I watch YouTube when I eat etc. I pretty much solely watch gameplays. Is there any alternative? Or an opensource way to view YouTube? I don’t want to use Twitch because Amazon and I grew out of enjoying streamers in my late teens and it’s been a while since.
Edit: I don’t ever use it on mobile. Desktop via Firefox only.
NewPipe. Newpipe is feature rich and does not require an account. It holds all subscriptiouns localy and does not use the API. Customizable and had tons of features.
Libretube is better as for me
Also a grat option! To each his own.
Since we’re on Lemmy, which uses ActivityPub, I’d first recommend using PeerTube since it’s also a fediverse ActivityPub platform. But it’s pretty small right now.
Alternatively, Odysee has an established creator base and it’s easy for YouTubers to sync video uploads, so it has a real chance at becoming mainstream if we can push adoption outside of the tech-sphere.
In terms of just YouTube privacy-respecting frontends, with your browser I recommend using Piped or Invidious.
For more instances for privacy-respecting front-ends, this link is a good resource. Furthermore, you could consider installing the LibRedirect extension to automatically redirect you to privacy-respecting frontends.
On Android, I strongly recommend downloading LibreTube or NewPipe from the F-Droid store. LibreTube is actually really pretty, so I prefer it to ReVanced on that basis as it doesn’t require any level of login to manage a subscription list I think. Newpipe is already very well established and I use it personally, very good app.
Happy to answer any questions, but I’m not an engineer, I’m just a guy :p
Peertube is simply not good however. I encourage people to try it but it’s just not even remotely close to YouTube content.
For now I think Newpipe is a much, much better choice.
I think Lemmy is good enough to replace Reddit though, which is why I’m here so much. :)
I agree that it’s not fully “there” yet, but it won’t get “there” without users engaging with the videos. I try to use PeerTube for any YouTube creator I enjoy that uploads there. For example, Linux Experiment has started uploading there so I’ll be tuning in weekly to see his news updates.
Let’s still support upcoming platforms where we can :)
For desktop: Piped or Invidious instances, like piped.kavin.rocks
If you want to completely get rid of YouTube, then PeerTube or Odysee is nice.
On desktop there’s Freetube, which is an accountless youtube frontend, which I’ve basically been daily driving for over a year now. It’s not the best experience in the world, as it still lacks some features like playlists.
Newpipe is an open source youtube client, unfortunatly it’s missing any features that require an account.
If you want those features check out Revanced, a patched youtube app. Unfortunetly since Revanced uses the stock youtube app its not fully open source.
If you decide to use revanced be careful as there are a lot of fake websites. The real one is revanced.app or the github. You also need to patch the app yourself.
I confirm this is the greatest front end out there (excluding YouTube front end)
I’m Elon Musk
Revanced on android has been good for me lately
Also this. Apparently revanced also works on the reddit app.
newpipe on android is a way to view youtube, invidious on desktop, i dunno about ios, peertube is the federated alternative to youtube but it’s gonna be a bit before it gets good.
for android, i recommend newpipe and libreture. in my experience, newpipe is more stable but you can give those two a try and see what you prefer.
Edit: I don’t ever use it on mobile. Desktop via Firefox only.
An Invidious instance or
mpv
(withyt-fzf
for example).Personally, I use
yt-fzf
for searching (no thumbnails though) andnewsboat
(a cli rss reader) for subscribing to YouTube channels then I can load up videos from there tompv
. I just press the “o” key on my keyboard when a new video comes out and it plays onmpv
.You can try NewPipe if you’re on Android Ü
I mainly use it for YouTube myself but you can use it for other sites aswell.
If you want a way to view YouTube with no ads, no trackers and with dislikes, Vanced is the way to go. As far as I know their github is still active.
Rumble is a major one, but they’re more well-known for housing creators that have been banned from mainstream platforms, like Andrew Tate, Sneako, Donald Trump, etc.
On desktop, first try VLC Media Player. It’s very good for streams and videos on both YouTube and Twitch. Failing that, mpv is also very good.
If you’d just prefer a website, have a look at Piped. Invidious and CloudTube are also good, but they can be a bit hit-and-miss with which videos they can play, in my experience; and Invidious is also currently being attacked by Google’s lawyers.
Piped: https://piped.video
Instances: https://github.com/TeamPiped/Piped/wiki/InstancesInvidious: https://invidious.io/ Instances: https://api.invidious.io/
More alternative frontends https://github.com/digitalblossom/alternative-frontends#youtube
I’ve been alternating between using Invidious and Piped in the past week or so, which are both open-source ways to access Youtube videos.
Piped seems to be more consistent with fetching captions, so I’m leaning towards that. You can setup an addon like LibRedirect to change any YouTube URLs to whatever instance of Piped or Invidious (and a couple others I haven’t checked out).
LibreTube is what I’ve been using on Android since Youtube Vanced died.