I'm currently in the process of switching from YouTube to Piped and was getting fed up with rewriting YouTube links myself. I finally found an extension that can do this with a relatively easy setup:
Thought maybe more people might find this interesting. My setup is in the pic.
Edit:
@nutbutter@discuss.tchncs.de Just suggested using LibRedirect which is even better than Redirector. Also since Redirector isn't really maintained anymore.
There is an extension called LibRedirect that does this. It's customisable, as in, we can set if we want to redirect to piped or invidious, and which specific instances to use. Not only just YouTube but other services like GitHub to Gothub, Twitter to Nitter, reddit to libreddit etc. The default settings are already great.
It is, but it already has all the services that most would use with big QoL features compared to Redirector. Namely quickly adding and removing instances, and quickly enabling and disabling redireciton for specific services. And is a lot easier to use in general especially for people who don't know regex.
Plus Libredirect has a few features that redirector doesn't, the ability to redirect to multiple different instances, and the ability to redirect embedded content such as any embedded youtube videos on any other website.
But as you said, redirector is more flexible if you need it for something other than the ~20 services that LibRedirect handles.
Piped redirect is too early, YouTube is still actively opposing attempts like Piped and because of that Piped only works sometimes, on certain instances, and that's not what anyone wants. It's worse than having a predictable ad skip to navigate.
I applaud the effort, but the Piped application needs to be stabilized. Not at all ready for prime time.
As much as I like the effort, I fear that if it reaches a critical mass of popularity, Youtube will find a way to oppose it even more, making the experience shittier for everyone involved.
Well I've been using it for a while now on android and can't complain. I don't miss any videos from channels I'm subscribed to and It's waaay better than using YouTube privacy-wise.
As long as it works I'll be using it.
I dont have this problem. But maybe your instance or browser is causing problems? Kavin.rocks was causing problems for me in LibreTube, but this was fixed after switching to piped.yt.
Never used Piped but I'm intrigued. Will addons like Enhancer for YouTube, SponsorBlock, and Return YouTube Dislike work on it? Does it show comments? Will HDR videos show in HDR?
YT addons generally don't work on Piped, but some of the most popular ones are already built in, like SponsorBlock, DeArrow and Dislike. It does show comments, but you can't post any comments yourself. HDR videos should work since it's just pulling the video files directly from YT servers.
You can just try it out, simply replace "www.youtube.com" with "piped.video" in any YT video or channel url.