YouTube Vanced: Safe to Use?

Here’s everything about YouTube Vanced being safe:

The safety of Vanced is more complicated than it might seem.

The app has an established history of safety and success, and many users have had a great experience with it.

Despite that, Vanced is no longer universally safe, and installing it is a much riskier prospect than it used to be.

So if you want to learn all about how YouTube Vanced works exactly, then this article is for you.

Let’s get started!

YouTube Vanced: Safe to Use? (Everything to Know)

What Is YouTube Vanced? (3 Things)

That’s not the clearest answer.

Vanced used to be safe, but now it’s a riskier app to use?

What’s that about?

Well, it comes down to what Vanced is and a little bit about its history.

For starters, Vanced is an app that is designed to change your YouTube experience.

Basically, it tries to mimic the YouTube Premium experience without forcing you to subscribe to the service.

So, Vanced provides extra features and perks that usually cost money.

For a few years, Vanced did this successfully and safely.

A lot of users enjoyed it.

But, events have changed things considerably.

The short version is that Vanced is no longer under the support and development of its team.

It still exists, but no one is taking care of the software anymore.

I’ll get into why a bit later, but this is the major safety concern.

To skip a lot of complicated explanations, Vanced is a traditionally safe app that provides some nice perks.

But, without support, it will likely become a lot less safe over time.

With that in mind, let’s go over those perks, how they work, why they matter, and what you can expect moving forward.

#1 Ad Blocking

A young lady looking at her cell phone with a serious look.

Ads are the primary source of revenue for YouTube.

If you have used the platform at all, you have likely seen ads embedded into videos.

They may show up before a video plays, at the end of a video, or anywhere in the middle.

Often, the ads are disruptive to the content viewing experience, and plenty of users dislike seeing ads.

YouTube Premium offers an ad-free experience, and Vanced tries to emulate this experience for its users.

When working properly, Vanced blocks all embedded ads, so your video won’t unexpectedly cut to ad content.

Keep in mind that this only applies to ads that are added on to video content.

Many YouTube content creators have sponsors and do in-video ads for sponsors.

Those kinds of ads are not removed by Vanced because they are part of the original content upload.

In case this isn’t clear, imagine these two examples.

In the first, you’re watching Mark Rober explain how he built a giant water gun.

In the middle of the video, Rober is cut away and you see an ad for laundry detergent that clearly has nothing to do with the video you were watching.

This is an embedded ad.

Now, let’s say you’re watching similar content, and at some point during the video, Rober goes off on a tangent talking about Brilliant.

It seems like an ad, but Rober is still the one talking. This is sponsored content, and it’s the kind of ad that Vanced cannot remove.

All of that said, one of the primary appeals of using Vanced is that it gets rid of the pesky embedded ads.

#2 Background Play

Happy woman browsing media in the night at home

Another perk of YouTube Premium is background play.

This prevents videos from automatically pausing when you navigate away from the YouTube app (or browser).

Even when your screen is locked, the video can still play.

It’s a nice feature if you want to use YouTube to listen to music, podcasts, or other content while you do things besides stare at the video.

It’s a nice perk.

This is another perk that Vanced emulates.

It essentially provides the same experience, but you don’t have to pay a regular subscription fee to YouTube in order to enjoy it.

#3 Themes

Happy pensive woman using digital tablet at home.

The last nice perk of Vanced is themes.

You can download from a wide range of themes to change your experience.

The themes impact the visuals around YouTube and can have fun interactions.

New themes are added on a regular basis, so you don’t have to settle for the same theme forever.

If this kind of content is enjoyable, then themes add another dimension to how you can get the most from YouTube and Vanced in general.

How Is YouTube Vanced Safe? (3 Points)

Happy young woman smiling while using laptop at house.

The reason Vanced was so safe for so long is that it’s designed well.

It’s an app that does exactly what it claims to do, and it pulls off adding features to YouTube without any major drawbacks.

In particular, Vanced is safe in terms of legality, design, and performance.

#1 Legality

Young female lawyer wearing glasses while working on her laptop at the office.

Using Vanced is in a gray area of legality.

On the one hand, it’s an app that operates well within what software is allowed to do.

More specifically, it’s an add-on that changes the user experience when they interact with YouTube.

That’s not a violation of copyright law or other regulations.

On the other hand, YouTube Vanced may infringe YouTube’s terms of service.

That said, Vanced was issued a cease and desist from Google in 2021.

The issue here is that Vanced used the name “YouTube” in the names and descriptions of the app without the express consent of YouTube or Google.

So, in that sense, Vanced was violating copyright regulations.

But, that violation doesn’t extend to users.

If you downloaded or installed Vanced at any point, you were not violating copyright laws.

What you did was perfectly legal, so you don’t need to be worried on that front.

#2 Design

A happy woman hanging on social media on the phone and drinking

Outside of legality, there are concerns about how Vanced actually works.

Does it brick phones?

Does it mess up YouTube?

Is it safe to use in that sense?

For the most part, Vanced is perfectly safe in terms of design.

Installing it does not expose your phone to exploits or bugs that break the phone or anything attached to the phone.

Vanced doesn’t put you at a higher risk of getting malware or being hacked.

Also, a lot of people have used Vanced, and the general consensus is that it doesn’t impact the YouTube experience in any negative way.

Certainly, some bugs have come up in the years that Vanced has been around, but the development team was quite proactive, and Vanced never earned a reputation for causing major or persistent problems for users.

#3 Performance

Motivated young woman listening to music with digital tablet on sofa at home.

Another issue that can come up with phone apps is performance.

Any app that is a resource hog can make the phone run slowly or hot.

It can introduce bugs that impact general phone performance.

How does Vanced stack up?

Once again, Vanced maintained a good reputation on this front.

It was never known to slow down phones by any noticeable degree.

It was a good app that was easy to use and get the perks you wanted out of it.

What Risks Are Associated With YouTube Vanced? (2 Dangers)

Woman using a cellphone and holding an apple.

So far, Vanced sounds pretty promising.

A lot of people have used it and had a good experience.

Why then, did I say it’s not really safe anymore?

It comes back to the cease and desist from Google.

Vanced has pulled the plug on the operation.

You can’t get the app directly from the developers anymore, and they aren’t still working on it.

There will never be another official update for Vanced (unless there are unexpected legal changes in the future).

So, any yet-undiscovered problem that shows up later with the app will never get fixed.

Specifically, the lack of support and official downloads create a lot of issues.

#1 Discontinued Support

Worried confused lady using cellphone, looking at screen.

This is one of the two primary concerns with Vanced safety (the other is discussed in the next section).

The primary problem with Vanced is that it is no longer officially supported.

If you go to the Vanced website, the app is unavailable, and instead, they have recommendations for alternative apps.

This means two things.

First, if you have Vanced installed, it isn’t going to get formal updates anymore.

So, if problems or exploits are discovered down the road, there’s no one around to fix them.

That means that Vanced can become a security and privacy risk over time.

A lack of support is a big deal for the safety of phone apps.

The other problem is that getting a copy of Vanced to download is no longer a reliable prospect.

Since you can’t get it directly from the app developers, anyone trying to install it now has to get it from unverified third parties.

Let’s talk about why that’s a problem.

#2 Unverified Downloads

Sad looking woman using her mobile phone outdoor.

When you source unverified parties for downloads, you don’t really know what you’re getting.

It’s entirely possible that you’ll find someone with a copy of Vanced who just wants to share the software. Everything could work out just fine.

Or, you could run into a scam download that actually has malware in it that harms your phone and gives you a hard time.

Just about anything is possible because there’s no longer a trusted, vetted place to get the download.

Even worse, Vance has a rooted version that you can run. This means that in order to use this type of Vance, you have to root the Android device.

The software run on a rooted device has more direct control over the phone, and malware on a rooted device can cause substantially more problems.

To keep it simple, when you root the device, you remove built-in controls in the Android system that prevent malicious software from having absolute control over the device.

Once you root your phone and these precautions are gone, malware can get a lot worse.

So, if you do want to look for Vanced these days, it’s probably best to use the non-rooted version.

Author

Theresa McDonough

Tech entrepreneur and founder of Tech Medic, who has become a prominent advocate for the Right to Repair movement. She has testified before the US Federal Trade Commission and been featured on CBS Sunday Morning, helping influence change within the tech industry.

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