this post was submitted on 20 Jan 2024
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libre

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FreeTube - The Private YouTube Client (freetubeapp.io)
submitted 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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I just wanted to share a program I've been using quite a lot recently which is Freetube.

FreeTube is what YouTube should have been: an ad-free, hackable, curated feed of videos from only the creators I enjoy. The app has a small developer base but is very complete with all the essential features.

FreeTube can either source videos from YouTube or Invidious depending on what you prefer, it also has additional settings for importing and exporting history and subscriptions, changing the user interface/player, and neat things like DeArrow video titles for less click-baity thumbnails.

The app is cross-platform though my preferred method is installing via flatpak on Linux.

Limitations: It is a "read-only" interface to YouTube, meaning that commenting, uploading videos, personalized recommendations and other YouTube provided services will not be available. Think of this as Invidious on the desktop.

"I have not used the YouTube app/website for over a year and a half. It's going to stay that way"

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 8 months ago

I don’t begrudge these YouTube straw-hat-pirates projects at all, but ultimately we’ve got to get independent of Google somehow. PeerTube seems like a good direction, but people making a buck from YouTube aren’t likely to just up and move there. Video production is a lot of labor.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Hmm well on mobile size display it doesn't quite scale down perfectly. but it's close. It also doesn't seem to do wayland natively so the text is blurry, but I'm going to try a workaround to enable that. Seems pretty lightweight for an electron app

edit: running flatpak with --socket=wayland and the app with --ozone-platform=wayland seems to work great, no more fuzzy text

the picture-in-picture mode button obscures the fullscreen button and I wish it used all the available width in portrait mode, rather than always having borders, but this overall is still great, considering it obviously wasn't designed for mobile

[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 months ago

This seems really cool, built-in sponsor block and chapter support are big improvements on Invidious

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

very nice I wonder if it scales down to mobile UI size cleanly. Also wonder if the performance is good enough for a slow mobile platform like the pinephone but hey worth a shot. I've got a DIY'ed chromecast alternative that runs on a raspberry pi, and watch a lot of youtube videos through mpv or invidious, but I find myself going back to youtube proper for discovery (my watch history is turned off so I "only" get subscriptions, but I do get per-video recommendeds as well, just not personalized.

edit: ooh it looks like it scales down pretty well, gonna install it on mobile too. would be nice to stop using youtube proper at all, and if I can port my subscriptions this might do it

edit 2: this also seems a lot more user friendly and thought out than other attempts I've seen at the same type of app, like newpipe and others

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

This one's great, if you wanna hide your IP from Google servers for whatever reason you can make it proxy through your invidious instance on top of sourcing from it. (enable proxy, disable fallback to non-preferred backend), also way more user-friendly than a lot of other YouTube clients I've seen

I mainly use Piped in browser but I export subscriptions to Freetube every now and then as a backup for when the instance I use is down or being throttled hard, might switch entirely some time but I like not having to export my subscriptions every now and then for mobile