Freetube is the best way to watch YouTube
Freetube is the best way to watch YouTube
Customize YouTube to work exactly the way you want it to.
I'm not sure it's the "best" way, but it's a solid alternative, and receives rapid updates when YouTube moves to break things.
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.today/post/15571129
I'm using this all the time myself. There is no login to YouTube required and it supports adding subscriptions and doing everything important you can do on YouTube.
And the best part is no ads whatsoever.
SmartTube is pretty great for android TV.
47Yaaa.
And I use Enhancer for YouTube™ on desktop Firefox on my Bazzite PC.
And Tubular on my Android phone.
19For people who are okay with using YT's official frontend, I couldn't recommend Enhancer for Youtube™ more.
2
It's annoying though that you can't save videos to lists or subscribe to channels without logging in to youtube account.
2It's using the YouTube API, so that makes sense. The developer likely wants to keep the app focused and reduce the amount of feature creep, hence reusing YouTube's standard subscription and list systems rather than building their own. That's also what the majority of users expect - if someone subscribes to a YouTube channel on one device, they'd expect to be subscribed to it on all devices.
1Just make a dummy account for only that if you don’t want to mix yours into YT
1
Other benefits:
- Multiple subscription profiles, so you can organize your subscribed channels into groups. "I want to watch stuff about cars and motorcycles - I choose 'Motoring.'"
- SponsorBlock
- No stupid recommendations to drag you into despair, hate watching, and misinformation.
- Ability to never show shorts.
Downside:
- Max 1080
36Seeing how I invested in an 144Hz monitor instead of a Hi-Res one, I see no issues here!
Will check it out!
8I still don't think that I've ever seen a 4k image or video. plenty of morons out there sliding the quality up to 4k and going "Look at how good it looks!" whole I know full well their screen is at 1080 and I internally cringe.
But yeah, late 2024 and I've still never even seen a 4k screen to my knowledge.
At least not in person and not rebroadcast to a 1080 TV. So it doesn't count.
1
You can add mpv to FreeTube as an external player. With yt-dlp, it supports playing YouTube videos directly and in any quality. It also has a plugin for SponsorBlock integration.
6Yeah, I use MPV as a external player and it's great because you can highly customize the way you watch videos. I like equalize the sound and through a MPV script I save the video from cache with a keystroke if I liked it. Sadly watching with subtitles stopped working some weeks ago.
4
There is also an Android fork which works amazingly well.
3Here.
3is this on their git or fdroid by chance?
1
I'm certainly concerned that now that this software has been covered in PopSci; that it will certainly suffer a needless onslaught of DMCA and other lawsuit-related shenanigans. >_>
14Out of curiosity, what's is better about it than YouTube?
Vanilla YouTube is obvious, but I've got ublock origin , sponsor block and that thing that renames stuff to non click bait.
It all just works and I don't get adds and I keep all my sub's and still get useful suggestions.
On android i just use revanced.
So, what's the pull of downloading a 3rd party for Linux / PC?
14For me it's not just about ads, it's also about surveillance. With FreeTube you can have subscriptions without needing a linked YouTube account, and all the subscription/watch history data is stored locally. So, it's a good opt-out of Google/YouTube surveillance. And you can import/export subscriptions if you need to transfer to another device. I happen to use FreeTube for this because it is frequently updated and I like the setup, but other options exist - I'm not really promoting this option over other options, just raising some awareness about it.
19I've tried a few different front ends for fun in the past and they're fun to tinker with, I'll admit. I don't think I used freetube.
Also it was some months ago, but the biggest issue I found was that I couldn't sync watch lists. I could add subs and things but if I watched something on my phone, whatever front-end on my computer would tell me I still hadn't watched that video and recommend it.
Is there a way around this? Because, that's a huge deal breaker for me. As an end goal, I want less Google in my life, but there are certain inconveniences I am unwilling to tolerate (however seemingly small lol).
Anyway, I may start tinkering again soon. Thanks for the reply!
7@Flatworm7591 @y0kai all from above plus you have a full view of your subscriptions in chronological order and you can organize your subs how you want (per subject for exemple)
3
that thing that renames stuff to non clickbait
Sounds like something I'd use, what is it called?
3Sorry, I'd have said the name initially, I've just got one of those brains that doesn't always cooperate when it's needed.
Anyway, it's called "Dearrow" and it's pretty cool. Check it out!
8
Grayjay and Freetube are both fine but different.
For some reason, Freetube currently works well, Grayjay needs iOS fallback and barely works.
Grayjay follows the bigger, already implemented idea of combining multiple platforms. This is a great UX and smooth fallback when Youtube blocks again, or permanently.
Accounts can link multiple platforms, so switching is easier.
It also allows commenting, livechat, on the platforms and has on the polycentric protocol, connecting all others.
Also, it has Sponsorblock integration.
13@boredsquirrel@slrpnk.net I like GrayJay, even tho I find their integration of PeerTube quite lacking.
@Flatworm7591@lemmy.dbzer0.com
2Yes, I also dont understand why Peertube works so badly. It is one of the platforms with the most quality content, but its decentralization really makes it require an app.
sepiasearch.org helps here, to connect all instances and index them
2
Freetube does have SponsorBlock and DeArrow integration as well.
2Oh cool didnt know that
2
You can donate to them, can't you?
9Thanks for the reminder: Donate link
9
... on computer.
9Unofficially on Android too.
8Now that's more like it. However for android Android (phone, tablet) I already have NewPipe I'm happy with. Does FreeTube work well on Android TV? I use SmartTube and it's good but it's not perfect.
4
There is no shortage on frontend alternatives for PC… but somehow I have yet to find anything worth mentioning for iOS
3iOS
I'm sorry but there likely never be a long-term alternative for free software such as this on that platform. Neither you nor the developer has much say on how to use it.
3
Freetube exists for Android also.
1
I use grayjay but this looks great for finding new stuff to watch and customizability!
4I've been using FreeTube for a while and it's great. It allows me to customise my feed to only include content from my subscriptions and filter out any recommendations designed to keep me on the platform for as long as possible.
3I like Clipious with Invidious
2Isn't this exactly like the original YouTube?
They get users to provide free content with the impression it is a genuine grassrots community then when the site becomes popular enough they cash in. imdb was like this too.
2Did you mean to reply to a comment?
Freetube is a frontend client that uses YouTube.
5Sorry, I didn't read the article. Thanks for picking me up on it.
I just use my Brave browser which avoids ads and doesn't require login but I see now that FreeTube offers a few customisation features and allows you to import your subscriptions.
And there are privacy benefits too. With Freetube your watch history is stored only on your computer, not YouTube’s servers
Really? I imagine it is free because FreeTube collect data on you.
0
Is there anything similar that works on iOS and tvOS? That’s where most of my YouTube viewing is done.
1