PCAPdroid VS NewPipe

PCAPdroid (version 1.6.9): No-root network monitor and traffic dump tool for Android devices

PCAPdroid mitm (version 16): Mitm addon for PCAPdroid

https://github.com/emanuele-f/PCAPdroid is very good, shows content too (for http)

There's also PCAPdroid [1] which you can run straight from your phone with no root. Works with https traffic too when you enable the mitm setting.

[1]: https://github.com/emanuele-f/PCAPdroid

Also whenever I mess around with http stuff I like to use tools like Fiddler Classic (PC) and PCAPdroid (Android) to know what I need to do vs. what I'm sending/requesting. With this you can perform the desired action manually while capturing all the packets of that action with headers. Then when you replicate the functionality, you capture the packets again and compare both to verify that your code behaves identically/similarly to what you manually did.

Try PCAPdroid. It'll show the app as well as the destination IP.

PCAPdroid (version 1.5.1): No-root network monitor and traffic dump tool for Android devices

I'm rather fond of PCAPdroid, just leave everything to default and start monitoring. Ideally you should only see ~100b be sent via netd and nothing else if you are not using your phone (and disabled background update checks in say NetGuard, Firefox, etc.). It takes up the VPN slot so be aware of that.

PCAPdroid should do the same thing

Just use NewPipe. It's just a better Youtube client even if it had ads.

https://newpipe.net/

I have a 3G device still able to watch YT and a very old Kindle Fire that has NewPipe [1] installed for watching YT in bed (whilst my phone is on charge).

I don't see why not either - if the device was capable of H264 when it was released, why not now?

[1] https://newpipe.net/

There is nothing you can do yourself as an app user, see https://github.com/TeamNewPipe/NewPipe/issues/9764. The current situation will be improved by https://github.com/TeamNewPipe/NewPipe/pull/10580.

NewPipe

NewPipe on Android is also unaffected.