- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
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.
Using it for years yes
I’d argue that Brave is the best way. The adblock is seamless and requires no add-ons, and you retain the full functionality of the site.
It looks realy good, but it wouldn play on my Fedora Setup. It keeps showing this : SyntaxError: Unexpected token ‘<’, "<!DOCTYPE "… is not valid JSON and other API things that i dont understand? What schould i do?
That can happen if you have an old version. Happened to me a few times also. It just means YouTube changed something so you need to update and see if its been fixed.
Go to freetubeapp.io and make sure you have installed the latest version which is 0.23.5 beta right now.
I just downloaded it from the store. Flatpack. Is there a difference? Thank ypu for helpinh me
Yeah there are some differences. Flatpaks are not updated when you update your system but you can run the “flatpak update” command to update all your Flatpak apps at once.
After install, it should just work. :)
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.
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?
For me, Newpipe is faster. Plus I can track my subscriptions, playlists and watch history.
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.
LOL the only terrible UI is the YouTube one. I dunno how people deal with all the garbage content and vertical videos that are relentlessly crammed down your throat. Not to mention the completely fucked search function.
I use Firefox with ublock on desktop, works like a charm. My favourite on android is YouTube revanced
So, what do you not like about the Freetube’s UI and UX?
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 used to think it is redundant too, but now see it as a quality-of-life difference. Because I can track my subscriptions and watch history, as well as have playlists. That is a massive improvement over folders of bookmarks.
Revanced is great for mobile
ReVanced isn’t a third-party client though. It’s patches applied to the official client.
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.
I prefer just about every third-party UI to the official one…
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.
SmartTube beta on Android TV is fanfuckingtastic.
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.
deleted by creator
+1
Don’t forget Playlet for Roku!
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 just having Sponsorblock built-in changed my life!!
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.
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.
Unfortunately it doesn’t work without a login. Also the search function stopped working entirely for me recently.
FT-Sync (in beta) has just been released.
Also on the dev’s website (in French)I think Linux only, and between desktop clients, no mention of Android.
Also manual install, but it’s not too hard.
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
And you can have multiple favorites lists.
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
I’ve been using it since YouTube stopped allowing adblockers.
For some reason like recommendation algorithm, I still use youtube premium.
How is that different from the free version in a browser with Ublock Origin?
If you use premium, the creators still get paid by YouTube for your views. If you use an ad blocker, they don’t get any money from your views.
When you see an ad on YouTube, the creator gets 55% of the revenue and YouTube gets the remaining 45%.
If I want to support the creator, I would rather donate directly or subscribe to the person’s Patreon. YT Premium just gives no extra features for Youtube itself so could not justify paying.
For some reason I doubt that’s a common practice with people hellbent on not seeing ads and not paying for the service.
Color me surprised if I’m wrong about that.
I use youtube music everyday as well as downloading videos on my phone to play without wifi. So maybe I do use some premium features, which may make me biased.
I don’t subscribe to anyone, but have donated to the authors I like, just as I did to the FOSS projects I use. One blogger even has a site where you can tie your donation to a specific video of his.
And for Youtube Music - RiMusic does just what you described but does not require a Google account or a recurring payment.
I guess I have to ask the same question about freetube.
If only someone would write an article about it with those details in it.
Oh well.
No Android version of it yet, eh? Damn.
ETA: I previously tried Vanced, but it didn’t work correctly.
I hate linking to Reddit, but follow this guide for re-vanced on Android:
https://www.reddit.com/r/revancedapp/comments/xlcny9/revanced_manager_guide_for_dummies/
Thanks.
I am trying Libretube via F-droid. So far so good.
Try GrayJay, works great in my experience and has all the stuff (background play, no ads, downloads, etc). One issue I had with ReVanced was casting didn’t always work for me, GrayJay seems to be able to cast to my shield without missing a beat.
Other than grayjay there’s newpipe
There is an android version: https://apt.izzysoft.de/fdroid/index/apk/io.freetubeapp.freetube
However I prefer Grayjay: https://grayjay.app/
I prefer NewPipe/Tubular so much that I don’t even use my desktop for YouTube anymore.
NewPipe stopped working for me some time ago, switched over to rvx which seems to work fine.
Try pipepipe, they update more often than OG newpipe/tubular
It stops working occasionally but they release fixed versions pretty fast.
i would like to say I prefer Newpipe, but those guys have a pretty annoying bug that’s been going on for years now and it’s still not been fixed.
If you watch a video and then go back to a list and scroll up to the top, the app crashes.
you can run it on your desktop with waydroid btw
All they need now is an iOS/iPadOS app.
Does it get rid of the ads?
also,
a community I created here on Lemmy.World:
music, but no YouTube no Spotify no Facebook no fru fru
No ads at all.
sounds good then. 🙂
I would like Freetube 100x more if it had a web UI instead of a non-browser interface. A web UI with a companion extension to automatically redirect YT video links to it could be so seamless.
If it’s hosting a server on the local network that would also provide a perfect solution to not having any way for view history or settings to automatically sync between different devices.
you might like Piped or Invidious with Libredirect addon.