README.md

March 18, 2026 · View on GitHub

LearnTube

A learning-focused YouTube front-end for Android, built on NewPipe.

What is LearnTube?

LearnTube is a privacy-first YouTube client for Android — no account required, no Google Play Services, no tracking. It is a fork of NewPipe, the libre lightweight streaming front-end, extended with structured learning tools designed to help you turn YouTube playlists into real learning paths.

LearnTube keeps everything that makes NewPipe great and adds a layer of learning accountability on top.

Screenshots

Learning Features

Learning Paths Dashboard

Your bookmarked playlists become learning paths. The dashboard shows a per-path progress bar (watched / total videos), a summary header with the number of active and completed paths, and your weekly study hours — all at a glance before you open a single video.

Watch Progress Tracking

Long-press any video inside a playlist to mark it as Watched or Unwatched. The playlist menu also provides bulk actions — Mark all watched and Reset all progress — so you can manage an entire course in one tap.

Timestamped Notes

Tap the note button in the player controls to save a note anchored to the current playback position. Notes are listed in the video detail screen in timestamp order. Tap any note to instantly seek back to that moment in the video.

Learning Streak & Study Time

A daily streak counter tracks consecutive days on which you watched at least one video. The stats header shows your study time for today, this week, and all time, plus a calendar view highlighting the days you were active.

Inherited NewPipe Features

LearnTube inherits the full NewPipe feature set, including:

  • Watch videos at resolutions up to 4K
  • Background audio playback (audio-only stream to save data)
  • Picture-in-Picture (popup) player
  • Watch live streams
  • Subtitles / closed captions
  • Subscribe to channels without an account
  • New-video notifications for subscribed channels
  • Channel groups and feed browsing
  • Watch history
  • Local and remote playlist support
  • Video / audio / subtitle downloads
  • Support for YouTube, PeerTube, Bandcamp, SoundCloud, and media.ccc.de

Acknowledgements

LearnTube is built on top of NewPipe, the libre, lightweight streaming front-end for Android created and maintained by TeamNewPipe. Without their years of work building a privacy-respecting, account-free YouTube client, LearnTube would not exist.

We are deeply grateful to every contributor to the NewPipe project and to the NewPipe Extractor library that powers it.

LearnTube is an independent fork and is not affiliated with or endorsed by TeamNewPipe.

Building

./gradlew assembleDebug    # Build debug APK
./gradlew build            # Full build (all variants)
./gradlew testDebugUnitTest  # Run unit tests

License

GNU GPLv3 Image

LearnTube is Free Software: you can use, study, share, and improve it at will. It is distributed under the GNU General Public License v3 or later — the same license as NewPipe.