What alternate Youtube frontends are there? And which ones do you recommend?

moosetwin@lemmy.dbzer0.com to Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ@lemmy.dbzer0.com – 186 points –

I've heard of piped due to the piped-link bot, but I am curious about others.

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Louis Rossman just released Grayjay! His video about it is here

Friendly reminder that Grayjay is only source-available.

FUTO Temporary License (FTL) violates the following open-source principles:

  • Open source licenses must allow free redistribution. FTL allows license suspension and termination at any time, without notice, for any or no reason.
  • Open source licenses must allow source code distribution. FTL allows restrictions to access the code at any time, without notice, for any or no reason.
  • Open source licenses must allow modifications. FTL allows modifications only for non-commercial use, or maybe not even that. FTL dodges the word modifications here, no clue.
  • Open source licenses must explicitly allow distribution of software built from modified source code. FTL forbids distribution of software built from modified source code for commercial use.
  • Open source licenses must not discriminate against persons/groups and fields of endeavor. FTL allows license suspension and termination at any time, without notice, for any or no reason.

The FTL enables the following practices:

  • Copyright holders can change the license terms.
  • Copyright holders can re-license everything.
  • Copyright holders can target specific groups and individuals with discriminatory license terms.
  • Copyright holders can close source everything.
  • Copyright holders can forbid specific groups and individuals from using their work.

My main gripe here is that the video sells a source-available software with severe usage restrictions as open-source. These restrictions may sound reasonable to people outside of the open-source world, especially to people who use similar wording in their own terms of service, but nobody would touch your software with a ten foot pole with a software license like that.

It doesn't? Louis spends quite a bit of time going over why they aren't fully open source and how they've arrived at that result.

I'm not quite sure what you mean? Louis calls it open-source during the entire "This is open source, but it is NOT free!" segment. But what he describes as open-source is not open-source, but source-available.

The reasoning that he doesn't want it to be used like newpipe is really optimistic on his part. People break license all the time on much larger applications.

Only on android :/ i thought it was going to be a progressive web app

I almost switched to iPhone, thankfully this came out to show me why that is a bad idea. I just need to de-gpogle.

Wait, why would this one app currently only being available on Android make switching a bad idea? Seems like a weird thing to base a decision that big on…

It's more about the ability for such apps to exist. Other apps include Tachiyomi (manga reader) and similar apps that are not allowed because of the app stores terms of service.

Hopefully Apple will soon be forced to allow such apps to exist outside of their store. Freedom to install what I want is a main reason I switched back from an iPhone to a Pixel with GrapheneOS.

I dunno, I call bullshit on that because Yattee is on the app store: https://github.com/yattee/yattee

Thanks for the link. I'm surprised it survived Apple's review process as I thought such apps weren't allowed. Now I have a private YouTube altednative to recommend.

Tachiyomi relies on installing sources as additional apks because otherwise they'd have to update the app daily. This is not allowed on Play/App Store.

YouTube ReVanced and other patched apps are also great and not obviously not possible on iOS bexlcause of restrictions.

This one app to use a google service stopped you from moving away from a google operating system? Lol

you can degoogle android. good luck removing apple from your iPhone tho

If you plan to get a new phone, get a Google Pixel and install GrapheneOS on it. By default, it doesn't have any Google spyware services. It also has substantial security improvements compared to normal Android. It's probably the most private and secure mobile operating system that currently exists.

Yow! that looks pretty awesome. I installed it and added the Nebula plugin... wonder if there's a CuriosityStream one as well?

Can you tell what payment options they offer? I can't find info on the website, and my options are rather limited. Thank you!

You can use the app for as long as you like until you decide if you want to pay. Looks to me like it's credit card or cashapp at the moment with crypto and carrier based options coming .

For Nebula/CuriosityStream? I only remember I bought a combo membership near Christmas the last two years -- they usually offer a year-long subscription for like $11 USD around the holidays. Look out for those, I really like CuriosityStream and find it's worth it.

I meant for the app, but it might be a good idea to pick up Nebula as well, I was thinking about that for a long time. Thanks!

It’s free my dude? Its open-source, the code is on gitlab.

Edit: My apologies, I was incorrect.

https://communick.news/post/245851

Here is an alternative Piped link(s):

here

Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.

I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.

GrayJay just came out into the testing phase. It not only supportsYouTubee but also Nebula, Odysee, Twitch, PeerTube and a few others with more to come. Works great so far. grayjay.app. Built by Futo, a nonprofit company which Louis Rossmann works for. His video here

Looks like a good option, unfortunately it would not run for me on an Android emulator in Windows. (LDPlayer 5)

If you're on Windows 10 or 11 just install it natively with WSA. You might have to look up a tutorial. I've yet to have a compatibility issue

GrayJay just launched and it's fucking fantastic.

It combines YouTube and Twitch into one platform in a really intuitive way. Has its own comment system and rating system for videos. No ads obviously. It's a whole fucking thing and it's incredible.

https://grayjay.app/index.html

and it's not free software. only source available with a license that doesn't allow forking.

And they do it so they can take down malicious copycats on Google Play

Which they could already do, with basic trademark law and just forcing all derivatives to be non-commercial. Cyrptominers are commercial.

Forcing all derivatives work to be non-commercial is incompatible with being open source.

https://opensource.org/osd/

Though I agree that they can already prevent usage of their app name with trademark laws.

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Except you have to give one app credentials for all of your platforms. It's also 335MB!?

Time to upgrade if your phone can't handle 350MB lol

Time to upgrade your SSD because the new call of duty is 175GB lol.

What a fucking mindset you have on you there 💀

I get what you're trying to say but 350 MB is close to nothing in 2023.

What are you talking about, it's about 110 songs with a good enconder, that's like 8~10 albums.

Have you looked at the size of most apps recently? 350mb is slightly on the big side, but nothing crazy.

I'm not saying it in relative terms, but in absolute terms. 350 MB is lots of space that can be useful, it's certainly not "close to nothing".

Like, I fear to imagine how much shipping fic would I have to publish annually in order to fill 350 MB in my lifetime...

Also PS You are looking at the universal APK, which contains the binaries for all CPU structures. OBVIOUSLY the one that's meant for your phone will be smaller. Mine was like 170 mb

Dude it's basically nothing. Mp3s have been/could be considered small for like 10+ years. It's much larger than I think it should be but it's not like it's an unreasonable space hog. File sizes have been inflating steadily for years as internet speeds increase worldwide

That's close to nothing in 2023. It's not 2003 where 110 songs was huge.

Credentials? What are you talking about? There is not sign in or signup required for the app at all.

It's the universal build. Download for your architecture (arm64) which is 127 mb

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SmartTube is excellent on our NVidia Shield. Not sure what other platforms it works on.

Seconding SmartTube on android TV. No ads, can automatically skip all sorts of content in videos (spoken ads, self-promotion, introduction segments, etc. etc. etc.) I dread the day it stops working.

Newpipe for Android. Hands down the best iv used.

I just tried it earlier but was taken aback that I couldn't find any way to login. Is that meant to be that way?

Yes, your info is stored locally so you dont need to login to the YouTube API, i use newpipe to watch the videos and read some comments, not to interact or upload videos since that's impossible on newpipe

I've been enjoying Piped for awhile now; it actually shows me a feed that's exclusively my subscriptions and has SponsorBlock built in.

YouTube revanced works super well.

Freetube, Individious, Piped, CloudTube, PokeTube, Tubo, Yattee are the main ones I know of. If you want be automatically redirected to alternative youtube frontends installed Lib Redirect.

I'll share mine: Tubo; it's mainly a web version of Newpipe with all its supported services.

Been using revanced for a while - had no idea there were this many alternatives. I like revanced though, especially with stube on Google tv.

I'm self-hosting Piped and couldn't be happier. Clean, distraction free and, importantly, private. No data mining. Importing your subscriptions from a Google Takeout dump is simple.

LibreTube for Android is my mobile client, and talks to my Piped server without any issues. The only thing missing at this stage is a client for my Chromecast GTVs. For those, I still watch YouTube with SmartTubeNext, which means keeping two sets of subscriptions in sync. A little frustrating, but relatively painless, for the privacy benefits.

Can someone explain to me why I want the video proxied vs the video coming directly from YT via a front end? I've used YouTube Vanced in the past and it was awesome when it worked

Its for privacy. This way youtube doesnt get your ip and has more difficulty figuring out who you are

How about alternatives to Youtube?

Most alternatives are pretty great, but they can never have the amount of content and the reach that youtube has. Youtube has a monopoly and they know it. They can do whatever they want, because you can't leave.

Yes, I love odysee and bit chute for exemple, people just need to go there instead just like the migration from Reddit to Lemmy so it can grow bigger.

Invidious. If you look up invidious instances you can find plenty of them and choose one that’s in your country so it’s nice and fast. Sometimes they take an extra second to load but there are no ads so it’s worth it

I can only recommend piped sadly, Invidious still make you connect to Google servers and do not proxy the video for you.

If you don't see the option in the settings, you might have to try another instance, it is a feature but instances can disable it for obvious reasons.

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On android i like newpipe + sponsorblock and clipious. Id use clipious all the time but it sometimes doesnt play and then i fall back on newpipe. Newpipe has downloading too.

I dont use youtube much on desktop but when i do i use invidious

Oh and i use smartubenext on android tv