Many YT privacy frontends are down it seems. YouTube is cracking down on these servers fast. Both Invidious and Piped services are not working now.
So how are you watching videos now? Just plain youtube[dot]com with unblock and VPN?
I download it with yt-dlp and watch it with a video player. that way they don’t know at what pace do I watch it (when do I rewind and pause, or speed up).
or grayjay when I remember that it exists.
other options for me include FreeTube and NewPipeOh yes. They don’t know the page… They do know what and what IP.
yeah unfortunately, but what can I do. you can’t download through inv/piped with yt-dlp anyway, because it just recognizes the youtube proxy and then goes direct to youtube
I download the videos I want to watch with yt-dlp. This applies to audio as well. I then add the videos to my Jellyfin server to watch them on the TV.
Searching Videos on FreeTube but watching these in the SMplayer, because FreeTube lists theVideos, but often don’t play it. SMplayer works almost always, Also possible open the Video copying the URL in it. Another possibility is searching the Video with Andisearch and watch it there in the search results sandboxed and anonym with the random proxies which use Andisearch.
I personally use libretube (with piped proxy disabled in settings) with proton vpn. If it shows the “sign in to confrim your not a bot” mesaage I just swap vpn servers.
I use a bot on mastodon named [email protected] . It sends me a link of new videos from creators I follow.I directly open the link with Tubular (newpipe fork) or freetube and download it to watch later.
Tubular on on mobile and trying to find a Non Electron app for pc
I pay a subscription to nebula and most of the creators i want are on there.
Vlc,potplayer, freetube
Freetube and Grayjay. Grayjay has a desktop app now.
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I’ve had a good experience with GrayJay. It’s a bit young and missing features but it’s never broken for me.
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I’ve been using their GrayJay desktop app, and I’ve enjoyed it so far.
I haven’t checked out FreeTube but maybe this is the push I need.
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I find it runs better then YouTube in Firefox on my crappy laptop
Vpn
Newpipe still up as of this morning. Hope it stays that way.
Just firefox with ublock origin.
Downside is that you’ll have to regularly delete all the videos you’ve downloaded.
Use yt-dlp URL -o - | mpv - This way the video goes directly to mpv without using the disk, avoiding the need to delete. It should work with other viewers as well.
Awesome, works with VLC as well. Thanks.
Another thing that I do is make an alias: alias pvid=“yt-dlp $(xsel -b) -o - | mpv -”. Install xsel first, xsel -b pastes what’s in the clipboard. So you only have to copy the URL and execute pvid, no need to paste. Or even better make an app that executes that command and put it in the taskbar. You only have to click it after copying.
I wrote myself a Chrome add-on that adds a context menu entry to play or download links.
background.js
chrome.runtime.onInstalled.addListener(() => { chrome.contextMenus.create({ id: "processLink", title: "Download as...", contexts: ["link"] }); chrome.contextMenus.create({ id: "720p", parentId: "processLink", title: "720p", contexts: ["link"] }); chrome.contextMenus.create({ id: "music", parentId: "processLink", title: "MP3", contexts: ["link"] }); chrome.contextMenus.create({ id: "maxQual", parentId: "processLink", title: "Maximum quality video", contexts: ["link"] }); chrome.contextMenus.create({ id: "separator1", parentId: "processLink", type: "separator", contexts: ["link"] }); chrome.contextMenus.create({ id: "piQual", parentId: "processLink", title: "30 fps for RPi", contexts: ["link"] }); chrome.contextMenus.create({ id: "separator2", parentId: "processLink", type: "separator", contexts: ["link"] }); chrome.contextMenus.create({ id: "streamLink", parentId: "processLink", title: "Stream to VLC...", contexts: ["link"] }); }); chrome.contextMenus.onClicked.addListener((info, tab) => { let linkUrl = info.linkUrl; if (info.menuItemId === "720p") { sendLinkToNativeApp(linkUrl, "video720"); } else if (info.menuItemId === "music") { sendLinkToNativeApp(linkUrl, "music"); } else if (info.menuItemId === "maxQual") { sendLinkToNativeApp(linkUrl, "videomp4"); } else if (info.menuItemId === "piQual") { sendLinkToNativeApp(linkUrl, "video720p30"); } else if (info.menuItemId === "streamLink") { sendLinkToNativeApp(linkUrl, "stream"); } }); function sendLinkToNativeApp(link, action) { console.log("Sending link to native app with action:", action, link); chrome.runtime.sendNativeMessage( 'com.example.ytlink_processor', { link: link, action: action }, function(response) { if (chrome.runtime.lastError) { console.error("Error:", chrome.runtime.lastError.message); } else { console.log("Received response from native app:", response.output); } } ); }
native_host.py (chatGPT wrote this because I can't Python)
import sys import subprocess import json import struct def log_to_file(message): with open("log.txt", "a") as log_file: log_file.write(message + "\n") def get_message(): raw_length = sys.stdin.read(4) if len(raw_length) == 0: sys.exit(0) message_length = struct.unpack('I', raw_length)[0] message = sys.stdin.read(message_length) return json.loads(message) def send_message(message_content): message = json.dumps(message_content) sys.stdout.write(struct.pack('I', len(message))) sys.stdout.write(message) sys.stdout.flush() def process_link(link, action): if action == "stream": cmd = 'yt-dlp --stream "{}" -o - | "D:/Programme/VLC/vlc.exe" -'.format(link) else: cmd = 'yt-dlp --{} "{}"'.format(action, link) result = subprocess.Popen('start cmd /c "{}"'.format(cmd), shell=True) return result.stdout + result.stderr if __name__ == "__main__": message = get_message() link = message.get("link") action = message.get("action") if link and action: output = process_link(link, action) send_message({"output": output})
The actions are just aliases for different qualities (old pi, so 720p60 stutters at times), audio extraction, etc.
Excellent.
I host my own invidious
Is there a good tutorial for doing that?
Their own documentation
Why? That basically means they track you the same, but with lots if extra steps.
Unless you use a VPN and then you’re back to the same problem again.
I am not the full expert on the subject, but I assume the profiling is to a lesser extent. For one you don’t browse within a Google account.
I also like the slimmed down UI and subscription management of invidious compared to yt.
And don’t forget no ads and sponsorblock. Although some add ons like vinegar for safari get you pretty close to uninterrupted viewing.
All said, probably not the best in regards to pure privacy.