then programs that use
youtube-dl (https://rg3.github.io/youtube-dl/) starts failing.

We have to remember that the URL above is to an app that I think *sucks* so
we have to keep in mind that there are different things which have the same
name.

This, for example, is the youtube downloader I use:
https://youtube-dl.org/downloads/latest/youtube-dl.exe
These, I think, suck.
https://github.com/MrS0m30n3/youtube-dl-gui
https://www.videohelp.com/software/youtube-dl-gui
https://bitbucket.org/qwertz19281/yaytdlfrontend/src
etc.

Likewise, this is the New Pipe opensource tool I use:
https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.schabi.newpipe/
These knockoff of the same name, I think suck:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/d...k.new.guidepip
https://play.google.com/store/apps/d...ii.new.guidepp
https://play.google.com/store/apps/d...pips.netonline
etc.

How big is the development team for NewPipe? Just one guy or a
multi-member team that is worldwide (different timezones so different
waking periods)?

Don't know. Here is their web page:
https://newpipe.schabi.org/
Doesn't say much about "them" though. It's just about the app.

https://newpipe.schabi.org/
mentions "Team NewPipe".

Yes. I agree. Not much there about "them".

I can say I've been using it for a few years now (don't remember exactly
how long) and it's been fine - but I fell for the Google Play knockoffs for
a while and was disgusted with them before I realized that the only New
Pipe to use is the one we're talking about here.

Well, we all know Internet lets entities bloat
themselves. So just how many are on this "team"? From what I found in
their blog, "Christian Schabesberger, initiator and maintainer of
NewPipe". So it's just one guy.

Hmmm... you found good information that I didn't know.

Well, he works, eats, and sleeps so he
won't be available at all times to work on his app and being just one
guy means it'll take longer to analyze the change that makes his app
fail and time to implement a fix. Since his app is not distributed via
the Google Play Store, you won't be getting an automatic update if and
when a fixed version is available.

Those are red herrings. It's like saying you shouldn't buy a house because
the garage door spring can break on you. I don't even have Google Play on
my Android phone, and I removed *everything* that had anything to do with
Google (e.g., the Advertiser ID and Google Framework and anything I could).

So, an "automatic update" is the least of my issues.
Philosophically, I never upudate (did you watch Sideline go down the tubes,
or ES File Explorer?). The less you update, the better, IMHO
(philosophically).

Google's service APIs are free. Don't know why the author didn't design
a different UI to YouTube but continue to use the API interface which is
stable and well defined. No site publishes documentation on the
construction on their web pages (because the web page is the document).

I think Google "might" publish its API. For example, I once geolocated my
wife's phone simply by knowing here SSID, and then asking a developer to
run his code (each query is logged and recorded by Google to prevent
abuse), and it geolocated her instantly - just by sitting in our pajamas
from a computer.

So, it's a fact you can geolocate anyone if their phone has an SSID and if
you guess where they may be located (so you have the second SSID) since the
Google API won't give you the location of the phone unless you have two
SSIDs in proximity to each other.

"NewPipe is a YouTube player that does not use Google Play Services or
YouTube API". Hmm, so the author thinks they need to use the
client-side library to issue commands to the service API?

You seem to understand New Pipe far better than I do, since I only use it.
I'm not skeptical of it - but skepticism is good.

All I know is that it does what no other app does, but New Pipe,
unfortunately, only works on Android (not on iOS nor on Windows).

I've seen several times where NewPipe is listed as ad-free.

You must be careful here - because there are MANY apps that seem to have
taken the New Pipe sourcecode and did what they wanted with it, including
adding their own ads!

There was one called "AT NewPipe" which I can't find anymore on Google
Play, but I had it - and it sucked - and I didn't know that this was just a
knockoff.

So we have to be careful that the "real" New Pipe is what we're talking
about. The real New Pipe has no ads anywhere - which includes the videos
but which also includes the app ads. The knockoffs have ads and they break
a lot (from my experience with the AT New Pipe knockoff at least).

All in all, your information is fantastically factual, well researched,
based on intelligent assessment and logical.

I don't really see, given I'm similar to you, why you seem to suspect what
I seem to love, but maybe it just boils down to the fact that your
suspicions will eventually be borne out to be true.

/nIn news
John Doe is a known troll: nymshifter, starts bait threads, insulting or
flippant replies, attacks respondents that don't agree, feeds other
trolls, cross-posts into dump/garbage/unrelated groups.

Oh. OK. I'll plonk him then. I thought he was serious at first, but then he
went off the edge pretty quickly. I'll stop responding to him.

Thanks for responding to my list of Android apps, where, I hadn't thought
about it much before you responded, but you proved to me that there's
really not a whole lot on Android that isn't already on Windows.

The one thing, I think, Android has over Windows, is the *simplicity* of
some apps, such as the sandtimer hourglass egg timer apps.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.alaskalinuxuser.hourglass

I have never found that simplicity on Windows yet.

/nIn news
This, for example, is the youtube downloader I use:
https://youtube-dl.org/downloads/latest/youtube-dl.exe
These, I think, suck.
https://github.com/MrS0m30n3/youtube-dl-gui
https://www.videohelp.com/software/youtube-dl-gui
https://bitbucket.org/qwertz19281/yaytdlfrontend/src
etc.

Likewise, this is the New Pipe opensource tool I use:
https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.schabi.newpipe/
These knockoff of the same name, I think suck:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id m.hozidevrock.new.guidepip
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id m.adamistii.new.guidepp
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id m.newpips.netonline
etc.

There is a point in the above list that the immense cost of freeware is not
so much in the cost of learning how to use the one good one that works, but
in all the costs involved in testing and then throwing away the ones that
failed.

That's why reviews are sometimes good - but only when the *same* apps (such
as Nox or Bluestack) keep coming out on top (which is, sadly, rarely the
case - which tells us that the reviews have a problem).

It's also why *asking* here is almost always a good idea, even if we've
read the reviews (e.g., Bluestacks seems to come out above VirtualBox).

The cost in freeware, I posit, is in the mistakes.

Joe Scotch wrote:

VanguardLH wrote:

John Doe is a known troll: nymshifter, starts bait threads, insulting or
flippant replies, attacks respondents that don't agree, feeds other
trolls, cross-posts into dump/garbage/unrelated groups.

Oh. OK. I'll plonk him then. I thought he was serious at first, but then he
went off the edge pretty quickly. I'll stop responding to him.

I don't delete unwanted posts. I flag them as Ignored and then use a
Hide Ignored default view that hides ignore-flagged posts (and their
subthreads - if I don't care to see some posters then I also don't want
to see replies to them). If someone mentions something in a hidden
post, I can simply switch to the All Messages view. Sometimes I also
switch to the All Messages view to check my filters are working without
false positives. My client lets me test on all headers (overview and
non-overview) versus other clients that only let you test on the
overview headers, plus I get to use regex (regular expressions) to
better focus my filters on the targets to reduce false positives;
however, false positives do happen so I may have to tweak my regex
filters, plus trolls will nymshift or sockpuppet so I need to see all
messages to make sure the regex is more accurate.

I was checking my filters for false positives by using the All Messages
view when I saw you started to get snagged by John Doe. As with all
trolls, sometimes they forget to troll or decide to nice for an hour or
two. That is, even trolls might [accidentally] help. Hard to be nasty
all the time. Someone wanted to nominate me as a MVP (Microsoft
Valuable Professional) for my contributions in Usenet for almost 20
years. Nah, sometimes I decide not to be nice and didn't want to
tarnish the MVP community. I declined but appreciated the offer.

As you can see, there is no dearth of trolls as evidenced by Burford
exposing himself in his reply to me. He took his nym (but [overtly]
mispelled the first name) from the the idiot sheriff in "Smokey and the
Bandit"; see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buford_T._Justice and
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yY13jS9X9Lk. His nym is appropriate and
self-condemning. My filter's comment on him:

# BurfordTJustice: Floods with drivel/political/racist/flame posts,
cross-posts to garbage groups, feeds other trolls, picked a nym to
exhibit his deliberate moronity.

Thanks for responding to my list of Android apps, where, I hadn't thought
about it much before you responded, but you proved to me that there's
really not a whole lot on Android that isn't already on Windows.

The one thing, I think, Android has over Windows, is the *simplicity* of
some apps, such as the sandtimer hourglass egg timer apps.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id m.alaskalinuxuser.hourglass

I have never found that simplicity on Windows yet.

While not a robust timer (i.e., a simple one with a basic digital
display, no fansy cutsy graphics), I've used FreeWatch for a long time,
especially during online tech chats or tech calls to time how long they
put me on hold.

http://www2.whidbey.net/gordonf/FreeWatch/

It doesn't do much but then I've not needed a timer to do much. I've
seen stopwatch programs that let you have multiple timers going. There
should be loads of timer and/or alarm programs (some have portable
versions so you don't have to install to test the programs).

http://www.softpedia.com/dyn-search....rch_term=timer
http://www.softpedia.com/dyn-search....rch_term=alarm

You might want to see my reply about using AirDroid. That eliminates
using an Android emulator and instead runs the Android app on its native
platform but lets you view it on your Windows PC. You run the Android
app on the smartphone. You can view it on Windows (or any platform and
anywhere by using a web browser using their web access method).

Joe Scotch wrote:

the functionality of New Pipe isn't yet on Windows.

What is missing? Just the ad-blocking?

On Windows with ABP or uBlock installed, I never see them, in fact it
wasn't until I used the Android youtube app that I realised ads before
or during youtube videos even existed.

/nIn , VanguardLH wrote:

I don't delete unwanted posts.

My Usenet interface is comprised of three things:
1. A telnet backend
2. A vi frontend
3. Scripts galore ported over the years from platform to platform

I have to manually put someone in my killfile, which is literally a
dictionary lookup file (like everything else), so, once I plonk someone
(which I rarely do), they're gonna be in there forever.

As an aside, you'll understand that a telnet approach to Usenet doesn't
care about nntp-related "headers"; headers are just a complication that is
randomly pulled out of a dictionary lookup.

The dictionary itself is not random, as I have to create those files by
hand, but they are simply lines inside of one of the many feeder files:

Here's a tiny snippet of the user-agent dictionary lookup, for example:
flnews/0.14 (for AIX)
Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:45.0) Gecko/20100101 Icedove/45.5.1
slrn/0.9.8.1 (FreeBSD)
tin/1.4.5-20010409 ("One More Nightmare") (UNIX) (SunOS/5.10 (i86pc))
Forte Agent 1.93/32.576 English (American)
Xnews/2009.05.01
MicroPlanet-Gravity/3.0.4
XPN/1.2.6 (Street Spirit ; Linux)
Thoth/1.9.0 (Mac OS X)
Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.3790.1830
etc.

Come to think of it, I probably should update that list as they're getting
old and that will hurt my anonymity from the aggregator bots.

http://www2.whidbey.net/gordonf/FreeWatch/

Nice and simple, I agree. It's a stopwatch, not an alarm timer, but I
wasn't clear so that's understandable. I like that it runs on any Windows
and that the user interface is fast and clean. At first I wondered why
there was a "description" field but then I realized it runs as many as you
want concurrently so that's how to tell them apart.

It's a keeper for a stopwatch - but not a 10-minute type alarm timer.

http://www.softpedia.com/dyn-search....rch_term=timer
http://www.softpedia.com/dyn-search....rch_term=alarm

Aaauuurrrgggghhh! Lists of lists of lists of lists of lists of lists.
The high expense of freeware is in all the mistakes in those lists!

You might want to see my reply about using AirDroid. That eliminates
using an Android emulator and instead runs the Android app on its native
platform but lets you view it on your Windows PC.

I saw that, and I appreciate the level of care, concern, and detail you put
into your very factual answers. I deplore these types of solutions, where,
really, all I really ever wanted was a New Pipe port to Windows.

I didn't really "want" to use an emulator - it just happened to be the only
solution that would run all of which New Pipe does, in a single app, on
Windows.

BTW, to prove that I can "learn", I did put AdBlock in my Windows browser
and I was amazed at how simple it was to do a before and after of YouTube
where those little yellow advertisement bars disappeared!

So AdBlock has its place - but I don't generally watch YouTube in a
browser, and I generally deplore browser-specific solutions.

But it does work. And it is simple. So kudos to AdBlock for that!

You run the Android
app on the smartphone. You can view it on Windows (or any platform and
anywhere by using a web browser using their web access method).

I think I used to do that with stuff like Kies and some Samsung Play apps
and my Motorola did that long ago (Motorola RAZR - that's how long ago it
was), but I deplore that approach philosophically.

/nIn , Andy Burns
wrote:

the functionality of New Pipe isn't yet on Windows.

What is missing? Just the ad-blocking?

On Windows with ABP or uBlock installed, I never see them, in fact it
wasn't until I used the Android youtube app that I realised ads before
or during youtube videos even existed.

That's a good question, which is valid, and which I appreciate.

What is missing?

With the "real" New Pipe (the one from F-Droid), you get this:
https://newpipe.schabi.org/
* Simple way to watch videos
* Extended privacy (does not use the YouTube API nor Google Play Services)
* Background player (choose our player or any other player)
* Subscriptions (never miss new content)
* Open Source (it's not a secret how it works)
* Download media (download the audio or the video)
* History (go back in time and enjoy your favorites again0
* Free (no in-app purchases, no ads either)

When you click on each description, you get more details such as:
* Extended privacy
NewPipe does not use the YouTube API nor the Google Play Services.
This means that we do not share any data except the video URL with
YouTube or Google. Also the app does not save any data from you or
use services that analyze your usage behavior.
* Background player
(skipping stuff) we only download the audio so you don't waste data.
* Download Media
(skipping stuff) the app offers different file formats and resolutions
* Subscriptions
(skipping stuff) subscriptions are saved locally without a Google account
* Video Pop-Up
Want to check your emails while watching a video. No problem.
With the pop-up mode you can do whatever you want and keep watching.
The pop up is movable and resizable- it won't be in your way. We promise.
* 4K Support
Up to 4K and 50fps but also fits normal phones with any resolution
* Open Source
How it works is not a secret.
NewPipe does not use the YouTube API nor the Google Play Services.
This is one reason the app is free of proprietary software.

Notice one thing important to me, which is privacy. As you know, I don't
have Google Play on my Android phone, nor Google Framework updates, nor
anything that says Google that I could delete (I'm rooted).

So, of course, YouTube doesn't work for me, and there is no advertiser ID
on my phone, and no accounts for *anything* (it's a rule with me that I
never log into anything ever, on a phone).

So, for me, New Pipe is *perfect*.

Anyway, that doesn't answer your question - but what we can do to answer
your question is look at what Google says is the value of YouTube Red.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YouTube_Red
"It provides advertising-free streaming of all videos
hosted by YouTube, offline play and background playback
of videos on mobile devices, access to advertising-free music
streaming through Google Play Music, and access to "YouTube Red
Original" series and films."

I'm not sure what a "YouTube Red Original" is, but other than that, doesn't
New Pipe do what YouTube Red does? And how much is YouTube Red?

This article says that, over a five-year period, you'll pay $600 for
YouTube Red, which is an entire really nice Android phone!
https://www.pcmag.com/article/355611...the-difference