2y ago

Wanted to share the libredirect Firefox plugin, for abandoning Youtube.

libredirect.github.io LibRedirect - privacy-friendly Redirector

A web extension that redirects YouTube, Twitter, Instagram... requests to alternative privacy friendly frontends and backends

This is a plugin I found recently and really enjoy. It gives you the opportunity to redirect several webpages to alternatives. For example Youtube to FreeTube or Piped. If I search for youtube in Firefox, FreeTube automatically opens and shows me my feed. I like it, I use it, I can recommend it.

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I keep thinking about installing this, but the required permissions seem a bit excessive:
This add-on needs to:
Input data to the clipboard
Access your data for all websites
Anyone know if the 'All Access' permission is really required for what this is doing? It just feels wrong. There isn't some sort of "Control Navigation for These Domains" that it could request for each enabled site or something is there?
- "Access your data for all websites" is important because otherwise it doesn't know what domain you're on in the first place.
  
  Access browser tabs
  Access browser activity during navigation
  are enough to do that.
  
  Shouldn’t it just require access to i.e. YouTube.com and not a blanket everything? This is what other extensions do.
- It's open source, you can ask the author and other users about it too (if you can't read the code yourself)
  
  Oh, I'm confident(-ish) in my ability to review the code, but as I understand it I have no way to guarantee that the code that's on github is the code that AMO installs. Plus updates are automatic, so I have no way to ensure that something malicious won't be added anyway.
- It's open-source so you don't need to worry

I would suggest Redirector.
It lets you redirect any site you desire.
- Sadly the developer passed away. I found out after looking into the development when trying to edit some redirects brought my phone to its knees. It's a good extension, but clearly needs a bit of love.
  
  RIP Einar Egilsson
  
  Shit, that's my favorite redirect extension for Chrome.
- I use both, LibRedirect and Redirector for things that are not supported in LibRedirect.

It can also redirect Reddit links to alternative sites and I’m here for the Lemmy hate for Reddit. Sometimes the YT redirects fail to play but you can open a private window to bypass the addon and go straight to YouTube. I second OPs recommendation, for what that is worth.
- Unfortunatley Reddit's API changes broke LibReddit. Not sure about Teddit (I would assume so but there's no mention of it on their github).
  The TikTok frontend is my favorite for when someone links me to it, totally cuts out all the garbage and just shows the video.
  
  LibReddit does work?
  I use it with LibRedirect, sometimes they block instances, you can switch to the next one in the addon

I will take a look, but can anyone offer suggestions for casting from my phone? Over the years I have become very accustomed to setting up a YouTube casting queue when I start my remote work shift and just letting it play all day as background noise and as much as I hate YT, I love the creators I watch and the convenience. I am very much so ambivalent about the abuses vs my mental well-being for work.
- Take a look at ReVanced
  
  Unfortunately both ReVanced and ReVanced Extended do not support casting. Just tested it. The whole issue is that I need it put onto the TV, which they unfortunately can not do. I will be keeping them for when I am watching on my phone, so thank you for that.
- SmartTubeNext
  
  Unfortunately, much like ReVanced, does not support Chromecast.

I was reading the name as "lib-redirect" lol
Also, spanish is my native language
Edit: argh maybe it's LibRedirect indeed
- If I were to guess, I'd say it's libre-redirect, with the middle 're' being deduplicated.
- Ahhh, so it's meant to say libre direct.
- English is mine and I've been reading it the same way as you up until you just mentioned it.

This still can't be installed on standard FireFox mobile, right?
- on android you can enable "share"/"open in external app" and send the link to piped or newpipe or whatever your preferred app is; that's how I do it
  
  Yeah, that's what I currently do. I'm just constantly annoyed how restricted I seem to be in Firefox mobile in general with add-ons. No scripting add-on, no redirect add-on, no User Agent add-on. I still run Firefox as my main on all devices, but using it on mobile is definitely my least favorite.
- On Android, I recommend the UntrackMe app. It basically does the same as LibRedirect. You can also use this hack to install desktop extensions like LibRedirect in Firefox Mobile, it requires Fennec Nightly (essentially the Firefox beta version) or Mull (hardened Firefox which is built from Fennec Nightly) though.
- Not currently, but Mozilla has announced a "dramatic" increase in the available extensions for mobile coming in December, so, fingers crossed.
  (as others have pointed out you can with Firefox Nightly and a custom collection)
- It works fine on Fennec, Beta, Nightly, and others using custom collection.
  
  I thought someone might say that, lol. It's good to know this extension will work that way. I have at least one extension that when using the custom collection method causes none of the extensions in the collection to load or work.
- Sadly not, no.

Any reason for making a new extension instead of creating a FastForward filter list?
- Never heard of Fast Forward before, only LibRedirect. How do they compare?
  Edit: They appear to be totally different use cases
  
  Same use case, different intentions. Both can redirect sites based on domain.

I'd like for connect to redirect links of a certain kind. I don't always want stuff to end up in my YouTube app, would rather that it opened in piped or something instead.

Any chance it only redirects the watch URLs on YouTube? So you can use YouTube to find the videos and on clicking them links it takes you elsewhere?
- Nope, for that you should use something like Redirector, but I don't think it allows random instance selection.
- You can exclude https://youtube.com/ from redirection, that way, the YouTube homepage won't be redirected, but all videos will be.
- This would be the ideal plugin behavior.

67 comments