- cross-posted to:
- piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com
- cross-posted to:
- piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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.
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i constantly gotta swap invidious instances because youtube is being relentless in their war against invidious.
but the ui is awesome and I use it every day.
apparently freetube automatically uses a new invidious instance every time it starts up.
It seems to be at random, and many of the instances don’t work correctly. You’re better off finding one that does, and setting it as default.
Or host your own :) less likely to be blocked by Google if it’s just you using it.
Invidious is awesome, if possible, self hosting one in docker is great and keeps it up to date
How do I go about doing that (finding a good one and setting it up)? Its been a month that either the video loads or it doesn’t and when it does work it is extremely slow to the point I can’t watch on 1080p.
honestly I keep a tab open with the list of invidious instances open. because every day I usually have to change the instance. or swap it around.
invidious is fighting youtube very hard, but youtube is fighting back. so its difficult to keep up with.
i would keep an eye on the invidious instances list. and change to a different one if need be.
Thanks for the reply! Just went through the whole list and none of the instances worked for me. I always get: “[invidious ](SyntaxError: Unexpected end of JSON input)”. Googling the error led me to https://github.com/FreeTubeApp/FreeTube/issues/5506 ← There someone posted an unlisted API that works. It seems non official since it is not listed on https://api.invidious.io/ … is that safe to use? Thanks in advance
I just use native API and VPN
SmartTube beta on Android TV is fanfuckingtastic.
Ive been using it for years now and holy shit. Even if it doesnt blocked ads and even youtubers own ads, the app itself is FAR superior than anything what this vanilla youtube app is supposed to be.
Even if it doesnt blocked ads and even youtubers own ads
You mean even if it didn’t? Because it definitely DOES and you’re absolutely right about the rest
Yes thats what i mean. Even if it didnt then still the app is SUPERIOR IN EVERY WAY than vanilla youtube. But it does block everything. Its a godsend.
Even just having Sponsorblock built-in changed my life!!
Can it be used on a “normal” android phone or just android tv?
It’s a no for phones, set top (android) boxes only. My friend has had success running it on Windows 11 and casting to his TV.
Huh? I run SmartTube beta on my phone. I don’t recall having to do anything “magic” to get it working.
Use revanced
+1
I love this app and would use it even if it didn’t block ads. The user experience is just so much better than the regular YouTube TV app. I’ve sent a few donations to the developer to thank them for their work.
Don’t forget Playlet for Roku!
Am I the only one that hates third-party clients for Desktop? They all have terrible UI and UX. Firefox + UBlock + Youtube is the way to go. For the phone it’s NewPipe or Grayjay.
Personally I still use the Firefox + uBlock + SponsorBlock + YouTube combo on my phone too. Maybe if I watched more YouTube on my phone it’d be worth figuring out an app with a better mobile UI, but I like that it’s a consistent experience anywhere I watch from.
Don’t forget about Enhancer for YouTube, SponsorBlock, and DeArrow! They’re all a must-have for desktop YT.
Revanced app had the superior UI/UX.
Not because if taste, but because it is the YouTube UI that then allows you to add and remove stuff from the UI, getting away from all the user-hostile stuff. If you want to.
Why had?
Has. Autocorrect fail :)
Firefox + UBlock + Youtube is the way to go.
Unless you don’t like Google tracking everything you watch on youtube, that is.
Let’s be real, no matter how you’re watching YouTube, if you’re accessing the video directly and not cached through a third party server, Google is still tracking you.
I think the point is basically having free YouTube premium (no ads).
I use Firefox with ublock on desktop, works like a charm. My favourite on android is YouTube revanced
Revanced is great for mobile
ReVanced isn’t a third-party client though. It’s patches applied to the official client.
You forgot sponserblock, it’s amazing!
I use the same combo on my phone without any issues or ads. Why use a client on the phone?
I prefer just about every third-party UI to the official one…
So, what do you not like about the Freetube’s UI and UX?
If you use ublock origin and watch a lot, they’ll eventually put your ip address on a list where you have to log in to watch anything. Newpipe seems to be able to circumvent this but yt-dlp can’t. I haven’t tried freetube but maybe freetube can circumvent that.
Keep it quiet with the Freetube articles, I don’t want it gone lol.
Created by deletor
Youtube/google/alphabet are almost certainly aware it exists already. The only real risk is too many people switching to it.
But even then there isn’t much they can do to stop it’s use. They can’t tighten up or remove their api, but then page scraping will take over. They can obfuscation their page, but that will not work forever.
It’s a cat and mouse game that is impossible to win for them.
You know the same thing was said with Beeper’s imessage on Android pytorch success. “Apple won’t be able to change this. They’d have to change the very nature of imessage itself to block this!” And then, two days later it was blocked completely so, as much as I would hope Google couldn’t block FreeTube, don’t expect such huge successes without tempering expectation.
I can’t say I’m familiar with that particular event. But I’m guessing there is a difference there in that iMessage is well, a messaging service. YouTube isn’t, their videos are on public webpages.
All Freetube and company needs to do, if it comes to it, is find a way extract a video from a public webpage. There’s a million ways to do that.
iMessage is not a public webpage, and so there is no real way around it unless you go through their api.
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Deletor by created
The best part about FreeTube unlike other Third-Party clients is that it retains a better YouTube-like suggestions system for any videos you wanna watch next. Discoverability is still a very important thing for me
How does it do it better that yt?
That’s not what they said. They said it’s better than other 3rd party clients because it’s just like YouTube’s suggestions.
I see what I got wrong here, thanks
And you can have multiple favorites lists.
My lg tv is jailbroken so I have the ad blocked version of YouTube on it, but I was on my Chromecast with Google tv yesterday and decided to go back to the regular YouTube app since I was there.
I was watching a video of 20 minutes in length, and got one 30 second ad at the start; ok fine.
After 4 minutes, they decided to show me a 50 second unskippable ad.
I backed out of the video, and deleted the regular app.
Fuck Google.
How do you jb LG tv?
O blocked my LG TV from Internet long time ago, since I only needed a dump TV screen anyway
😄maybe there is a fun experiment in my near future
Doesn’t sound like you have anything to lose, and you might gain a new skill! Go for it!
Oh shit, I just made the switch and I’m liking it. I just “favourite” things from my sub feed in one small window, and watch in the other, and it autoplays (if I want) so I can just start doing shit while the background vids keep playing. Honestly kinda more convienient than youtubes gui. It has sponsorblock built in too, which is nice
The recommendation algorithm is the reason I use YouTube. Well over half of the videos I’m watching are from channels I’m not even subscribed to. Ads can be blocked as always.
The recommendation algorithm is the reason I use YouTube.
This is an unpopular opinion on Lemmy (since it means Google has to track you) but I agree. I’ve discovered so many great channels, both small and large, through YouTube recommendations.
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For some reason like recommendation algorithm, I still use youtube premium.
I agree; between it and Tubular, YouTube is usable again.
That said, someone pointed out that higher resolutions are not viewable on FreeTube. I hadn’t noticed this until they mentioned it, and now I notice it constantly. I don’t know why, but it’s demonstratable: find a 4k video on Tubular, and open the same video on FreeTube, and only lower resolution versions are available.
yeah I agree! My wife would hear bitchin me if we would watch something on her iphone as i would constantly point out the fucking ads… I use in on my Fedora but sometimes (like once a month) I have a problem with the invidous instances. I wish there would be something similar to use on android, bu fortunately with Firefox& SponsorBlock it seems to block most of them…
I downloaded Newpipe from the Fdroid app store and it works very similar go freetube
I wish it didn’t use Electron.
Since they are integrating a web browser in the app, it kind of make sense here actually. For code editors though, not great…
Since they are integrating a web browser in the app
are they, though? I thought they just grab whatever data Invidious API fetches and display it with their method of choice, similar to how mobile clients for Invidious and Piped work. PlasmaTube manages to do similar thing without becoming a single purpose web browser.
You may be right, I just assumed. :)
FreeTube uses their own API (Local API) on top of Invidious’ API. you can choose whichever, and the other will be the fallback that’s used.
I tried it there but my browser works better is my first impression, I’m using thorium with Ublock, YouTube enhanced and some other addons.
Did honestly just give this a test but I kept getting videos just freezing up for no reason.
YouTube recently rolled out changes that break these third party apps causing a 503 error. Other apps have patched this issue.
Yeah I’ve removed it already and know all the antics YouTube has been doing as I use Smarttube on my Firetv.
But yeah not very impressed with Freetube in comparison to even a browser and the more I read about it not being able to view age restricted and other content it’s not for me especially with the constant freezes.
