Vinegar - Tube Cleaner App Reviews

Issues since the start of December. I’ve been using Vinegar for a while, it’s honestly one of my favorites extensions for YT but as of late the video player has been constantly crashing. If the video is over 5 minutes long the video player will crash around the 3 to 4 minute range. I never had this problem before and I find it really annoying to deal with. I’m waiting for an update before I start using this extension again.

Essential Extension. Been using Vinegar for a few years. Does what it says: native controls and no ads. I do hope the developer is able to bring back AirPlay compatibility.

Enable Extension in Settings and Browser. I missed to enable the extension while in the safari app (not just in settings!), can you please add that to the instructions? As someone who’s never used an extension before this would be helpful. After this the app works as promised, thanks!

Excellent. One of the few extensions I'm gonna keep. 4K works perfectly in the last update. Would be nice to be able to switch quality when in full screen.

Extremely good app. Just a good old fashion app that actually improves my life, does what it says and works well. I would like to see more config options and the ability to allow an advanced feature to inject cstom CSS and JS (if this is possible, Apple may not allow it IDK the policy)

Excellent, but selecting quality is a pain. This app is EXCELLENT! A must-buy. I like the new “Best” quality selector but I wish that I could set the quality I want for the network type. For example, I’d like to stream 720p on metered network like 5G/4GLTE, but stream Best quality on Wi-Fi. If it’s possible to read network state and change settings based on that, my cell phone bill would appreciate it!

Really solid. It’s amazing how long Vinegar has been able to battle against whatever updates YT makes to the mobile websites and the ads. Occasionally I’ll notice the video player acting odd (controls disappear, can’t maximize the video, etc.) BUT that’s not on the dev, that’s YT freaking out. The dev is always updating Vinegar and Baking Soda. Awesome app.

Issues with compatibility and generally buggy. Often times the ability to airplay videos doesn’t show up, regardless of selecting airplay compatibility mode. Additionally, videos will often play for about two seconds, then stop and replay from the beginning multiple times. The app does do well at blocking ads, but at some significant cost of native functionality that makes the apple ecosystem desirable.

Wonderful extension. Absolutely wonderful extension that does what no other seemingly can. Videos play back so much better with no issues or interruptions. The only things I’d like to see added and the reason for 4 stars, when swiping down from full screen playback pauses, and there is no theater mode. Still a Must have extension IMO.

Great with only some slight annoyances. Vinegar works great and provides a great alternative to YouTube’s absolutely insane and consumer unfriendly premium prices. The only real complaint I have with Vinegar is that if a video is buffering you often times cannot change the quality until the video loads which can sometimes cause a limbo state if your connection is poor at the time.

Thank you for adding SponsorBlock support. A year or so ago I tried Vinegar and loved it but uninstalled due to incompatibility with SponsorBlock. Now it works just fine and auto-skips as configured. Thank you for making this

Video starts for 2 seconds and starts reloading again. This app is great when it works. However, a lot of times it’ll start playing a video and two seconds later reload the entire video from the beginning and takes forever to load. no idea why it does that and does not seem to interference from other extensions.

Solid Start. It's super nice for what it does. Clean, elegant, and easy. Not supporting higher resolutions than 1080 is tough in 2021. Not to mention the lack of HDR. If your viewing is 1080 or less, snag this and be thrilled. If you haven't figured out a different way to kill the most annoying ads on the internet, snag this, too. If, however, you want something like this with higher resolution support, buy it now and ask for the support! Either way, support the mission!

It's great, but can be better. everything is on point except for the native volume settings. Basically the video player does not remember the volume level and resets it to a default volume (~60%ish) for every video.

10/10 would recommend to a friend. Very good for what it does! The three dots are for video playback speed- which for some users (like me) is very important. The replacement UI is much better for touch, and allows videos on websites to be actually usable. Keyboard shortcuts have been introduced to the app, so now for me this app is perfect.

No longer works iOS 18. Update: As of Jan 22nd the app functions normally again!! Used to work, but was a bit clunky. Still waiting for developer to update iPhone version of this app. Frustrating!!

The most important feature of all. Is a responsive and skilled developer. Thank you for being that, and for TRYING, and then succeeding! This is an awesome app. The problem is never bugs. The problem is ignoring them. You didn't, and for that I'm grateful. Also, love the app!

Extremely glitchy, more hassle than it’s worth. I experienced the following glitches - Player constantly re-mutes itself when hitting the unmute button - Videos reload at random - Toolbar buttons not appearing - Toolbar buttons appear but don’t respond to touch - Player covering up portion of the video title when toolbar is enabled This extension is missing some really obvious options, like not automatically playing/muting videos upon loading the page. Playing the video muted upon load means that, even when the extension works perfectly (which is never), I have to hit unmute and then skip back to the start because I missed part of it—on every. single. video. Why is it like this??? Just don’t immediately play the video on mute.

Background play. Seems like everything works but when I turn the screen off it stops playing. This is suppose to allow it keep playing right? I tried on mobile and requesting desktop site. How do?

Thank you, Dinosaur!. This simple extension is a life changer for me. I rarely used YT because of the ads, as I felt constant advertising was hurting me, mentally, so I ran away from it. Vinegar took me back to when I used to listen to album after album on YT, without interruptions, without aggressive marketing and garbage advertisment. So for that, thank you Dinosaur :D As everything else, things can get improved to cater to people's wishes, but for me this is fine the way it is.

Videos default to mute audio. Great product, but ever since the last update, videos have started defaulting to mute audio every time I start a new video. Videos will also sometimes revert back to mute audio in the middle of watching.

Works great for background playback. This extension does exactly what I would expect and reliably enables background playback, the only thing that would make this app better would be an option to set default playback speed, I wish I could always play videos at 1.5x speed.

I ACTUALLY works!. Nice job! It’s quite magical when a dev drops something that does what it says and for a reasonable price. To the users: consider supporting your favorite YouTubers in other ways if you choose to block ads!

Developer doing their best against YT’s actions. The developer is active in their efforts to provide the best experience possible. The constant changing of YT’s tactics, make it very difficult to provide a seamless experience. Current issue is that I use my iPad and audio only, when the video hits a ‘break’, the vinegar/safari forgets the audio only and starts to show the video, or pauses totally, until I interact with the browser. I know it can be fixed eventually and am patiently waiting.

Hotkeys ?. Great app but is there a place to find the hotkeys ? Sometimes I accidentally mute or speed up a video and it'll retain the settings for each video that plays subsequently and I can't figure out how to revert the original playback settings

Half Baked. What a goofy extension. Vinegar and its newer offshoot Extract have been hit and miss for over a year now. Now the darn thing doesn’t even show controls on macOS unless you right click and turn them on, even then it doesn’t stay on. The iOS version is only marginally better. This was a decent solution a few years ago but has only become more and more obsolete. I occasionally try it just to see if it has improved or fixed outstanding issues but…it hasn’t. I originally bought the bundle that includes Baking Soda. While the latter is still somewhat usable, I wouldn’t have purchased the bundle knowing what I know now. Don’t waste your money. I would say it’s better than nothing but since I really only use this for PnP/PiP…it’s sort of not.

Great Tech Support. I had some questions regarding Vinegar after the latest update. Zhenyi was VERY prompt and responsive to my questions and was able to problem solve successfully an issue I had with the App.

Give theater mode viewing option.. At the top left corner, there is option for full-screen view, also offer a theater view mode option. However, there are times when I don't necessarily want the full-screen but prefer the wide-view provided by "theater mode". It would be convenient to have that option placed next to the full-screen button for easier switching.

Great extension. Works as expected. A few small tweaks it could use are changing quality while in theater mode and giving the option to not pause videos when leaving full screen

Works beautifully. Works on my phone just fine. It isn’t perfect and rarely doesn’t load but a quick page refresh fixes it. Very neat extension!

Skip track?. App is great but it replaces the option to skip to the next video with skipping by 10 seconds instead, can you add an option to change this? It makes skipping songs a bit annoying

It doesn’t automatically select the highest video quality. I like this extension. I hate watching videos in lowest quality. While using this app I found out, If it doesn’t have 1080p option then it goes to auto and the video plays in 360p. It doesn’t automatically select 720p. And also If you can please make it support 60fps.

Wonderful app, one big bug. Well worth the $. Absolutely perfect with two exceptions: 1) Major problem: The space bar sometimes doesn't pause the video. It pauses for a split second and then resumes. I can't figure out what triggers it (but it's not the key repeat rate). Other videos don't have this problem. 2) Minor problem: If the desired resolution in settings isn't available, it switches to Auto instead of to the nearest resolution. For example, if 4K is chosen in settings, it shoudl chose HD instead of Auto if 4K isn't availble.

It used to work.... Until a few months ago was working as you would expect, sometimes there was some wait but at least there was no ADS. After a few updates I have now 2 icons but it seems uncapable to block the ads, I suppose Google managed to make the life hard for this kind of extensions, I have to say tough that the AdBlock on Edge works just fine.

too annoyyingg. i apologize for the extra letters, my keyboard is dyying (wwhwen it rains it pours) I had to uninstall vinegar for one simple reason, the developer fixes one buggg and releasses a neww update, rinse repeat. unfortunatel7yy you have to restart SSafari every time there is an updte and it is very annoyyying whwen you have manyyy tabs open.. i dont want to restart safari everyy y3 hours i wwnat to maybe do it once a wewek. i dont think that the updates are so critical that theyyyy cant wait for once a wweek... to the developer: i am not sso desperate for updates that i cant wait for a weeklyy update. having so many updates is veryy disruptive to my normal workfloww.. the dev says that i can turn off auto-update in the app store but that AFAIK is a global all app option.. not really a solution. wouldnt it be better for the dev to just release updates once a month?

Love it! Only missing a couple of things.. This is an amazing extension. It enables the ability to do picture-in-picture on macOS, which is a god-send. It would be near-perfect if added support for 4K resolutions and also the ability to selectively disable it for certain videos. Otherwise, great job!

When it works it’s great. As the title says, when it works this app is great. However sometimes this app doesn’t work and gets stuck on “loading” so it defaults to 360p. Also for some reason I’m unable to block comments now as I used to

Broken most of the time (but improved by updates). Update 1: The extension has improved over time with updates. Still many sharp edges and bugs, but certainly better than it was before recent updates. Keep up the good work! Original: Not sure if this is Google breaking the site so often, but to be honest, I don’t really care. The extension does not provide what it promises. Often, experience is broken, requiring at least one refresh until options show up, videos with aspect ratio other than 16:9 are broken to the point of unusable, etc. Not recommended at this point.

Videos are in low resolution. Update 12/8 this issue is resolved and app is now supporting all resolutions. Rating changed to 5 stars. I’m not sure where is the problem but most videos are in low resolution and will not show anything more than 720p. Regardless of what I have in a settings (auto or 1080p) max is 720p which is very disappointing.

Was amazing up until about a month ago. I will change my stars back to five is this ever gets fixed, but as of now, its pretty impoosible to use across all platforms (MacOS, iOS, iPadOS) Weird thing is that each device does something else. All devices have the same issues in full screen mode where when the video file updates, it will shrink to the wondow size or theater size, almost all the time the video will stop working at some random reload point. Also, in MacOS it wont load the next video on a playlist. I've been using this app for over a year now with zero issues. But now its to annoyingly broken that I cant really use it at all. I hope this gets fixed soon. I know they are trying, but with every update there are either new issues or old one resurface. I do appricate the effort they have been putting in. I'm sure this is difficult to maintain with the constant changes and hurdles they have to go through.

Works Great Except for One Thing.... Seems totally fine other than the volume resets, I perhaps when automatically switching quality. So if I crank down the volume on something it will, without intaction, suddenly go back to regular volume. Look forward to a fix!

Bought to fix Safari playback issues, introduces its own playback issues.. I already had an Adblock extension working fine to stop ads, but Safari PiP would constantly pause playback when locking the screen or while multitasking. I thought I found my answer with Vinegar. Now my video audio continues when locking or multitasking, but now I can forget about a video automatically resuming where I left off after any lengthy pause, or even resuming at all without a page refresh. Because of the black screens of no playback, I am then forced to interact with the UI to troubleshoot and it really makes the UI feel clunky. If I didn’t have to press play/pause or PiP/close full screen so many times to try to get the page to resume where I left off in the video, the UI would be just fine. Refreshing the page starts the video back at 00:00, and it’s up to you to scrub to where you left off. My main use is to listen to 2+hr long content during commutes and Vinegar has made it very unenjoyable. Listening to say 47 minutes, pausing, going into work, leaving work, and then fighting the player to actually play and then scrubbing to find where I left off (hard to do if you don’t note what time you paused) just to do it over again the next time I hop in the car is not fun.

Slowly becoming more trouble than it’s worth. I really loved using this over the years, but lately the last couple of months it seems like it’s hardly working anymore. It used to not work here and there but it’s been more often than not these days. Growing tired of having videos not play then having to disable the extension all the time 🤷‍♂️

Buggy when running audio through BT. I love this app, and want to stay in love with it but I continue to have issues when running audio through Bluetooth. Specifically, when using my steropair of homepods as my audio source for my M1Pro MBP. Have the latest version installed and it seems to get choppy or drop to one channel after about a minute or two of playing. To test this being a mac issue vs app issue, I disabled the intigration and the issue was gone. Once re-enabled it came back after a few videos played. Willing to help troubleshoot some more if needed, just let me know what you need on my end.

sorta works.. Seems interesting, but super buggy. does clear out ads, if you can get the video to actually play. Videos play fine in the little list windows, but go to open into a regular size window, it pops out, and does nothing most of the time. And, some videos I have to double click on, some I have to single click on, some don't work at all. OK, use the little "pop out" button, well the video pops out to a mini play just fine, but 9 times outa 10 it's just a black screen, no video playing, hit the play button? sure, still no video, oh and sometime the window thinks it's playing and there is a pause button. still no video.

Great stuff, but. The only thing I would like to change about this is the ability to either pause and play with the controls on the Lock Screen, or the pull down menu once I close the app on the Home Screen. Both of these options to pause and play the music are either available or disappear completely sometimes. Also in a playlist, you must refresh the page to pause and play in the background, which has the same inconsistencies above of course.

Video Player often crashes when rotating video. When I rotate my phone in safari when in fullscreen video, the video will frequently start over. Also, if you immediately put the video into PiP, and then attempt to use the coward 15 second or backward 15 second buttons, without previously having touched that video player, the video frequently crashes and restarts.

Saves my Sanity. Thank you for making the Fizzy Water extenstions. They work great and I love that you're so responsive when platforms update their shenanigans. These great little extensions have improved my quality of life and reduced frustrations!

Almost perfect now. I had a few complaints but with the latest version I'm almost completely happy with it both on iOS and macOS. Well done and thank you for completely changing my YT experience for the better! I have two nice-to-have feature requests: the ability to switch quality in theater mode on macOS, and an option to allow me to seek /-15 secs with the keyboard shortcuts instead of 5 secs.

Good at what it does. This works for what it does and the lack of higher than 1080p support isn't a deal breaker. However, it updates far too often—which is only an annoyance because to update, you have to quit Safari. I suppose there's no way for it to update wihtout restarting Safari, but being asked to close safari for updates is annoying to me.

Did you know that you can earn 25 USD from our site just by registering? Get $25 for free by joining Payoneer!

Great app expect for 1 thing…. Great app however it would get 5 stars if when you play a video it opens the video full screen instead of having to manually click every time.

Breaks HDR and 4K support. Does what it says, but doesn’t support HDR, 60FPS, etc. needs a warning about this…

Stopped Working. Looks like the folks at YouTube have finally found your measure? Wouldn’t be so bad if YouTube ads weren’t so darned long and with subjects like “Where to buy a comfortable bra”.

Excellent app. Works exactly as advertised, I much prefer this less intrusive video player over the default Youtube one. Would love to see the video quality options added to the right click menu when the "show quality switcher toolbar" option is unchecked, though this is a very minor gripe.

It's June 2022 and this still works well. You do need to follow the instructions carefully, but once you've set it up, YouTube videos *within Safari* can be played in the mini overlay mode (and audio even works from the lock screen!). To open a video in Safari rather than in the YouTube app, just tap the 'share' arrow (from the YouTube app) and then 'copy link'. Then paste the link into Safari. Or, if you're already in Safari, long-tap on the link and open the video in a new tab.

Great. Works very well to stop the ridiculous number of ads on YouTube nowadays.

Not usable with youtubes ad blocker detector. Needs an option to be able to disable the built in ad blocker

Good premise for app, but needs a lot of work.. Not a bad premise for an app, but it is so incomplete. Why does it consistently downgrade me to 720p or even worse 360p? Why does it play in the background when I go back to the YouTube homepage. Needs some work.

Appreciate your efforts. Working again after YouTube's recent efforts. I appreciate it!

It’s great. But already YouTube seems to be fighting back to break this plugin. So begins the game of cat and mouse. Why does Google have to be so user hostile? Oh that’s right, because we’re not their customers—advertisers are.

good app. removes ads of youtube on safari which is good

God bless this app!. Does exactly what it says it will. Thank you!!!

The best way to watch YouTube. I’ve been sleeping on Vinegar for far too long! This extension makes using YouTube a delight. I really like how it combines the ease of use of Apple’s native HTML video player with the features of YouTube’s page controls. Access to the full gamut of video playback settings - 4K, 60 FPS and HDR - is available on macOS and iPadOS, and all of the keyboard shortcuts have been preserved. I only have two minor issues to report: - Sometimes, it takes a while for the resolution options to appear after selecting the Auto button - I can’t seem to find a way to watch HDR video, or video higher than 1080p resolution (i.e. 1440p, 4K) on iOS/iPhone Thanks again for a great app. Highly recommended.

The best YouTube Adblock on the market. Adblock, magic lasso, ublock, … I’ve tried, and paid for all of them. None of them work as well as vinegar. Highly recommended.

Great app. I love this app and how it improves the Apple experience on YouTube. My only gripe is that currently the ‘Auto’ quality mode sets all videos to very low resolution, and you manually need to set higher resolution for each video you watch. Would love this fixed!

Now with 4k 😍. Fantastic!!!

Good but…. Good app but I wish it would provide a landscape button/gesture when in full screen (accessibility voice commands has this function so perhaps you could trigger that?)

Great app until Google Blocked the Blocker. Since YouTube stated blocking the blocker, the app does not work as expected any more in my macOS .

Excellent!. I purhcased this app just for it's youtube ad blocking feature and it does exactly that. Great to see the app has recieved regular updates and now supports 4K, resume and also maintains playhead position when changing video quality. YouTube keyboard shortcuts now also work with this extention. Single purhcase works on all my devices and can be shared with family sharing group.

Doesn’t work. Unfortunately it doesn’t work for me at all. Followed the setup to a tee, but still had ads.

fixes my particular gripe. when i double tap the screen to go forward or back 10 seconds, on regular youtube, it annoyingly would go in or out of full-screen. With this extension, I no longer have this issue. 5 Stars *****

Amended review. This app frequently ends up essentially disabling the ability to use magic keyboard at all on youtube videos. Have to reach up and touch the screen in order to pause or skip around in the video, even trackpad doesn’t work.

Great App still in 2023. I have been using this for few years now and working well even with it disables all the crazy youtube ad blocking warnings in 2023.

Best $3 I’ve spent. Use YouTube daily and this is the perfect app to compliment the experience.

This is so great.. Best $2 ever. Makes youtube behave like a REGULAR video player.

Works Brilliantly. No issues. Supports 4k HDR playback on my iPad Pro 12.9”. Developer was quick to respond to my email enquiry as well.

Just ok. It’s working fine on iOS devices, but not on my Mac’s. Another big issue to me is that no watch history saved in YouTube at all. Seems that it turned on the “ghost mode” while watching videos in safari. Have had several occasions where I thought i had new videos unwatched on my other non Apple devices but in fact they have been watched on my iPad. Kinda annoying.

Thanks!. Thanks for putting in the work and keeping up with YouTube’s constantly-changing attempts to break Vinegar.

so far so good!. so far so good!

No more YouTube app!. Makes Safari great :)

No longer works. Great app. Just doesn’t work right now. Shows no toolbar or playback options. Just a floating video you can’t interact with. Now with ads

overall pretty good. Does what it says on Ipad 7th gen but sometimes fails to exit fullscreen mode.

Very Handy. I love that this app exists, as it makes viewing videos on YouTube feel lighter and quicker. It’s also great that it includes 4K support.

Works as advertised. Picture in picture works. Background play also works. Ad blocking also works. Nothing to complain about

Great Updates!. Fantastic, reliable, and ingenious app. The developer responded to all the request I have seen in a very timely manner - I look forward to seeing this app succeed more and more. YouTube has taken too many turns for the worse over the years to be enjoyed thoroughly, so this is where the minimalism of Vinegar enters the picture to save the day.

Would buy multiple times. This is a fantastic app and it's the best 2 bucks I've ever spent. I've tried so many different adblock apps for YouTube and they all eventually stopped working after a few weeks. Keep up the good work!

Great stuff. Been using this for ages now. Still a great extension. Works like a charm. Also want to thank the dev for constant work and updates due to YouTube/google’s ever more aggressive attempts to cram as many ads into yr eyes as possible.

No Chromecast option?. $3 ain’t much, but I was hoping I’d have the option to Chromecast from the app. Perhaps something you could write in at a later date? Otherwise, flawless

YT has seemed to disable PIP. Currently as of today, PIP is disabled :(. 4/5 stars for app. Works pretty well, some UX things that aren’t as smooth as premium but it’s cheaper than a month of premium. 🤷🏻

Its been so long since i was really happy from the app i used.. Thank you

No 1080P at all. Does not support 1080P. I click the ‘1080p’ but actually won’t work. Maximum 720P on iPhone only.

Incredible!. It works as advertised. A note for the developer: sometimes I get video URLs with ‘#dialog’ at the end. Until that tag is manually deleted, attempting to play a video will refresh the page or go back to the previous page.

Great, consider forcing AV1. Great app, sometimes needs a reload - but consider adding the option to force AV1 to save battery on newer devices (A17, M3 and later)

Doesn’t AirPlay. Honestly you get tired of trying to get it to do one thing. It does not AirPlay YT with any consistency.

No ads, play in window, but no screen rotate. Can’t make it rotate to play full screen besides that, working well! no ads can minimise youtube play while locked Great!

Imagine you at your best. All the time. Picture yourself at your sharpest and most productive. Your most alert and focused. Your most lucid, creative and confident. At work. At play. In every area of your life. Add Mind Lab Pro® v4.0 to your daily routine and uncap your true potential. Buy Now!

Features that should be added for completeness. - Platback speed: Fast forwarding/Slow playback - integration with video chapters - quick toggle without entering safari extensions to disable the plugin. - download option or save video option - Airplay integration - Captions with caption settings - internal user feedback, directly within extension.

Doesn’t work. Still have ads when using safari to access YouTube.com on the iPhone.

Delightful. This app does everything it is supposed to. It's got some quirks and problems, but it's just one guy developer and it still does an insanely valueble job that Big Tech Video Site refuses to do.

No longer getting the same functionality before the update. I’ve made sure the original Vinegar extension is On and the Vinegar Extract extension is off, however I don’t see the player controls in the video and I’m seeing all of the ads.

broken after last update. latest ios and this app are now a bad mix. all kinds of weird things are happening with youtube. sometimes controls are completely missing. just generally a lot more buggy after the latest release

Almost perfect !. The app works as described, its a video player for youtube that blocs ads! Would love to be able to double tap to fast forward 15 sec instead of clicking the button :)

Beautiful. Looks great, as videos should on a Mac. Theater mode, replay, and loop buttons are only available if the quality selection black bar is enabled. Would be nicer to have them accessible from the extension icon like the quality selection is. The quality selection black bar appears above thumbnails even though they aren't really needed there at all.

No longer works. Not sure who’s fault this is. I’m guessing it’s Google, but this doesn’t really work anymore. What the heck is Vinegar Extract? Unclear what it is, and I don’t see any description. What is it extracting that vinegar it itself doesn’t do? I don’t see any information about what it does in the description or in the app. With this extension on the video just loads perpetually, I have to turn it off just to get the video to play. Also: I wish this extension would stop resetting the current playhead position on YouTube!

Amazing extension. Possible to default to highest quality?. My videos are always 720p and I have to change

Stopped working March 2025. Was working ok with some issues before March 7th 2026 Now it won’t block any ads even though it says the extension is working

Awesome. Really great extension, I use it mostly for the ability to see captions and PIP. One thing is that vinegar, not extract, blocks video previews when scrolling through the main YouTube’s main page. I’m not sure if this is intended or not though. Awesome extension!

No 0.75x playback. Horrible… can’t do 0.75x….

Great App but need one more function！. Even the regular website youtube can have a more detailed playspeed adjustment like 1.75x. Vineager however, only have 1.5 and 2.0x speed. Please consider add a more detail speed adjustment control either in extension setting or in the bottom right speed control dropdown! many thanks!

When it works, it’s the best.. I would totally ditch the YouTube iOS app for the website + this extension on. Unfortunately, the functionality of the video player (especially the Vinegar Extract version) is very hit or miss. I think it works best on iPhones, but trying it on iPad (which defaults to requesting the desktop site) is a really poor experience. I’m pretty sure this is YouTube/Google changing things that break some functionality of the extension, because I didn’t always have the problems I’ve experienced. I love what the developer is doing here, and I hope they can find a way to get around the problems YouTube/Google cause from the backend. I sometimes go back to the iOS app version out of habit, and I miss having the features the website version with this extension gives me, like Picture in Picture and background audio.

Has the developer abandoned this?. It's been about two months since an update and I'm wondering if the dev just gave up trying to fight YouTube? If so I kind of understand and I appreciate the time they put in, but it seems like YouTube has figured out how to recognize when people are using this extension and just make things not work properly.

It does the exact feature I wanted:. - Playing in PIP mode; - Playing in background, and especially audio mode (yay). As for the ad blocker feature, I don’t mind it at all as it is useful to contribute to pay the content creators.

No longer functions. Note developer log on version 3.0.1. ‘Note: Vinegar doesn’t block ads. Use it with an adblocker or a YouTube Premium subscription for an ad-free experience.

Pretty good. The only way I know of to get rid of the incredibly annoying "more videos" overlay in embedded youtube videos on Safari. Would be excellent if the dev would map "skip 10 seconds forward/backward" on the left and right arrows.

Really buggy. Have to baby it. I was hopeful about this app but it doesn't work great most of the time. Firstly, no HDR or 4K. But that aside I sometimes have to reload the page several times before the video plays. Even when it is playing it often just stops and even a couple reloads doesn't fix it. The pain of it all isn't worth it at the moment.

Makes YouTube on iOS usable. Great app.

Great!. I was on a mision to thwat a certain Ad Blocker blocker.... Mission Accomplished! Max Resolution seems to be 1080p, however this is a minor set back! I commend the developer. A couple tiny suggestions: -Try to hide the original player when the page loads initially. Currently the ad will flicker momentarily before the Vinegar player loads. Perhaps draw a black rectangle over the ad and then have the Vinegar player fade in from black over top of that when it loads. -Round Rect the corners to closer match the original Youtube player. Thank you.

Appreciate its existence but very buggy. Look, this is a great tool for Safari as I much prefer the Apple player over the Youtube one. Still, it's unfortunate that the plugin is filled to the brim with bugs in its current state. A couple examples: - Sometimes the player controls don't show up at all - Sometimes speeding up the video doesn't work - Half the time the video playback stops between the 30-40 second mark and needs to be reloaded - Many more minor glitches

Well Worth It!. Has worked great for me! One little nitpick I've noticed, is that I noticed it doesn't let me jump around using the 'Chapters', and auto-playing from a Watch Later playlist means I just need to hit refresh to move onto the next video. But those are just nitpicky suggestions.

Needs some more features. I am very happy with this extension, but there are a few missing features I would like to point out, the first one being the lack of an end screen. The second one is the lack of playing clips. Overall, this is a good app. Just needs some more features.

Great, Minimal, Works as intended. This is one of the few apps that does the job perfectly with a very minimalistic approach, no extra garbage. Works on both my iPad and iPhone. And I like the audio only feature, also the easy controls to change resolution. For ad blocking I use Adblock plus, they work great together.

Not so great anymore. I’ve been using vinegar for years but for the last while it’s been super glitchy. Videos don’t load. Can’t Airplay. Videos don’t continue from where you left off. I hope they are able to fix these things.

Very good. It’s really good, but please add the function of auto subtitles

please add 8k option for videos, best option doesn’t seem to work. title

Limited Functionality. YouTube recently made some sort of update to its API that’s limited the function of Vinegar to just ad-blocking. If that’s all you want, perfect.

Good app but some bugs need to be fixed. Good app but there are some bugs that haven’t been fixed in a while. Video pauses and loads for a while when you first start it. Clicking time stamps doesn’t work and causes the video to restart. Video doesn’t pickup from where you last left off like it’s supposed to and instead starts from the beginning.

Great App. One suggestion. The App works as advertised. It would simplify usage if the Close command (x) where to be added next to maximize and minimize commands. I wrote the above yesterday and the Developer response was from a year ago! ?

Was great, but stopped working. Needs an update. For the last few months the video just keeps resetting part way through. It’s really annoying, and unfortunately while this was a 5star app, currently I can not recommend. Will update review when fixed!

just a bad investment. i know these extensions from the devs aren't expensive but they dont work as well as the free ones nowadays. just look it up on reddit, people will tell you more details. i dont think its worth it guys :(

Great work, but needs AirPlay fixes.. I know this is not something that’s necessarily easy to test if you lack the hardware or just even mind to test at all, but a video playing through AirPlay will only stream audio, not video. Through AirPlay it thinks it’s an audio stream for some reason. The video keeps playing normally on the phone screen.

Bought to fix PiP in safari, doesn’t work. See above :(

Lovely (when it works). The app works most of the time. Thanks to several quick updates, most functionality and bugs keep being fixed. I do get several pages reloading issue though (and video pausing/not able to fast forward at times - all on YouTube). Would there be a way to add 0.75 to playback speed? I do use this a lot for language learning. All in all, I love this app.

Great!. It is working well with 4K and HDR. I wish there is an option that I can move the top toolbar to the bottom of the player.

Love this extension. So happy how this works on MacOS and iOS

Money well spent. I love this extension, having the ability to picture in picture or play utube is the back ground is so clutch. As google constantly updates their ad blocker blocker lol, it’s good to see this developer still supporting this extension. Just last week I had some issues but they have been resolved with the most recent update!

Great but missing timestamps resume. It’s great but there is a bug. It can’t resume from the last timestamp. When the page first load the video player start for a split second at where I left the video. But then it refreshes and start the video over from the beginning. It’s annoying for long podcast. Is it a known bug? I am happy to provide debug logs or anything to help for that and change my review score. Edit: Leaving the quality to auto fix the issue somehow.

Does not work perfectly…. Only works on full site not mobile thus, not very easy to read on an iPhone. Needs to improve!

Confusing. It doesn’t seem to work at all on my Ipad Air. Just installed it yesterday and nothing changed. I did follow all of the installation instructions which are pretty easy. Tried restarting several times with no success. Not very impressed so far…

Great, one suggestion that would make it perfect (to me). Awesome extension, does exactly what it says and with no fuss. Would be perfect if you were able to set a default quality level when using cellular data (even integrating it with a Siri shortcut/automation would be awesome if possible) Thanks!!

Amazing!. This makes YouTube in safari the best, please never stop supporting it devs! It’s beautiful!

Good when it works. Issues -Makes videos reload mid way -Stop playing -Lots of black screens -network errors loop Good when it works but can be frustrating need to delete it and reinstall often

Great app with one potential change that would make it near perfect.. Simple and straightforward to use while enhancing YouTube experience on Safari. However, the way YouTube shorts are handled, could be greatly improved on. The shorts resolution could match that of the native Youtube app, since Vinegar can do 4K on regular videos. Also the video player on shorts seems conflicted, showing the Apple native video player, as well as YouTube’s video player. If this is improved upon, I will give a full 5-star rating.

It works - most of the time. Had it occasionally stop working for me but seems to be fixed now. There are free apps that do the same.

Good app. Makes YouTube a lot better, it would be nice if it would auto rotate when you go into full screen

Daily updates. Thanks for the extension, but please stop releasing updates so frequently. It forces us to constantly quit/restart Safari which isn't convenient. Bundle them up into less frequent updates. For our sanity!

4K finally added for iPad Pro :). Excellent product

Adsterra is the most preferred ad network for those looking for an alternative to AdSense. Adsterra is the ideal choice for new sites with low daily traffic. In order to advertise on the site in Adsterra, like other ad networks, a certain traffic limit, domain age, etc. is required. There are no strict rules. Sign up!

The best thing ever. This should be installed on every phone out the gate. The internet is improving with tools like this. It has gotten greasy in recent years, but time for a clean! 🧼

Thank you for the consistent updates. Thank you for the explainer on the previous review. Thank you for the contued effort on updates with the app.

Must have. Must have utility. Currently Airplay and Mirroring to ATV from YT is effed up, especially if you use HomePods as speakers. Hopefully that can be fixed, but it’s still an incredible app either way.

Nifty little tool for iOS and MacOS. Love this! That one star is because it also removes the Share button to share the URL with others. Hope they can add their own Share button.

Video restart. Not sure if this is normal but if I have played a video & started again with this extension the video start over from 0:00:00 instead of continue

Still works… but subtitles don’t work properly. It still works fine…however for some weird reasons I don’t get subtitles from time to time under Wifi connection (5G/LTE works)… Oct-1: Stopped working.

Fixed Safari PIP!!!. Fixed the iOS 15 PIP issue instantly after following 5 simple instructions. Thank you!!!

Improvement. Everything works well, but sometimes the the button to control resolution disappears, that’s the only annoyance

Buy this extension now. You won’t regret it. Great features. Support the dev. Buy the bundle. Does this extension work on OSX too? I never checked if so great. Put it on your iPhone , ipad, great for you great for kids. Thank a million.

This is just getting worse and worse. We all know that this is one person (or maybe a handful) trying to combat one of the largest, and most evil, corporations on the planet. They used to have frequent updates (daily or weekly). As of this review, it has been over a month since their last update. Obviously, Google has performed many behind-the-scenes idiocy in this time. So, the viewing experience of using Vinegar just gets worse, and worse, and worse. If you need more money, charge more. If you need monthly subscriptions, do it. But this app is in the worst place it has ever been (in my opinion) in the very long time I have owned it.

can you add feature that show dual subtitle. I saw the function for transaction of subtitle, it would be helpful to show both original and translated captains for a language learner, thanks.

Wish it remembered playback speed. PiP, Background play, no ads, everything’s great except that it doesn’t save your playback speed. Ex. I click 2x on a video , next video it’s back to 1x instead of staying at 2x

Love this so much. Any time I have to use a video player that isn't the Apple video player makes me sad haha. Thank you for all your hard work playing whackamole with google. I cannot tell you how much i appreciate it. one minor gripe: the arrow keys don't seem to control the apple video player. is there a solution i'm not seeing? anyways, y'all rock. thanks for doing what you do. <3

Love it. I've only been using Vinegar for a short time, but so far on the latest versions of everything it's been working great! Thank you so much for building this!

Works 10% of the time 100% of the time. When it works it’s great… however getting a single video to work is so hit or miss you might as well just deal with the random ads. Overnight it just stopped loading videos completely both on WiFi and 5G. It just infinitely loads after playing one second.

Fantastic App BUT.. can't use further. Does everyhing it says it will do except it blasts the volume even if you mute it. There's been no fix for this and no updates for months. So instead i'll switch to the browser Brave.. built in ad blocker and doesn't have the audio spiking issue.

Amazing app. Had an issue with the app once the latest iOS was released. The developer reached out to me and helped me troubleshoot the issue, and now it works flawlessly again.

Responsive Developer (now supports 4K). Amazing app and impressive latest updates. Has me stay logged out of Google's ecosystem everywhere but in Safari. Highly recommended.

Awesome when it works.. Its great when its functioning as intended. Unfortunately most of the time I have to turn it off because it just freezes the video and keeps playing the audio. iPhone XS running IOS 15.0.1

Great thank you!. Response to developer — thank you, the new requirement to use desktop mode for airplay fixed it!

Updated review: Awesome app, responsive developer !. Changed my rating to 5 stars. Best app for simplicity it just works !! Previous note —- Dear Vinegar developer if you are reading this, the audio only mode broke for iOS 16.4

Nice player but captions. Captions not working for me and there's not a button to turn them on either. To avoid this, i turned it off so I could enable captions but they're actually already enabled! This player is beautiful, but if I cannot use captions, then it's not for me!

Seemingly silly behavior on Sonoma. Every time you close and reopen Safari, you need to go into Extension settings re-enable Vinegar's allowed URLs. Hopefully a solution can be found soon because this workflow is not fun

This was a 5 star review but then Ads. Worked great at first but now I’m seeing ads once in a while. I really hope this gets fixed

Much better than the default. Video playback still pauses when I leave the browser, though. Only gripe.

So Good!. Not only does Vinegar eliminate adverts, it greatly reduces the battery drain caused by the native Safari video player. Worth it alone for the increased battery life.

Does what it says on the Tin. Lack of 4K support is unfortunate, but I'm not wathing YouToube for high quality videos. Feature Request: Would like for it to retain the volume setting from video to video.

Bought this to get rid of ads, but the quality loss isn’t worth it.. This app sounds great, but you can rarely watch videos higher than 720P. I have tried watching many videos that are 4K in the YT app but max out at 720P here. I’d honestly prefer to watch an ad than sit through a pixelated mess of a video.

Bug report. Tool bar doesn’t show up on vertical mode but shows up on landscape. Other than that great app

Great one bug. Extension is great. One piece of feedback is the video stops playing when you exit player. I would prefer it stay on, otherwise perfect.

Works as advertised!. One suggestion: is it possible to remove the shadow while in PIP mode? It’s a bit extreme and personally I find it distracting. Otherwise great.

Awesome, seriously.. This is worth every penny. Being able to use PIP and play audio with the screen off… Awesome, absolutely awesome. Thank you. You all are a blessing.

Quality switch. On the iphone 12 mini. ios 16 - Quality button is never usable, it’s always in the loading stage.

Works but a bit Buggy. PIP works fine and I like the audio only streaming option. Bugs: Video controls sometimes don’t show up. Freezes up Safari. Sometimes hard to resume after pausing a video. Yea resolution is low

Excellent, but no arrow key control. This works quite well. I just wish the arrow keys could be used as navigation controls to skip forward and backward within a video.

Great but needs livestream support. One of the best parts about YT streams is being able to rewind at any point in the stream and you can’t do that with this extension. Would love if this extension and the Mac version supported that!

Picture in Picture is working again!. Thank you for updating the extension and informing me that PiP only works using the mobile site at this time, which is good enough for me! Awesome extension!

Awesome addition!. This is an awesome addition, and really improves performance on both iOS and macOS for me! Would love to see this expand to even more sites (Prime Video for example) as it continues to be developed. 5/5 would reccomend to anyone!

Toolbar not working. Great app but the toolbar hasn’t been working for the last couple months, although it still works on Landscape? Seem to be one of the few rare people experiencing this from what it seems like. Love the app, but man the toolbar is still not popping up.

The best. To the developer: Thank you for keeping this app consistently updated with bug fixes and new features. This app shines! Update 2024: Vinegar extract + AdGuard work so well together.

Toolbar isn’t working as expected. Everything seems to work as expected, but the toolbar does not show 1080p as an option in any video, only goes up to 720p. Setting the video quality in the extension settings does not seem to do change anything.

Easily my favorite Safari extension. This extension, along with Baking Soda, work flawlessly in Safari. I use both extenions everyday and they have such a positive impact on my productivity. Thank you for creating such a great app!

Works about half the time. You get what you oay for but it’s downright infuriating how inconsistently it works when it comes to play in picture specifically. It’s about as reliable as the old exploit for the sane thing that ios patched out. What’s more usually any attempt to rewind play in picture instantly crashes it.

Plays video from the start. The extension causes the video to play from the beginning even with a timestamp “t” parameter on the URL

It works. It’s simple.. Does what it says on the tin and does it well. Extremely worth the $2. Don’t deliberate any future. Hit the button.

Extension preferences. If you prefer to watch videos at faster speeds or certain resolutions you’ll have to choose them for every video. Edit: Dev helped me find the controls

Really buggy : Click to play almost doesn’t work. Really like Vinegar but it is far from being perfect. The most common and infuriating issue I have is unable to click and activate play button on videos while on safari.

Reading is hard. I am an idiot and failed to realize that I use Safari with this instead of it as a standalone. It works great to read the instructions like an adult.

works great. - I have not seen a single add since I installed this - videos load fast - very content with my purchase

A perfect alternative to YT Premium.. Internet video website raised prices on Premium recently without adding any new features. Thank you for providing an alternative. Well worth it!