Blight upon you, Google, for fucking this up

So we took the upgrade onto Android 12 for my phone. It’s just nice, much has already been said about it so not going to repeat any of that. We do have one bone to pick and it is that the youtube app is now permanently installed onto the phone and it ignores any of the preferences you had set in Android 11. It just so happens we have NewPipe as my preferred app cos Reasons. Here’s my workaround for that.

Disable youtube app

Go to Settings → Apps → See All Apps.

Scroll to YouTube, tap it.

Tap disable. Android will put up a warning to scare you.

Tap Disable app.

Re-enable newpipe permissions and links

Tap back out to All Apps.

Scroll to NewPipe.

Tap Open by default.

Enable Open supported links.

In the list of Links to open in this app, enable the ones you want. We got lazy so we just enabled everything.

Exit out to your home screen.

There, you can now enjoy youtube videos in Android 12 without youtube trying to ram any of its paid options down your throat every other video.