Pocketwatch

A phone and tablet client for YouTube

Forked from yuliskov/SmartTube

Upstream SmartTube is built exclusively for Android TV — its interface is Leanback, designed for a remote control and a 10-foot viewing distance, and it explicitly does not support phones. This fork replaces that interface with a touch-first one while reusing upstream's entire presenter and playback layer unchanged.

Warning

Early beta. Version 0.1.0. It runs, plays video and is usable day to day, but it is not feature-complete against upstream — see Status. Signed builds are on the Releases page, or build it yourself from Build.

What this fork changes

Upstream already separates presenters from views: everything in the common module is UI-agnostic and contains no Leanback code, and ViewManager maps each view interface to an activity. That mapping is the only seam this fork touches.

Layer	Status
Data, networking, playback engine	Upstream, unchanged
Presenters (common)	Upstream, plus two small hooks
Views	Rewritten for touch

Because the shared layer is untouched, upstream fixes remain mergeable.

Status

Working

• Browse — bottom navigation, with an overflow sheet so any number of pinned sections is reachable
• Responsive grids and shelves — column count follows screen width, so tablets get more columns
• Player — video, seek bar, all 24 of upstream's player actions, double-tap-to-seek, landscape fullscreen
• Comments — shown inline beneath the video actions, paging as you scroll
• Settings and context menus as bottom sheets
• Search with live suggestion chips and voice input
• Channel, channel uploads, sign-in, add-device, in-app browser
• Light and dark themes following the system setting

Not done yet

• No MediaSession, so no background-audio controls or notification
• No trigger to enter picture-in-picture (the manifest supports it)
• SponsorBlock segments are skipped but not shaded on the seek bar
• No storyboard thumbnails when scrubbing
• Rotate and flip appear for parity but are inert; they need a TextureView-backed surface
• Auto Frame Rate and screen dimming are TV-oriented and carried over untouched
• Tablet layout is responsive but not specifically designed
• The Leanback code is still in the tree, unreachable through ViewManager

Signing in is required for the Home feed — that is upstream behaviour, not a fork limitation. Other sections work signed out.

Build

No releases are published. Build from source:

git clone --recursive git@github.com:alkevintan/Pocketwatch.git
cd Pocketwatch
chmod +x gradlew
./gradlew :smarttubetv:assembleStfdroidDebug

Notes that will save you time:

• --recursive matters. settings.gradle reads build constants from the SharedModules submodule, so without submodules the project will not even sync. If you already cloned, run git submodule update --init --recursive.
• JDK 17. Gradle 7.5 and AGP 7.4.2 do not support JDK 21, which is what current Android Studio bundles. Set JAVA_HOME to a JDK 17 before building.
• lint and instrumentation tests fail, on this fork and on upstream alike — Espresso 3.2.0 against targetSdk 34 produces a manifest merge error. Unrelated to these changes.

APKs land in smarttubetv/build/outputs/apk/<flavor>/<type>/. Install the split matching your device ABI (arm64-v8a for most phones).

Flavors

Flavor	applicationId
ststable	io.github.alkevintan.pocketwatch
stbeta	io.github.alkevintan.pocketwatch.beta
stfdroid	io.github.alkevintan.pocketwatch.fdroid

The applicationId differs from upstream's, so this installs alongside SmartTube rather than replacing it. The Java package namespace is deliberately left as upstream's to keep merges tractable.

Firebase and Crashlytics are disabled: upstream's google-services.json is tied to their Firebase project and cannot work under a different applicationId.

Contributing

Issues and pull requests are welcome, but note this is a personal fork maintained in spare time.

Bugs in playback, data loading or settings behaviour most likely belong upstream, since that code is shared. Report here anything about layout, touch interaction, navigation or the mobile player UI.

Licence and attribution

MIT, inherited from upstream. Original work is Copyright (c) 2020-present yuliskov — see LICENSE. All credit for SmartTube and everything this fork stands on belongs to yuliskov and the SmartTube contributors.

Not affiliated with, endorsed by or supported by upstream SmartTube, Google or YouTube. MIT grants no trademark rights; the SmartTube name is used only to describe this project's origin.