Google shuts down YouTube Vanced, a popular ad-blocking Android app

The popular mod of the official YouTube app is dead. The project stopped working over the weekend. The project leaders are coy about why the app is shutting down, but they confirmed that a cease-and-desist letter from Google is the reason.

The mod of the YouTube app is called YouTube Vanced. The developers added additional features and distributed the resulting code. The ad-blocking feature, which is called "AdVanced", but without the ad, was the primary appeal. You could consider it a form of piracy since it was a cracked version of the YouTube app that enabled most of the $12-per-month YouTube Premium features for free.

It also added a bunch of community-requested features like a darker dark theme, SponsorBlock integration, and video quality preferences. In addition, the dislike button and the shortsUI were removed. Similar changes to the YouTube Music app were made by Team Vanced. The Play Store didn't allow Vanced, so an open source version of the Vanced Manager app could check for updates, install both Vanced apps, and install a mod version of MicroG so you could log in with your Google account.

It was so popular that it was accidentally shown in an official video. It is not clear why Google took so long to kill the app, and there are still plenty of popular alternative clients, like the NewPipe app. There is speculation that this action is what drew Google to the stunt. If you make a legally dubious mod, you're going to bring out the lawyers.