Prodigus

 

A quick and simple YouTube browser that, through a loophole in YouTube’s end user license agreement, does not display preroll advertisements before videos.

Initial release: 2013

Features: Dynamic video loading; no preroll ads; video minimization.

Media coverage:

Relevant links:


Prodigus was my second shot at releasing an app to the App Store. At the time of release, YouTube had a clause in their EULA which allowed “unsupported” browsers to not display the preroll adverts (which used Flash) before videos (which used HTML5).

I took advantage of this by designing an app that spoofed the user agent, telling YouTube that Prodigus was an unsupported browser, and in turn I was able to skip the preroll advertisements. This was unfortunately rendered undoable with the advent of HTML5 preroll ads and the deprecation of browsers which couldn’t support it.


Screenshots:

Splash screen.

 

Results of a search for “Apple.”

 

Video player.