Google officially dropped support for iOS 9 nearly three years ago. However, a niche community of developers has kept the lights on. Enter the solution:

For many, an old iPad 2, iPad mini, or iPhone 4S running iOS 9.3.5 is considered a "brick" in 2026. Official app support is gone, and the App Store tells you to "Update to iOS 14 or higher" just to watch a video.

This is a fork of the popular uYouPlus project. It aims to replicate the functionality of Android's Vanced for iOS, offering ad-blocking, return of the dislike button, and background playback. It is tailored to work on older iOS versions via side loading.

If you still see this screen after installing the IPA, your spoofed version number in the Info.plist file has likely become outdated. YouTube periodically deprecates older version numbers on their servers. Use Filza to find the current version string of the official app on a modern iOS device, and copy that number into your iOS 9 device's Info.plist . App Crashes Instantly Upon Launch

Before diving into the IPA, you must understand the problem. iOS 9.3.5 represents the end of the line for 32-bit Apple devices. The last official YouTube app for this OS was version 14.x, released back in 2015.

Strips out heavy modern telemetry scripts to run smoothly on older A5 and A6 Apple processors. Troubleshooting Common Issues

: Forced 360p or 480p streaming to prevent buffering on aging Wi-Fi chips and processors. 🛠️ Common Installation Methods

(Only works if you have a paid Apple Developer Account) Step-by-Step Guide to Install YouTube IPA

The Ultimate Guide to YouTube IPA for iOS 9.3.5: Legacy Streaming Restored

Sideloadly will unpack, sign, and install the YouTube app onto your legacy device.

Grab the last compatible YouTube IPA for iOS 9 (usually a variant of version ). You can find archived IPAs on databases like the Internet Archive Install the IPA via or sideload it from a PC using tools like Sideloadly 4. Edit the Info.plist file (The "Spoof" Trick)

Finding the file is only step one. iOS 9.3.5 is notoriously difficult to sideload onto because Apple deprecated the ability to install apps via iTunes 12.6.5. Here is the current method.

But for a specific, stubborn subset of the internet, the YouTube experience is entirely different. It is cleaner. It is ad-free. It allows videos to play in the background while the screen is locked. And it runs on hardware that Apple long ago declared obsolete.

Using an exclusive IPA is a legally. It violates YouTube’s Terms of Service. Google does not actively ban users for this (they ignore legacy traffic), but theoretically, your account could receive a temporary lockout if the app sends malformed requests.