Checklist
Affected version
0.27.6
Steps to reproduce the bug
- Update to Android 15 (NewPipe v0.27.6 worked fine on Android 14).
- Open an affected YouTube video in NewPipe. Not all videos are affected (see Additional information).
- Start playback.
- Try to activate any UI element (pressing the video to show the controls, pressing a comment to show more text etc.). Seems like all UI elements are affected by this.
Expected behavior
The UI element activates instantly without any significant lag or errors.
Actual behavior
Any UI element only activates after 2-7 seconds instead of instantly. The time varies. Sometimes Android even prompts an error "NewPipe is not responding" and if I press "Wait" instead of "Close App" the error will keep popping up until I finally close NewPipe - even though the app is still playing the video and clearly responding, just slowly.
Screenshots/Screen recordings
Here's a video of the problem on YouTube.
Sorry about recording with another phone instead of a screen recording, see Additional information for the reason. I enabled "Show taps" from Developer Options to make it clearer when I'm touching the screen but this doesn't affect the problem one way or another.
Logs
No response
Affected Android/Custom ROM version
Android 15
Affected device model
Motorola razr 40 ultra 5G
Additional information
The affected device is a foldable phone. I have only tested this on the inner main screen, not on the outer one.
This problem also occurs with a po-token debug build of the app I was using previously before 0.27.6 released and which I still had installed. Both that one and the official 0.27.6 release worked fine before I updated my phone from Android 14 to Android 15 so the problem seems somehow tied to Android 15.
Increasing playback speed (tempo) seems to make the problem much worse. It's still noticeable at 1.0x but when I bump the speed up to 1.5x or 1.75x it really becomes evident and the wait times seem longer.
Not all YouTube videos are affected. I haven't been able to find a reason other than almost all videos from some channels suffer from this problem while others don't seem to have any affected videos. Video length, chapter bookmarks, subtitles, audio tracks - none of these seem to matter. If I stop playback, the UI works fine again on the affected videos until I continue playback.
Here's a couple of affected videos:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2VXu8VhJ1hA (and all of the other videos from this channel I've watched so far)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxfDHnLRaY0 (newer videos from this channel don't have this problem)
And some unaffected videos where the UI works fine during playback:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGz9DS-aIeY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTWn3hwF-CI
One possible lead I noticed was that if I go to my subscriptions tab during playback and start a manual update of the subbed videos list, the UI begins responding normally again until the update finishes and the list of videos comes up - after which the UI goes straight back to laggy.
Another weird thing is that when I tried to record the screen on Android for this bug report (both as a single app and the entire screen), the lag completely disappears while the recording is on. As soon as I turn it off, it immediately comes back.
NewPipe never actually crashes with this error so I haven't got any crash logs but if Android starts telling me the app isn't responding, those errors will keep popping up forever even after pressing "Wait" and I have no choice but to restart the app to continue watching without interruptions. Even stopping playback doesn't make the errors go away.
Checklist
Affected version
0.27.6
Steps to reproduce the bug
Expected behavior
The UI element activates instantly without any significant lag or errors.
Actual behavior
Any UI element only activates after 2-7 seconds instead of instantly. The time varies. Sometimes Android even prompts an error "NewPipe is not responding" and if I press "Wait" instead of "Close App" the error will keep popping up until I finally close NewPipe - even though the app is still playing the video and clearly responding, just slowly.
Screenshots/Screen recordings
Here's a video of the problem on YouTube.
Sorry about recording with another phone instead of a screen recording, see Additional information for the reason. I enabled "Show taps" from Developer Options to make it clearer when I'm touching the screen but this doesn't affect the problem one way or another.
Logs
No response
Affected Android/Custom ROM version
Android 15
Affected device model
Motorola razr 40 ultra 5G
Additional information
The affected device is a foldable phone. I have only tested this on the inner main screen, not on the outer one.
This problem also occurs with a po-token debug build of the app I was using previously before 0.27.6 released and which I still had installed. Both that one and the official 0.27.6 release worked fine before I updated my phone from Android 14 to Android 15 so the problem seems somehow tied to Android 15.
Increasing playback speed (tempo) seems to make the problem much worse. It's still noticeable at 1.0x but when I bump the speed up to 1.5x or 1.75x it really becomes evident and the wait times seem longer.
Not all YouTube videos are affected. I haven't been able to find a reason other than almost all videos from some channels suffer from this problem while others don't seem to have any affected videos. Video length, chapter bookmarks, subtitles, audio tracks - none of these seem to matter. If I stop playback, the UI works fine again on the affected videos until I continue playback.
Here's a couple of affected videos:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2VXu8VhJ1hA (and all of the other videos from this channel I've watched so far)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxfDHnLRaY0 (newer videos from this channel don't have this problem)
And some unaffected videos where the UI works fine during playback:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGz9DS-aIeY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTWn3hwF-CI
One possible lead I noticed was that if I go to my subscriptions tab during playback and start a manual update of the subbed videos list, the UI begins responding normally again until the update finishes and the list of videos comes up - after which the UI goes straight back to laggy.
Another weird thing is that when I tried to record the screen on Android for this bug report (both as a single app and the entire screen), the lag completely disappears while the recording is on. As soon as I turn it off, it immediately comes back.
NewPipe never actually crashes with this error so I haven't got any crash logs but if Android starts telling me the app isn't responding, those errors will keep popping up forever even after pressing "Wait" and I have no choice but to restart the app to continue watching without interruptions. Even stopping playback doesn't make the errors go away.