Add button to play audio only (no video at all) for playing podcasts etc.

[tv21]

SHORT Table	(Summary)
Problem	YouTube plays video even when playing something that is essentially audio only, wasting bandwidth.
Solution	Have a button to play video only
Alternatives	Download the video and play it in an external player (inconvenient)
Scope	Hard to say; don't know how many users listen to podcasts or other predominately audio content
Side effects	Other than having an additional button I can't think of any
Context	The idea would be to prevent playing irrelevant video that wastes bandwidth / battery

[error-404-usernotfound]

This would be great, putting it in picture and picture giving it a basic audio playbar would be perfect for listening to music while I chat on Discord, ect.

[ImprovedTube]

hi! & thanks @tv21 @error-404-usernotfound

Our to-do list of buttons: #1445 :

• Bandwidth? : Audio-only or 144p (features exist) We can integrate the method and icon of https://github.com/Ashish-Bansal/audio-only-youtube (asked him here: Bandwidth // Audio only  #566 (comment) )

we finished #300 recently

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@error-404-usernotfound:

We can't reduce the size of pip but you can set the resolution to 144p, so hiding it might be possible to

Please try our mixer feature in version 3.* http://web.archive.org/web/20220531043659/https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/downloads/file/3896635/youtube_addon-3.935.xpi, since we can fix it in the current version and add more to it

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Let us know if anything else comes to mind sooner or later (Your input can be impactful and i'm not using every feature myself so exact implementations might rely on your voices. Whenever we implement something at all here, we can prepare conceptualize, design with extra depth to make best use of our time and volunteer developer's time and not add anything unnecessary or unsustainable.)

[raszpl]

Best we can do without some serious intrusion into YT internals is 'Quality without focus' to 144p and minimizing the tab.

Sadly it appears YT also swaps audio track for lower quality in that case, goes from
251 webm audio only 2 │ 31.29MiB 110k https │ audio only opus 110k 48k [en] medium, webm_dash
to
250 webm audio only 2 │ 16.73MiB 59k https │ audio only opus 59k 48k [en] low, webm_dash
and there is nothing we can do about it

[ImprovedTube]

serious

opt-in feature @raszpl

https://github.com/Ashish-Bansal/audio-only-youtube/blob/e9815328a39b0f3540e2d495599daf0a150030e4/src/js/background.ts#L75-L81

    const parametersToBeRemoved = ['range', 'rn', 'rbuf', 'ump'];
    const audioURL = this.removeURLParameters(url, parametersToBeRemoved);
    if (audioURL && this.tabIds.get(tabId) !== audioURL) {
      this.tabIds.set(tabId, audioURL);
      this.sendMessage(tabId);

YouTube video url paramters
(these can help us to make some features in demand, such as buffer settings
or to provide fallback methods for other features, to make them more failproof/futureproof)

parameter	explanation	a Value	Value/s
rbuf	Buffer size	1000	0, 10000
range	Byte range	12345-67890	0-1048576
clen	Content length	12345678	98765432
dur	Duration	600	3600
quality	Video quality	hd720	medium, small
rn	Random to avoid browser caching	123456
ump	Performance metrics	1	0
itag	Media format	140 (128kbps AAC)	18 (360p), 22 (720p HD), 137 (1080p), 5 (240p FLV), 17 (144p 3GP), 18 (360p MP4), 22 (720p MP4), 34 (360p FLV), 35 (480p FLV), 36 (240p 3GP), 37 (1080p MP4), 38 (3072p MP4), 43 (360p WebM), 44 (480p WebM), 45 (720p WebM), 46 (1080p WebM), 59 (480p MP4), 78 (480p MP4), 82 (360p MP4), 83 (480p MP4), 84 (720p MP4), 85 (1080p MP4), 91 (144p MP4), 92 (240p MP4), 93 (360p MP4), 94 (480p MP4), 95 (720p MP4), 96 (1080p MP4), 100 (360p WebM), 101 (480p WebM), 102 (720p WebM), 132 (240p MP4), 133 (360p MP4), 134 (480p MP4), 135 (720p MP4), 136 (1080p MP4), 137 (1080p MP4), 138 (2160p MP4), 139 (48kbps M4A), 140 (128kbps M4A), 141 (256kbps M4A)
mime	MIME type	video/mp4	audio/mp4, video/webm, audio/webm, video/mpeg audio/mpeg, video/ogg audio/ogg audio/wav audio/aac, video/x-flv video/3gpp video/x-matroska
ms	Media source	au (audio)	va (video)
mv	Media variant	m	u
mt	Timestamp	1625097600	1625184000
lmt	Last modified time	1609459200	1612137600
gir	Segmenting	yes	no
pl	Playlist index	1	2
t	Timestamp (playback start)	1m30s	90s
id	Video ID	oHg5SJYRHA0
v	Video ID	dQw4w9WgXcQ
gcr	Geo region	IN	CA
hl	Language	fr	pt
cc_load_policy	Closed captions	1	0
cc_lang_pref	Preferred caption language	cn	kr
autoplay	Autoplay	1	0
fs	Fullscreen button	1	0
rel	Related videos at end	1	0
modestbranding	Modest Logo	1	0

[raszpl]

You cant manipulate most of those parameters, whole URLs are crypto signed and checksummed.
As I said before doing what this extension does is VERY invasive. This one for example uses
chrome.webRequest.onBeforeRequest.addListener
to intercept already checksummed and crypto signed audio track URL in flight. Its the kind of thing Google bans extensions for (YT APIs Terms of Service) https://www.reddit.com/r/grayjay/comments/1ajv2ur/apparently_grayjay_got_a_cease_and_desist_letter/