What is your private way of watching YouTube videos when Invidious or Piped are not working?
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?
At this point we should just start torrenting YouTube. Like fuck YouTube.
At this point we should just ditch YouTube entirely, but alas.
I kinda assumed Vimeo would step up its social aspects when YouTube started ratcheting up its bullshit. Still waiting.
At this point we should just ditch YouTube entirely, but alas.
YouTube is great for downloading movie rips. They're out there if you know where to look. When you download a movie on YouTube, you're legally in the clear: Google is doing the copyright infringement. That's one big advantage over torrents.
I've been avoiding Youtube content altogether, I ditched it completely.
However, it seems like yt-dlp does the job even when all Indivious instances are being blocked.
Reject inefficient video data transfer. Return to kb sized articles you can analyze at your own pace.
Sometimes (although rarely) I watch some videos on Odyssee. I try to avoid it too, because of some of its downsides, but it's better than YouTube because it has no ads, no need for login to watch, and videos can be easily downloaded without complains from the platform.
However, yeah, texts are way better. Internet used to be textual. Text allows for personal annotations, just like the grand old book annotations.
Close the door, turn off the lights, wear earbuds, pull a duvet over your head. Works every time. Might look a bit suspicious, but at least it's private.
Seriously though, it's getting pretty bad. I'm currently shifting my video watching habits away from YT. I have a feeling that sooner rather than later I may have to quit YT completely.
There are several way, honestly. For Android, there's NewPipe. The app itself fetches the YouTube data. For PC, there are similar applications that do the same such FreeTube. Those are the solutions I recommend.
If you're one of those, you can also host your own Invidious and/or Piped instances. But I like NewPipe and FeeTube better.
I've used freetube for a while and it seems like it's expierencing the same issues since I've been getting a lot of error messages lately.
NewPipe needs VPN or Tor for privacy which usually gets blocked
That really depends on your threat model. The app isn't monitoring your activity or has imbedded trackers. It pulls content directly from YouTube's CDN. All they (Google) know is your IP address, but nothing else. For 99.9% of people that's totally ok.
Just firefox with ublock origin.
i just search it on dukdukgo and use their viewer
You can still use yt-dlp with most of the invidious instances that are still up, but not displaying the video for some reason. Just copy the URL and use it with yt-dlp from the command line. All still works, sponsor block and all.
On my android phone I use either invidious with seal(yt-dlp wrapper app) or tubular (fork of newpipe with sponsor block).
Freetube has an option to watch videos in a external viewer. I set it to be MPV which I set it to use yt-dlp to download which allows me to customize many things like video and audio quality, subtitles, equalize audio, etc. No need to copy and use the command line.
How do you set this up? Link to guide?
seconding this
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.
Freetube and Grayjay. Grayjay has a desktop app now.
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.
Grayjay.app
But it requires login when I tried to play some videos on youtube
Check the settings. There should be some to allow restricted videos
Downside is that you'll have to regularly delete all the videos you've downloaded.
I use https://freetubeapp.io/
FreeTube is a useful project as it allows you to "fallback" on a non-preferred frontend.
https://github.com/FreeTubeApp/FreeTube
This allows you to continue to use Youtube irregardless of which frontend is (potentially not) working.
In 'Settings > General' you'll want to select "Invidious API" as your "Preferred API backend" and specify your favorite invidious instance in the "Current Invidious Instance" field and click "Set Current Instance as Default". This locks FreeTube into the specified instance.
Then, when you notice that FreeTube is issuing notices to you about your favorite Invidious Instance being down, you can wander back to 'Settings > General'; hit the "Clear Default Invidious Instance" Button and wait as FreeTube magically contacts the "https://api.invidious.io/" page for you and selects a new, and hopefully online and working Invidious instance. (You may have to hit this button several times to roll a working instance, Hit the button, check the subs page and see if everything loads, repeat if it falls back on the Local API.)
When you run into instances where you can't roll up a good Invidious instance; the built in Local API is running a NewPipe Extractor like API directly from your FreeTube client. Not the best; but at least it keeps things working while you wait for the Invidious devs to fix things up; and it still reasonably preserves as much of your privacy as it can while doing this to the best effort it can.
...Sadly this doesn't work when Google manages a double combo of breaking both Invidious and NewPipe; but I have found that this is less often the case and the devs of either project are usually fairly quick about getting fixes out. Bless their hard work with a donation sometime maybe, if you can.
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 NewPipe
Oh 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
Hell, I'm having issues using the plain old YouTube website. It tries to make me sign in.
I think thats the point of this question. How to get around that because YT has become unusable.
I signed up for PeerTube, uploaded all my videos there, and updated my old YT vid descriptions that say "can't watch this video? Click here to view ad-free on PeerTube"
New pipe android app. Been using it for years with no issues accessing YouTube.
Same problem if you use a VPN or Tor
I pay a subscription to nebula and most of the creators i want are on there.
Freetube and newpipe for me. However I will say they just don't work sometimes. So then I just am left with my browser.
I use grayjay as you can use a google account to bypass the "confirm your not a bot" but then have the ability to subscribe, comment, and save video playback without a google account.
Tubular on on mobile and trying to find a Non Electron app for pc
I feel like most have misunderstood the point of the question, they offer to use newpipe, yt-dlp and the like, but those aren't private, they just allow you to watch without signing in, just as you could through the official website with maybe uBlock origin, you're still exposing your IP.
The only fitting suggestion I saw is that of downloading from invidious through yt-dlp, which sounds pretty neat, I had no idea you could when the web frontend is apparently not working
Yes I tried to using freetube with VPN this morning. I have to say.. Its pretty good. But the catch is you have to use a vpn server that is not used by many.
Some invidious instances directly embeds the video from googlevideo[dot]com. This means google will get your IP. But in the setting you can choose an option to proxy the video for you.
Yeah that's also a good solution!
I feel like most have misunderstood the point of the question, they offer to use newpipe, yt-dlp and the like, but those aren’t private, they just allow you to watch without signing in, just as you could through the official website with maybe uBlock origin, you’re still exposing your IP.
This implies invidious and piped hide your IP address, which I'm not sure is true.
Piped always does, it's the way it works. Invidious is not always like that, at least if what is said in this issue is still true, it depends on the instance
Downie.app (MacOS) and yt-dlp (multiplatform).
I am not watching YouTube content while these are blocked. I will not watch stupid ads. I will not submit to shitty platforms that suck. Until these work again, there is no YouTube.
I'm finding other ways to fill my free time during the holiday break. I'll have a bevy of new content to watch when they're updated.
You can watch, download video, download only audio.
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 found that switching my VPN server allowed FreeTube to work for me. I'm on Mullvad's South African servers atm, which are quite slow. If anyone knows of any unblocked Mullvad servers that are faster, lmk, but those were the first ones I found that you can use FreeTube with.
Most Netherlands servers work for me
Which netherlands servers are working for you? I just tried literally all the wireguard ones and none of them worked.
Vpn
I discovered that I watch enough YouTube to warrant paying for a premium subscription. I've turned off viewing history (after one video, so the homepage renders).
This isn't a solution for everyone, but it works for me.
I use it enough but since Google is evil I use ReVanced and give the money to a better cause.
Newpipe still up as of this morning. Hope it stays that way.
Recently I have been unable to find any working public frontends for YouTube or Instagram. People keep sending me links to content on both. Piped and Invidious servers were still fairly plentiful just a very few weeks ago. Based on what I've only just now read here, I'll try GrayJay for YT. If there's a good source for persistently updated info on currently-functioning, public-facing Privacy Frontends, please post a link (or keep this thread updated?). Thanks!
I wish we had some sort of way to copy videos from YT to PeerTube on some sort of on-demand way.
Like tell PeerTube the video you want, wait a few minutes, and then its available for everyone. Then it auto deletes after X days if it has had 0 views.
Edit: oh man, you could even have a Lemmy bot do this automatically when it sees a link to a YouTube video.
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.
Actually, I have never used piped and invidious to watch the videos themselves. I use them just as subscription feeds and in case I need to search for some video, then I toggle a script I have, I copy the links to the videos I want to watch and I untoggle the script. Then the links I copied start playing on mpv. I don't like to overload piped and invidious services, which I would say is the main reason for them to be shut down, when I can watch/download the video through mpv-ytdlp on my own. Although, I don't know if that answers your question.
Yes its okay if you're using a VPN for downloading which makes your IP untraceable by Google Servers. Currently I am using freetube with VPN. But I need to choose a server that is not used by many for getting around 'you need to sign in' issue.
I use a bot on mastodon named birba@rss-parrot.net . 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.
On mobile, Firefox plus ublock works well. There are a few issues like losing your position if the page reloads, but it works pretty consistently otherwise.
I also use NewPipe, but Google breaks it fairly regularly.
Grayjay seems to be really stable compared to newpipe. I used it for 6 months now never break once. They also recently released a beta version for desktop which is quite promising
PipePipe on mobile works fine.
Vlc,potplayer, freetube