SmartTube

A native Swift/SwiftUI YouTube client for iPhone, iPad, macOS, and Apple TV. Zero ads. SponsorBlock auto-skip. DeArrow community titles. Google sign-in. Up to 8K.

Inspired by the original SmartTube Android app.

Screenshots

Features

Playback

• Adaptive HLS and DASH streaming — up to 8K via AVPlayer; manual quality picker (144p → 4K)
• DASH adaptive quality switching via AVMutableComposition — no black frames, audio preserved on every switch
• Audio-only playback mode
• Landscape playback with one-tap orientation lock (iPhone)
• Picture-in-Picture (iOS)
• Mini-player with background audio
• Adjustable playback speed, seek interval, and sleep timer
• Previous / next video navigation
• Now Playing metadata on lock screen and Dynamic Island

Audio & Captions

• Multi-track audio selection with a preferred-language setting (original, English, dubbed, and more)
• Caption / subtitle track selection — language choice remembered across videos

Content & Feeds

• Home, Subscriptions, Shorts, History, Search, Playlists, Library
• Local subscriptions — follow channels without a Google account
• RSS channel feeds with background refresh and deduplication
• iCloud sync for subscriptions, watch state, queue, and RSS feeds
• Video publish date shown in search results and feed cards

Ad & Sponsor Blocking

• Zero ads, no tracking
• SponsorBlock — auto-skip with per-category controls and skip-button toast
• DeArrow community titles and thumbnails

Integrations

• Google OAuth sign-in (YouTube TV device-code flow)
• Safari Web Extension — auto-redirects YouTube, Shorts, and Music links to SmartTube
• Share Extension — share YouTube links from any app directly into SmartTube
• Video downloads with live-activity progress; Downloads screen in Library
• WatchTime reporting and Like / Dislike support
• VPN / IP-block detection with a clear, non-retrying error banner
• Comments, Stats for Nerds

Platforms

• iPhone & iPad — iOS 17+
• macOS — Mac Catalyst, macOS 14+ (Sonoma)
• Apple TV — tvOS 17+, full Siri Remote / d-pad navigation

Project Structure

SmartTubeIOS/          Swift Package — core library (models, InnerTube API, SponsorBlock, views)
SmartTubeApp/          Xcode project — app targets (iOS/iPadOS/macOS + Apple TV)
SmartTube.xcworkspace/ Xcode workspace (references both above)

Requirements

| Platform | Minimum | |---|---| | iOS / iPadOS | 17.0 | | macOS | 14.0 (Sonoma) | | tvOS | 17.0 | | Xcode | 16.0 | | Swift | 6.0 |

Getting Started

git clone https://github.com/milika/SmartTubeIOS
cd SmartTubeIOS
open SmartTube.xcworkspace

Signing

The project requires an Apple Developer Team ID and a Firebase GoogleService-Info.plist to build. Copy SmartTubeApp/Config/Secrets.xcconfig.example to SmartTubeApp/Config/Secrets.xcconfig and fill in your Team ID:

DEVELOPMENT_TEAM = YOUR_TEAM_ID
SMARTTUBE_TV_TEAM = YOUR_TEAM_ID

Add your own GoogleService-Info.plist to both SmartTubeApp/SmartTubeApp/ (iOS) and SmartTubeApp/Smart Tube/ (tvOS) (create a free Firebase project at console.firebase.google.com — only Analytics and Crashlytics are used). All of these files are gitignored (via glob rules matching any GoogleService-Info.plist or Secrets.xcconfig) and will never be committed; setup.sh installs them for you if you have access to the private config repo.

Contributing

Pull requests are welcome. See .github/PULL_REQUEST_TEMPLATE.md for the checklist. Please ensure Secrets.xcconfig and GoogleService-Info.plist are never included in a PR.

Changelog

See CHANGELOG.md for a full version history.

Support

If SmartTube is useful to you and you'd like to support its development, there's a Ko-fi.

License

GPL-3.0