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Watching YouTube in Leopard Webkit (fix?)

Appleuser201

Appleuser201

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Oct 12, 2018
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Some users have mentioned Webkit not working well with youtube anymore and lacking features such as full screen...
No fullscreen option can be a problem and also the fact that WebKit loads the old style of youtube (and most of the web too)
A user on here by MrPilot had sent me a video a couple of months ago of playing desktop Youtube on a 1ghz Powerbook G4.

The thing is, Webkit rendered youtube... in its new form in this video and gave the option for both full screen and miniplayer.
I just can't remember where to switch UA's, my UA must be on IE9 or some other older UA which explains the lack of features and old design and incompatibility with some of the web.
If someone can tell us how to get the new desktop youtube design (plus the features that come with it) in Leopard WebKit, I think it could help us all out, especially those where fullscreen is important. Heres the video:
drive.google.com

g4_1ghz yt proof.mp4

drive.google.com drive.google.com
 
I know I don't ever comment on anything (I have lurked these forums for years before making an account earlier this year) but I have been able to watch YouTube fullscreen on my iMac G4 1Ghz without any issues at 360p using Webkit. All I have done was change the user agent to an iOS 13 iPad and that's about it. I would have to check exactly what I had used, but from memory I had used an iPhone UA for iOS 13 and changed it manually to render like the iPad.
 
Last edited:
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Switching user agents is from the Develop menu - just tested this one on my iBook 12" and it allows full screen playback on Youtube/Tonvid:

Mozilla/5.0 (iPad; U; CPU iPhone OS 5_0 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A334 Safari/7534.48.3

You can add the user agent permanently via the Terminal - I have done posts covering this a couple of years ago.
 
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Appleuser201 said:
Some users have mentioned Webkit not working well with youtube anymore and lacking features such as full screen...
Click to expand...

I suspect those same users have not properly enabled WebKit's advanced features so YouTube would recognize it's dealing with a little bit more than Safari 5...
 
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Tried finding my old posts but quite impossible since the forum site change, process for adding user agents via Terminal:

Copy existing user agent plist:
cp /Applications/Safari.app/Contents/Resources/UserAgents.plist ~/Desktop/

Open the file you just copied (now on your Desktop), and you’ll see all of the User Agent definitions. At the bottom add a separator, and a new definition:


<dict>
<key>separator</key>
<true/>
</dict>
<dict>
<key>name</key>
<string>iOS 5</string>
<key>version</key>
<string></string>
<key>platform</key>
<string>iPad 2</string>
<key>user-agent</key>
<string>Mozilla/5.0 (iPad; U; CPU iPhone OS 5_0 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A334 Safari/7534.48.3</string>
</dict>

Make sure you put this block before the ending </array></plist> tags.

Save and close. Now we want to copy the modified file back into Safari:

sudo cp ~/Desktop/UserAgents.plist /Applications/Safari.app/Contents/Resources/UserAgents.plist

Start Safari/LWK and you’ll see the new User Agent in the menu.

To set a default user agent:

defaults write com.apple.Safari CustomUserAgent "\"Mozilla/5.0 (iPad; U; CPU OS 3_2_2 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/531.21.10 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0.4 Mobile/7B500 Safari/531.21.10\""
 
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Dronecatcher said:
Tried finding my old posts but quite impossible since the forum site change, process for adding user agents via Terminal:

Copy existing user agent plist:
cp /Applications/Safari.app/Contents/Resources/UserAgents.plist ~/Desktop/

Open the file you just copied (now on your Desktop), and you’ll see all of the User Agent definitions. At the bottom add a separator, and a new definition:


<dict>
<key>separator</key>
<true/>
</dict>
<dict>
<key>name</key>
<string>iOS 5</string>
<key>version</key>
<string></string>
<key>platform</key>
<string>iPad 2</string>
<key>user-agent</key>
<string>Mozilla/5.0 (iPad; U; CPU iPhone OS 5_0 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A334 Safari/7534.48.3</string>
</dict>

Make sure you put this block before the ending </array></plist> tags.

Save and close. Now we want to copy the modified file back into Safari:

sudo cp ~/Desktop/UserAgents.plist /Applications/Safari.app/Contents/Resources/UserAgents.plist

Start Safari/LWK and you’ll see the new User Agent in the menu.

To set a default user agent:

defaults write com.apple.Safari CustomUserAgent "\"Mozilla/5.0 (iPad; U; CPU OS 3_2_2 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/531.21.10 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0.4 Mobile/7B500 Safari/531.21.10\""
Click to expand...
I have had luck with YouTube on iOS 5 on the iPad 1. I forgot I could use mobile UA's, and I remember TFF has the iPad/Safari UA.
[automerge]1571327047[/automerge]
z970mp said:
I suspect those same users have not properly enabled WebKit's advanced features so YouTube would recognize it's dealing with a little bit more than Safari 5...
Click to expand...
Yeah, with the default settings, Webkit is not much more than a glorified Safari 5 with some security updates.
 
Webkit with the iOS 5 user agent, running 360P at just under 70% CPU on iBook 1.33 with option of full screen - about the best efficiency excepting SMTube.

Picture 4.jpg
 
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Does anyone running Leopard Webkit have a fix for the inability to scrub/change time of a YouTube video?

Maybe I am just missing something really obvious, but all features within mobile YouTube work very well except for this. No amount of clicking or dragging on the bar seems to have any effect. Not being able to skip to different parts in a video easily is VERY annoying. I've resorted to adding on "&t=###s" to the end of the video link to jump to "###" seconds into the video but that is just a time consuming workaround.

Also, are there any effective adblockers still working under Leopard WebKit in 2023?

It is shocking how functional this browser still is overall...especially when used with an HTTPS proxy to combat the lack of TLS 1.2/1.3 support.
 
socom_22 said:
Does anyone running Leopard Webkit have a fix for the inability to scrub/change time of a YouTube video?

Maybe I am just missing something really obvious, but all features within mobile YouTube work very well except for this. No amount of clicking or dragging on the bar seems to have any effect. Not being able to skip to different parts in a video easily is VERY annoying. I've resorted to adding on "&t=###s" to the end of the video link to jump to "###" seconds into the video but that is just a time consuming workaround.

Also, are there any effective adblockers still working under Leopard WebKit in 2023?

It is shocking how functional this browser still is overall...especially when used with an HTTPS proxy to combat the lack of TLS 1.2/1.3 support.
Click to expand...
I use this UA:

Mozilla/5.0 (Mobile; rv:48.0) Gecko/48.0 Firefox/48.0 KAIOS/2.0

I can drag the playhead along the timeline no problem in LWK.
 
Thanks for this Dronecatcher.

The UA that you use does address the time scrubbing issue. The UI looks different, which is totally fine, but there is seemingly no option to switch video resolutions? I was using 720p which plays without hiccup on my G5 but the UA that you use seems to default to a lower quality (480p I think).

I wonder if there's a custom UA that can do both.
 
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