How to watch Youtube videos on a Windows Phone 7.8

tl;dr use ytclone.com or genmirror.com to open a working desktop version of Youtube in any browser, Ytclone allows you to use the Filter feature, Genmirror loads a bit quickier. This will probably work on a Windows Phone 7.5 too, but I can't test that.
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Basically, Google changed the Youtube API in 2015, third-part softwares and apps had to be updated to keep working, that didn’t happened on any Windows 7.8 apps since the OS is pretty much abandoned. The browser version of Youtube stopped working because Google wanted to, they arbitrarily decided to not allow HTML5 videos to play even though the OS is completely capable of handling them.

Of course, I didn’t know that when Youtube first stopped working, at first, the third-part app I used stopped working, it would just open the browser version, which would sometimes work and sometimes show that dammed “Sorry, we can't play this file on your phone” message. It seemed like clearing the cache and/or restart the phone made things better, after a week or so, nothing would make the video start. How did I know that wasn’t some screw up from the actual phone? Because downloading the videos would work normally, most Youtube apps and the UC Browser has this feature, so the phone could play that freaking file!

After lots of fruitless Google searches, I thought maybe I could trick browser Youtube into thinking this is not a Windows Phone, I started to search for proxies, most of them did not worked, but one of them did, which was Genmirror. I have no idea why did this one worked and the others didn’t, I tried all possible combinations of SLL and cryptography and whatever, they would load Youtube, always the desktop version, but the video wouldn’t open.

Also, while searching for proxies, I found a Youtube mirror called Ytclone, it’s not a proxy as far as I can tell, it’s literally an exact clone of Youtube. I prefer this method since it lets me filter the searches.

Both of these should be filled with advertising, but they are not, because no one wants to advertise on a Windows 7.8, you will only see empty spaces where the ads are supposed to be, the pages are a bit slow since they are the desktop version, but the videos themselves run smoothly, I not sure if the quality is in High Definition (720p) or Enhanced Definition (480p).


Written on 15/02/2016