It has its own backend, but it can also use Invidious. As such, you can also run NewLeaf (an Invidious-compatible YouTube scraper based on the NewPipe scraper) in the background and connect to it via FreeTube, and that should work.
Freetube supports maximum 1080p, you should specify it.
There are solutions that work. Like you, I would enjoy a simple app that allows for subscriptions and playlists without tracking or using an account. I mostly use RSS feeds (newsboat) and watch the videos through mpv.
And yt-fzf is great too. It uses invidious instances instead of YouTube links.
I used freetube a few years ago, but i dont know if the project is still active. Was a bit buggy, but acceptable for me
Been using it for half a year now, it's amazing and running flawlessly as a flatpak on Fedora for me.
I can confirm it's greatly improved in terms of reliability in the last couple of years.
At this point, it works more reliably than playing Youtube videos in a web browser.
I would say Freetube, it's very similar to android alternatives but in Linux, can proxy your traffic trough individious' instances.. The only downside is the 1080p limitation
Why the limitation?
It's a bit strange because I've that I can play some videos @ 4k with no problems. And this limitation is here the most of the time, because you have to change the video format (mainly switch to webpm), and this format is not really supported by piped and individious...
https://freetubeapp.io and available as verified flatpak : https://flathub.org/apps/io.freetubeapp.FreeTube
I'd recommend FreeTube.
It has its own backend, but it can also use Invidious. As such, you can also run NewLeaf (an Invidious-compatible YouTube scraper based on the NewPipe scraper) in the background and connect to it via FreeTube, and that should work.
Freetube supports maximum 1080p, you should specify it.
Plasmatube https://invent.kde.org/multimedia/plasmatube
There are solutions that work. Like you, I would enjoy a simple app that allows for subscriptions and playlists without tracking or using an account. I mostly use RSS feeds (newsboat) and watch the videos through mpv.
And yt-fzf is great too. It uses invidious instances instead of YouTube links.
I used freetube a few years ago, but i dont know if the project is still active. Was a bit buggy, but acceptable for me
Been using it for half a year now, it's amazing and running flawlessly as a flatpak on Fedora for me.
I can confirm it's greatly improved in terms of reliability in the last couple of years.
At this point, it works more reliably than playing Youtube videos in a web browser.
I would say Freetube, it's very similar to android alternatives but in Linux, can proxy your traffic trough individious' instances.. The only downside is the 1080p limitation
Why the limitation?
It's a bit strange because I've that I can play some videos @ 4k with no problems. And this limitation is here the most of the time, because you have to change the video format (mainly switch to webpm), and this format is not really supported by piped and individious...
https://www.privacyguides.org/en/frontends/#youtube
freetube is amazing
SMTube still seems to exist
I run LibreTube through Waydroid, but you have to enable HLS and do a bit of instancehopping to get it to work.