Whelp, here we go again

  • So there are YouTube front ends for browser experience, but has anyone tried freetube from this guide?

    https://www.privacyguides.org/en/frontends/

    I’ve really liked the newpipe x Sponsorblock experience on my Android phone with having a subscription list, saves, playlists all locally with no YouTube account and ability to export and import the data of Playlists etc.

    Freetube sounds like newpipe for desktop and has sponsorblock as an option too. Anyone use it or used it and have an thoughts on it?

    • I exclusively use Freetube for my Youtube needs. It is great when it works. Sometimes you have to find the right Invidious instance for it to work properly. A few times videos play at 720p. I have also noticed search failing for specific terms sometimes - for example “machine learning”. I don’t know if it is a bug or blacklisted words/phrases.

      These are a few reality checks highlighting it isn’t a perfect experience all the time, but I will be damned if go back to a vanilla Youtube interface after having gotten used to Invidious and then Peertube.

      The upsides are less fluff that is recommended, you control your own feed with the videos from the channels you subscribe to, no ads, sponsorblock, and I guess more privacy.

    • I’ve used Freetube on desktop Linux and it works perfectly fine. I’ve moved to hosting my own Invidious though so that all my stuff can be accessed from anywhere instead of having 1 laptop where I watched a video on Freetube then moved to another machine that indicates I didn’t watch it.