YouTube Plus is back — but it's a money grab, not a gift

YouTube Plus is back on the app store after a brief ban for sideloading. It's the same app that lets you watch without ads and use YouTube Premium features for free. The developers got kicked off by Apple and Google, and now they're back.

This is a cat-and-mouse game that's been going on for years. The app works by spoofing YouTube's internal API — pretending to be a Premium subscriber so the app thinks you're one of the paying customers. It's not hacking; it's just using the app's own system against it. And every time YouTube or the app stores crack down, the developers update it and push it back out.

The catch is YouTube Plus is a subscription app now — 99 cents a month. The developers who built the original free version are monetizing the workaround. There's a certain irony in the folks who told you to steal YouTube Premium now charging you to steal YouTube Premium.

Why this matters for us: when the big platforms price gouge and the only way to afford them is through sideloaded apps, we're left choosing between paying the rent and paying the service — and the middlemen profit either way.