this post was submitted on 13 Jun 2023
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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.

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[–] JackOfAllTraits@lemmy.world 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] xxferf@stars.leemoon.network 3 points 1 year ago

Libretube is better as for me

[–] frogman@beehaw.org 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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

[–] mrmanager 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

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. :)

[–] frogman@beehaw.org 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

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 :)

[–] pokkst@monero.town 8 points 1 year ago

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.

[–] chaercoffee@lemmy.one 4 points 1 year ago

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.

[–] communist@beehaw.org 4 points 1 year ago

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.

[–] orbit@beehaw.org 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Revanced on android has been good for me lately

[–] spirals@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

Also this. Apparently revanced also works on the reddit app.

[–] htmono@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

Revanced is amazing and does what it says it does. +1 from me too.

[–] Bandicoot_Academic@lemmy.one 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] poudlardo@terefere.eu 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I confirm this is the greatest front end out there (excluding YouTube front end)

I'm Elon Musk

[–] ppp@lemmy.one 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Edit: I don’t ever use it on mobile. Desktop via Firefox only.

An Invidious instance or mpv (with yt-fzf for example).

Personally, I use yt-fzf for searching (no thumbnails though) and newsboat (a cli rss reader) for subscribing to YouTube channels then I can load up videos from there to mpv. I just press the "o" key on my keyboard when a new video comes out and it plays on mpv.

[–] Nolando@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 1 year ago

Peertube, Odysee, and YouTube via Newpipe or another client/proxy are my first suggestions. I also enjoy some content from Nebula on occasion.

[–] Clbull@beehaw.org 1 points 1 year ago

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.

[–] kylian0087@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Take a look at Odysee. I even have a browser extention that redirects me from youtube to the video on Odysee if it is avilable their.

[–] motcho@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Looks very clean. But the issue to me and with a lot of new social media sites is the lack of population and thus the lack of content. I'll try to stick to Lemmy and give it a chance but yeah it is a huge barrier of entry for new competitors.

[–] pumpsnabben@beehaw.org 2 points 1 year ago

Just use the addon so when there is a video on YouTube also available on Odysee it will automatically switch to Odysee.

The platform makes it very easy for creators to simply duplicate their YouTube channel.

And lastly, how are we ever going to get an alternative to YouTube if people refuse to use the alternative.

[–] kylian0087@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

undefined> the lack of content.

I have the same issue. That is why i still use youtube for example but the extention allows me to slowly migrate to odysee. If the creator also uploads their videos to Odysee without me knowing the extention will make me aware of it by redirecting me to the Odysee variant of the video instead of youtube.

[–] motcho@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'm not the person you asked, but I did find this firefox add-on. I just installed it, but haven't really used it yet.

[–] hedge@beehaw.org 1 points 1 year ago

AlternativeTo has a lot of good suggestions for alternatives to just about everything software-related; it claims to list 145 alternatives to YouTube!

[–] spirals@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

There's LibRedirect for Firefox and Chrome on the PC.

[–] NonDollarCurrency@monero.town 1 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I personally self host my own Viewtube using docker and it works really well.

[–] Zebov@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Since you seem knowledgeable, I have a marginally related question. Do you know any dockers that can scrape a YouTube playlist automatically and put it in a Plex folder?

[–] bruhduh@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yt-dlp app can download playlists and whole channels also batch download supported, just set download to folder you need, from text file in which your channels/playlists listed, and add recurring cron job to repeat downloading new videos as they appear

[–] Zebov@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Hm, I'll have to try again with that. I tried a couple, but I think that one would download one or two videos then quit.

Appreciate the info!

[–] bruhduh@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

I had the same problem, to work properly app need to set proper arguments like "yt-dlp -abcd" and some people had problem with downloading speed, this problem was solved with usage of custom downloader option of yt-dlp, as custom downloader aria2 app was used with options to split downloaded file into 16 chunks downloaded in parallel, also as channels change names of videos you can accidentally download same file multiple times, to avoid that use dedication like fdupes or something, imo you should delve deeper into it and slap some bash script for your personal needs), then recurring cron job to repeat that script when you need it

[–] mikehunt@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

That looks amazing, thanks for bringing it to my attention.

[–] ComradeMiao@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

How was setting this up? This looks great but I am often bad at this.

[–] NonDollarCurrency@monero.town 1 points 1 year ago

Assuming you already have docker and docker compose set up on your server I just followed the docker compose file section on their installation wiki and got it working within minutes of deploying it.

[–] ComradeMiao@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Because YouTube videos keep getting deleted I download all my favorites and host on my Jellyfin server.

[–] Esca@lemmy.one 2 points 1 year ago

Same! So much better this way. I wrote my own program so it just automatically downloads new videos from channels I've told it I'm interested in, and then it puts it in the appropriate Jellyfin folder. Way more reliable this way, I don't miss videos. And I don't care if my internet shits the bed, it can take however long it wants to take to download and once it's there I can even watch it even with no internet. I even implemented sponsorblock in it so Jellyfin automatically skips sponsored segments.

[–] hellfire103@sopuli.xyz 1 points 1 year ago

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.

[–] XpeeN@sopuli.xyz 1 points 1 year ago

Piped and invidious (not always proxy videos by default so be aware)

[–] fwgx@f.fwgx.uk 1 points 1 year ago

What are you hoping to achieve here? If you just dont want the tracking then I've found Firefox containers and the CookieAutoDelete extensions to be excellent. Contain YouTube to its own container that no other site uses and as soon as the tab closes all the cookies are deleted too. Enable all the strict privacy controls in FF too.

[–] kek_w_lol@lemmy.one 1 points 1 year ago

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.

[–] hal_canary@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 1 year ago

in what way is watching YouTube on an open source web browser not open enough?

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