[HN Gopher] FreeTube - A Private YouTube Client
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       FreeTube - A Private YouTube Client
        
       Author : night-rider
       Score  : 177 points
       Date   : 2022-11-27 20:01 UTC (8 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (freetubeapp.io)
 (TXT) w3m dump (freetubeapp.io)
        
       | the_third_wave wrote:
       | I'm using a private [1] Invidious [2] instance on all platforms
       | to gain access to Youtube content without feeding the beast more
       | than needed. The advantage of something like Invidious is that it
       | allows you to access subscriptions anywhere you can access the
       | 'net instead of just on those platforms where you installed
       | something like Freetube or Newpipe or any of the other
       | alternative clients.
       | 
       | [1] private for now since my instance ended up being very popular
       | in Japan for some reason, this being rather odd given that I live
       | in Sweden. I'll keep it private for a few months and open it up
       | again to see whether traffic remains within reasonable bounds.
       | 
       | [2] https://github.com/iv-org/invidious
        
         | lrvick wrote:
         | Freetube has built-in support to proxy all content via
         | Invidious.
        
       | ramonezy wrote:
       | I think as developers we have to be careful that we don't
       | overstep logical boundaries. Youtube provides a free service that
       | hosts immense volumes of video and creates an ecosystem allowing
       | creators to earn a living. It's selfish to use the services of
       | YouTube while removing their main source of revenue. If you have
       | a problem with YouTube's tracking, simply don't use it
        
         | Waterluvian wrote:
         | This is how I feel about all the bold circumvention of
         | paywalls. It's a legally fuzzy area in some cases, but to me at
         | least, it is basically people saying, "here, let me help you
         | steal!"
        
           | 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
           | YouTube could kill all of this by simply forcing a login to
           | watch anything but they won't because they're cowards.
        
           | fijiaarone wrote:
           | That's rich coming from someone defending a site that existed
           | for a decade purely on helping people to steal copyrighted
           | content until they had a monopoly and were able to force
           | copyright holders to license it to them.
        
           | Dylan16807 wrote:
           | It's not usually very fuzzy. If a site wants a hard paywall,
           | they can set that up easily. But few sites want that.
        
           | lrvick wrote:
           | When you consume ads, tracking supported content, and money-
           | sorted content targeting, you are voting that it is okay to
           | give anyone the ability to modify your behavior, and of
           | others in your network and household.
           | 
           | People are told their only options are to consent to
           | corporate behavior modification or be effectively ejected
           | from modern society.
           | 
           | That is a bullshit choice and everyone should feel no guilt
           | for opting to consume content anonymously. In fact many
           | -need- to do this to protect themselves from politicians who
           | are unfriendly to basic human rights.
        
         | nonrandomstring wrote:
         | > It's selfish to use the services of YouTube while removing
         | their main source of revenue.
         | 
         | The entire edifice of Capitalism, which we celebrate, is built
         | on selfishness. And yet you use the word here as if it were a
         | bad thing. I am confused :)
         | 
         | > If you have a problem with YouTube's tracking, simply don't
         | use it
         | 
         | Why "simply" avoid a problem when with some effort you can
         | improve it? In this case optimising the service to make it free
         | from ads and tracking appears to be an improvement.
        
         | _carbyau_ wrote:
         | The problem here is "network effect" leverage on society.
         | 
         | When you choose not to use Youtube, you are choosing to not be
         | a part of a large part of society. This is isolating. Whether
         | that isolation matters to the individual in question is highly
         | variable.
         | 
         | You might be able to easily forego it. But a kid - ostensibly
         | uninformed, not able to reason well enough and "not able to
         | consent" - who's teacher sets an assignment to write about a
         | youtube video has an overwhelming influence to "simply do it".
         | 
         | Should large parts of society including institutions know
         | better and do better? Sure. But in practice they don't.
        
           | InCityDreams wrote:
           | >When you choose not to use Youtube, you are choosing to not
           | be a part of a large part of society.
           | 
           | How would using freetube solve this problem?
        
             | sokoloff wrote:
             | It lets you watch the content otherwise available on
             | YouTube without all the ads and tracking that comes with
             | using the YouTube site or app.
        
         | throwaway0x7E6 wrote:
         | lol, lmao even
        
         | makeitdouble wrote:
         | This arguments stands in a fully rational market with fair
         | competition guaranteed by a controlling entity.
         | 
         | Youtube doesn't have any competition at its scale, not using it
         | isn't a rational choice. Even school assignments will have
         | YouTube links to watch. I think we're at the point where your
         | statement sounds like a "if you don't like the Standard Oil
         | company just don't buy their oil" rehash.
        
         | lrvick wrote:
         | If there was a pay to anonymously support Youtube creators
         | directly with micropayments using only open source privacy
         | respecting software like LBRY does, I would use it.
         | 
         | Sadly YouTube has monopolized a lot of content, has mandatory
         | tracking, and also censors and suppresses things and uses
         | algorithms to put people in maximally profitable filter bubbles
         | regardless of mental health.
         | 
         | Ideally more creators will realize they can put censorship-free
         | tracking-free content on alternative services that give them
         | direct profits.
         | 
         | Until then I use Freetube and Invidious exclusively to opt out
         | of tracking nonsense and avoid wasting my valuable time
         | watching ads.
         | 
         | We should all starve adtech companies of revenue so creators
         | are incentivized to learn how to monetize in a way that
         | respects users rights and privacy.
        
           | schmichael wrote:
           | You can pay for ad free YouTube by paying for YouTube
           | Premium. No annoying micropayments. All the content with none
           | of the ads.
           | 
           | It does not satisfy your anonymous requirement but very
           | little does. Most content creators appreciate (directly or
           | indirectly) the features a non anonymous platform provides.
        
             | Brian_K_White wrote:
             | Incorrect. I have premium and I still get all kinds of ads,
             | in the content itself, and of course premium means a login
             | which means not anonymous and absolutely "personalized"
             | content.
        
               | schmichael wrote:
               | If the content itself includes paid promotion then (a)
               | it's not individualized, and (b) the platform you view it
               | on (YouTube, FreeTube, Blu-ray, or VHS) doesn't matter...
               | ...so I don't think paid promotions from the content
               | creators themselves are relevant to the discussion? Your
               | only option is manually skipping the promotional content
               | which is usually really trivial to do.
               | 
               | I have YouTube Premium and don't see any ads by
               | Google/YouTube. I'm not a heavy YouTube viewer though so
               | it's possible I'm missing something.
               | 
               | Edit: just discovered sponsorblock and wooow am I
               | impressed at the lengths some folks will go to skip ads.
               | TIL
        
             | lrvick wrote:
             | YouTube premium requires I have a Google account, and
             | consent to Google ToS which includes them tracking my
             | behavior and using it to sell changes in my behavior as a
             | service to the highest bidder.
             | 
             | Youtube Premium is not acceptable. I can use cash to buy a
             | book or a movie at a store and not have to reveal anything
             | about myself in the process. No targeting, no having my
             | personal data and behavior collected in centralized systems
             | and sold forever.
             | 
             | The only acceptable model I have seen is what LBRY does,
             | where I can have an anonymous account and top up a wallet
             | of tokens which are used to support creators with
             | microtransactions. No tracking, no ads, but creators get
             | paid.
        
               | jsnell wrote:
               | You can opt out of ad personalization:
               | https://myadcenter.google.com/
               | 
               | But I get it, why pay for the content or the service when
               | you can just take it for free?
        
               | judge2020 wrote:
               | > which includes them tracking my behavior and using it
               | to sell changes in my behavior as a service to the
               | highest bidder.
               | 
               | You can use Ad Block while using YT Premium.
        
               | Brian_K_White wrote:
               | no adblock blocks in-content ads, and if we are talking
               | technicalities and theory anyway, surely it violates the
               | tos. I'm not sure what this suggestion even meant to
               | accomplish now that I think about it.
        
               | joecool1029 wrote:
               | >no adblock blocks in-content ads
               | 
               | Ever heard of SponsorBlock?
        
         | ahelwer wrote:
         | This sounds plausible enough until you examine it and realize
         | you're turning viewing ads into some kind of moral duty.
         | 
         | "Have you witnessed the requisite quantity of behavior-
         | modifying media today, Citizen? Remember, we all have to do our
         | part. I see you only internalized five minutes' worth
         | yesterday. This is below target. Your beliefs and desires have
         | not been sufficiently altered to meet corporate goals. We
         | require greater acquiescence."
         | 
         | If a company wants to paywall something then they can do that.
         | Maybe I'll pay for it. Advertising shits in your head. I don't
         | accept the modification of my mind as an acceptable form of
         | payment.
         | 
         | "So don't use it"
         | 
         | No. What are you going to do about it? Tell me I'm immoral?
        
           | lrvick wrote:
           | What is immoral is people being told to either give up all
           | privacy or stop using the internet.
           | 
           | A true third choice does not exist, so we are left with no
           | choice but to create one. Strip the ads and remove the
           | trackers until alternatives like anonymous micro-transactions
           | are implemented.
           | 
           | This needs to go down like DRM. When enough people voted no
           | to DRM by obtaining music via alternative channels, music
           | sales portals started dropped DRM letting people have
           | unrestricted copies of what they paid for.
        
           | throwaway0x7E6 wrote:
           | based
        
       | BurungHantu wrote:
       | More YouTube alternatives and privacy frontends:
       | 
       | - https://www.privacytools.io/youtube-alternatives/
       | 
       | - https://www.privacytools.io/privacy-frontends/
        
       | greenpizza13 wrote:
       | Why would people want this?
       | 
       | YouTube creators make their money with ads, so this takes money
       | out of their pockets, too.
        
         | BLKNSLVR wrote:
         | Save time, save bandwidth, save privacy, minimise support for
         | Google.
         | 
         | I'm intentionally not addressing the advertising revenue issue
         | as that becomes subjective very quickly, just attempting to
         | answer your question through my lens.
        
       | illuminerdy wrote:
       | I've been using FreeTube for quite a while now. It's great for
       | subscribing to channels that you don't necessarily want to infect
       | your regular YouTube feed and recommendations.
        
         | europeanguy wrote:
         | Why not just RSS? Don't get me wrong, I hate Google's monopoly
         | as much as anyone else, but in this specific case I don't see
         | the benefit of using some app for the subscriptions, vs rss
        
           | ekianjo wrote:
           | It goes beyond just feeds
        
             | MattDemers wrote:
             | Just to add, Freetube has support for comments, timestamp
             | segments, and other things that goes beyond RSS.
        
       | 2-718-281-828 wrote:
       | i use it every day and really like it. youtube gets almost every
       | aspect of ui and ux wrong. it's not even funny considering how
       | central it is to multimedia content.
        
       | sneak wrote:
       | It says Private right in the name, but on launch it immediately
       | phones home to GitHub and some VPSes.
        
         | ekianjo wrote:
         | Private from youtube as in you do not need a Google account
        
           | googlryas wrote:
           | YouTube.com doesn't require an account either. What exactly
           | is this buying us that you don't get from just opening the
           | site in incognito mode?
        
             | agluszak wrote:
             | But without account on youtube.com you cannot subscribe to
             | channels. With FreeTube you can. And also it is open-
             | source[1]
             | 
             | [1] - https://github.com/FreeTubeApp/FreeTube
        
               | fijiaarone wrote:
               | Once upon a time browsers had a way to bookmark web pages
               | and nobody knew it but you.
        
               | bogwog wrote:
               | Browser bookmarks != Youtube subscriptions
        
               | aliqot wrote:
               | all youtube channels can be added as RSS feeds natively.
        
               | [deleted]
        
             | wolfskaempf wrote:
             | You can still subscribe to channels and create playlists.
             | All of this is stored locally without an account.
        
       | s3p wrote:
       | I see this is based on Electron. Do you have any plans to release
       | a progressive web app? That would be a nice addition to
       | win/mac/linux apps
        
       | n4bz0r wrote:
       | People here talking about how they don't want YouTube to make a
       | profile of their preferences, and here I am, wishing YouTube had
       | a _better_ profile of my preferences.
       | 
       | Lately, there is almost no new videos in my recommendation feed.
       | It's mostly either the things I've already watched or new videos
       | from the channels I'm already subscribed to. It really feels like
       | I've exhausted the internet at some point. This can't possibly be
       | true now, can it? :')
       | 
       | Where do I opt-in for _more_ tracking?
        
         | mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote:
         | I found that disabling autoplay helped with this. I regularly
         | watch youtube while getting to sleep. It would end up
         | autoplaying previously seen videos all night, which I guess
         | trained it to think I loved rewatching the same videos over and
         | over.
        
         | Blue111 wrote:
        
         | ruminator1 wrote:
         | The goal of the YouTube algorithm is not to give you great
         | videos but keep you mildly entertained for long periods of
         | time.
         | 
         | In my experience the 'suggested videos' next to the video
         | you're watching is more than good enough to get recs.
         | 
         | I use newpipe and put all the videos I like in a playlist. So
         | everytime I want new videos I just scroll through the list,
         | click on a video and just try something from suggested videos.
        
           | charcircuit wrote:
           | Being shown great videos that are relevant to you is
           | correlated with increased time on the platform and
           | satisfaction which are some of the metrics YouTube cares
           | about.
           | 
           | >the 'suggested videos' next to the video you're watching is
           | more than good enough to get recs.
           | 
           | Which is also an algorithmic feed which optimizes for the
           | same metrics as the home page.
        
         | rodgerd wrote:
         | There is _a lot_ of effort that goes into gaming the algo.
         | Either that or YouTube 's devs are completely incompetent.
         | Either would explain why watching Stewart Lee videos gets me
         | Jordan Peterson recommendations, but I tend toward the former
         | rather than the latter.
        
         | echelon wrote:
         | Precisely this.
         | 
         | I go to YouTube, see a whole lot of _nothing_ , and then I
         | promptly leave. It's an interest desert.
         | 
         | I always read and hear of YouTube being lauded for its
         | recommendations, but to me it has always been the _weakest_
         | video content site and social network. It doesn 't do either
         | job particularly well, at least not in a way that engages me
         | for long.
         | 
         | I like science and geopolitical content, but the typical
         | YouTuber treatment tends to pale in comparison to stuff you'd
         | read.
         | 
         | From my perspective, HBO and TikTok win long and short form
         | video respectively, whereas Twitter, HN, and Reddit win 1:n and
         | n:m social.
        
           | JZL003 wrote:
           | what geopolitical and science do you read/follow? I can find
           | pretty alright science (either very high level or just papers
           | at some point, some industry niche websites strike a better
           | balance), but not that many geopolitical sites I feel good
           | about
        
         | lvass wrote:
         | Is boob tube 2.0 really better than the original yet? It
         | seemingly can't even stop showing bizarre things to children,
         | recommending good content seems very far away. It's probably
         | not even their business interest if you adblock.
        
         | TylerE wrote:
         | I've had a similar experience, and it's rather recent.. last
         | month or so.
        
         | MR4D wrote:
         | I think you might not be understanding the context of the
         | argument.
         | 
         | Google has tons of information on you - way more than it needs,
         | and yet it still doesn't get recommendations as good as we
         | expect (as you rightly point out).
         | 
         | So the issue is that it has tons of extra data than they need
         | because it * doesn't make their recommendation any better.*
         | 
         | Gathering data for the sake of gathering data in todays world
         | of information privacy and hackers, leaks, etc. And that is
         | what they are doing.
         | 
         | In my opinion (sample size of 1), YouTube is incredibly
         | simplistic in its recommendations. I find it very hard to
         | believe that they couldn't achieve the same quality with much
         | less info on me.
         | 
         | For instance, my IP changes when I travel, but I'm an American
         | who speaks English, and yet YouTube insists in showing me local
         | ads in different languages when I'm in foreign countries,
         | despite having my home address (verified with my credit card no
         | less!!!) That's just laughable.
        
           | mhss wrote:
           | > Google has tons of information on you
           | 
           | Do you have any good sources about this? what do we know for
           | sure Google know and track about us? I work for Google now,
           | but speak for myself here. In my time here (not much, less
           | than a year still) I've seen a huge focus on privacy and not
           | storing user data. Then again, I don't work on ads. However,
           | even before working at Google I was surprised that given my
           | liberal sharing of information on the internet, ad targeting
           | did not seem particularly more informed for me than "middle
           | aged male living in Canada" -\\_(tsu)_/-.
        
           | bogwog wrote:
           | > For instance, my IP changes when I travel, but I'm an
           | American who speaks English, and yet YouTube insists in
           | showing me local ads in different languages when I'm in
           | foreign countries, despite having my home address (verified
           | with my credit card no less!!!) That's just laughable.
           | 
           | I bet those advertisers that are wasting money on ads that
           | you don't understand aren't laughing
        
             | nwienert wrote:
             | For years YouTubes top hero banner purposely loaded quite a
             | bit later than the rest of the page.
             | 
             | I never noticed it, until I moved to Spain for a while. Our
             | place had slow internet, and I watched my roommates hit the
             | ad multiple times a day on accident because it loaded right
             | into where the search box was exactly as you'd naturally
             | click there.
        
               | Brian_K_White wrote:
               | I have seen that kind of thing a few different places and
               | I just plain decline to believe that it isn't done with
               | knowledge.
               | 
               | Active items that are already clickable that change
               | location as a page loads drive me nuts, but these
               | particularly convenient examples add another dimension to
               | that.
        
               | FeistySkink wrote:
               | My banking app does that when doing a transfer, i.e new
               | field appear depending on a receiver. It catches me off-
               | guard every single time. Infuriating.
        
               | Brian_K_White wrote:
               | hah! 2 seconds later this is in my feed
               | 
               | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33765399
        
         | guestbest wrote:
         | The tracking isn't for a better user experience for you but for
         | better targeting for companies
        
           | mrleinad wrote:
           | Well, that's not working either
        
         | makeitdouble wrote:
         | As it is a new development (been seeing the same thing happen
         | since a few months ago, and lot of people seem to have the
         | complaint), I'd assume YouTube is exactly taking account all
         | the data it has on its users, and are applying what they see as
         | the best strategy for their bottom line.
         | 
         | I wouldn't expect more data or better profiling to bridge that
         | gap.
        
         | verisimi wrote:
         | Where oh where can I get a body cavity search?! Won't anybody
         | tell me?
        
       | charcircuit wrote:
       | It's easier and better to just make a new YouTube account or use
       | incognito mode. The only benefit I see from FreeTube is no ads.
       | This can be replicated by just using an adblocker.
       | 
       | Having watch history and other data tied to an account is more
       | convenient since you can access it anywhere and YouTube can
       | recommend videos for you to watch which is a killer feature that
       | FreeTube lacks.
        
         | ekianjo wrote:
         | Nope. No ads as in no sponsor ads either. You cant replicate
         | that with an adblocker. Also it prevents youtube from making a
         | profile out of what you consume.
        
           | pessimizer wrote:
           | > No ads as in no sponsor ads either. You cant replicate that
           | with an adblocker.
           | 
           | https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/sponsorblock/
           | 
           | https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/sponsorblock-
           | for-y...
        
             | ekianjo wrote:
             | That's not your typical adblocker. That's an extra one that
             | you have to trust to give access to all of your website
             | data, on top of that. Freetube uses the API, I prefer that
             | approach to trusting random extensions that get automatic
             | updates.
        
       | timbit42 wrote:
       | Does it support SponsorBlock?
        
         | femboy wrote:
         | Yes.
        
           | mardifoufs wrote:
           | Can't believe your name wasn't taken before two weeks ago!
        
             | system2 wrote:
             | Unlike reddit, the nicknames are not too vulgar. That must
             | be the reason why. You can find many others not taken.
        
       | soheil wrote:
       | How is this any different than running youtube in a Firefox
       | container? I feel like it's a lot of reinventing the wheel if you
       | have to do things like Sponsorblock, Adblock, etc. all over again
       | instead of just relying on your current browser setup.
        
         | lrvick wrote:
         | You can route all traffic through community invidious instances
         | so Google can not even track what content is consumed by your
         | IP.
         | 
         | It also automatically skips all ads, even sponsor segments in
         | videos.
         | 
         | You also avoid needing to have a Google account to keep up with
         | subscriptions, and you avoid content suppression as the
         | sponsor-prioritized advertiser-friendly algorithms are turned
         | off.
        
           | judge2020 wrote:
           | > so Google can not even track what content is consumed by
           | your IP.
           | 
           | "Google uses IPs to track you" has been theorized since 2010
           | or maybe even before, but I've never seen any study or
           | evidence that it actually does so. So, so much of the
           | internet is built on NAT, shared IP space, and short-lived IP
           | addresses that it really doesn't seem like there is any ROI
           | in having engineers keep their IP correlation tech in service
           | and tracking its efficacy.
        
             | cuttysnark wrote:
             | IP addresses are frequently kept and stored to show users
             | their active sessions. Are you sincerely doubting that a
             | company like Google doesn't or can't use this information
             | in other ways that support their core business? You don't
             | have to call it "tracking", but I can't think of a better
             | name.
        
         | emaro wrote:
         | You don't have to execute YouTubes javascript to watch videos.
        
       | lakomen wrote:
       | We need one to replace vanced on Android and Android TV. We have
       | ad blockers for browsers on the desktop.
        
         | Bilal_io wrote:
         | Revanced has been in development since Vanced stopped
         | development.
         | 
         | Their client takes a different approach, and it not only
         | patches YouTube clients, but also Twitter, TikTok, Spotify and
         | Twitch to name a few.
        
         | SkyPuncher wrote:
         | S Tube is fantastic on AndroidTV.
        
       | poulpy123 wrote:
       | Looks nice. Can it import/export subscription with newpipe ?
        
         | illuminerdy wrote:
         | Yes, but when I tried, it was kind buggy. May have improved
         | since then.
        
         | ekianjo wrote:
         | yes they have compatible json exports
        
         | 3np wrote:
         | Looks like it:
         | https://github.com/FreeTubeApp/FreeTube/pull/2604
        
       | arbol wrote:
       | Now we just need an Android version of this!
        
         | ekianjo wrote:
         | Its called Newpipe
        
           | 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
           | I love NewPipe and use it heavily on my phone and Shield TV.
           | 
           | https://github.com/TeamNewPipe/NewPipe
        
       | capex wrote:
       | My biggest gripe with Youtube right now is how they've left
       | channel subscription just as a long list. I have hundreds of
       | subscriptions, and they are clearly around a few of my
       | interests...
        
       | causi wrote:
       | I need to get around to figuring out how to build ReVanced before
       | Youtube Vanced stops working.
        
       | Zuiii wrote:
       | One and only one question:
       | 
       | Can it limit video search to only the channels in my subscription
       | list?
       | 
       | Youtube seems to have had this feature at one point but it was
       | removed. The only option is to search each channel specifically
       | (a tedious task if you hundreds of channel subscriptions).
       | 
       | If you can provide this incredibly useful but imposible-to-do-
       | manually functionality (search all subscriptions), you'll have a
       | UVP that will make people like me immediately switch.
        
         | causi wrote:
         | If you've seen the video before you could search your view
         | history.
        
       | walrus01 wrote:
       | I would encourage anybody interested in this sort of thing to
       | search for yt-dlp, which is a fork and continuation of the
       | YouTube-dl project.
       | 
       | CLI tool to download and mirror YouTube videos and audio to local
       | disk.
        
         | 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
         | You can even stream twitch.
         | 
         | For example, I've used:
         | 
         | $ yt-dlp -o - <twitch channel> | vlc -
        
       | ipaddr wrote:
       | Can it save video content through browser addons or build in
       | functionity?
        
         | ekianjo wrote:
         | it uses yt_dlp under the hood to save video afair
        
         | ajvs wrote:
         | Built in but I don't find it reliable, I instead opt for yt-
         | dlp.
        
       | sourcecodeplz wrote:
       | I don't mind Youtube making a profile of me and recommending
       | similar things. But then again I use youtube to watch channels
       | I'm subscribed to and maybe once a week I watch the recommended
       | stuff.
        
         | colinsane wrote:
         | i just find the youtube login process terrible. my browser
         | doesn't persist cookies, so i have to re-login every day. not
         | problematic for most sites that use a single login form (like
         | HN) and play nice with a password manager.
         | 
         | but for Youtube its:
         | 
         | 1. go to login page.
         | 
         | 2. enter username, hit enter.
         | 
         | 3. enter password, hit enter.
         | 
         | 4. at the 2FA page hunt for the "other method" option and click
         | it.
         | 
         | 5. select "authenticate with Google Authenticator" (i.e. OTP).
         | 
         | 6. enter TOTP code, hit enter
         | 
         | 7. select either "use this method in the future" or "no" --
         | they don't take effect because no cookies.
         | 
         | sure, it's self-inflicted on behalf of me not persisting
         | cookies. but a 7 step login process? get real.
         | 
         | 3rd party clients like this solve that. in theory i could also
         | whitelist youtube cookies to be specifically persisted, but
         | figuring out how to do that would be a lot more troublesome
         | than just using a 3rd party client.
        
           | InCityDreams wrote:
           | My cookies dont persist. I do steps 1, 2, and 3 - almost
           | daily. And that, to me, is a pain. As you say, "self-
           | inflicted" - i can't help but think of the guy-on-the
           | bicycle-meme. No snark intended, but your steps 4-7 (2fa+)
           | seem remarkably...unnecessary for youtube?
        
             | ThePowerOfFuet wrote:
             | It's not just YouTube; they are signing into their Google
             | Account.
        
               | colinsane wrote:
               | yeah, if Youtube wasn't connected to my old gmail account
               | which secures way too much of my life, i wouldn't use
               | 2FA. now that you point it out i should rather create a
               | separate account specifically for Youtube, which wouldn't
               | need 2FA.
        
           | jayshua wrote:
           | I had the same pain until I started using Firefox containers.
           | Now I can persist cookies for just YouTube without keeping
           | them for any other sites or making the Google cookies
           | available to Google when I'm browsing other sites using the
           | non-youtube container.
        
         | 31337Logic wrote:
        
       | MattDemers wrote:
       | I love Freetube, and try to contribute to people directly if I'm
       | going to use Freetube.
       | 
       | It'll truly become killer when I can save multiple playlists,
       | like I can on Newpipe. Sadly right now you're stuck with one
       | playlist of "Favourites", and then copy-pasting a playlist link
       | from YouTube to queue things up.
        
       | mirkules wrote:
       | I use Musi on iOS. Ability to play in the background, save
       | playlists locally, no YouTube ads (just ads on screen in the app
       | while music plays in the background, for non-paid versions), and
       | no link to your YouTube account.
       | 
       | https://apps.apple.com/us/app/musi-simple-music-streaming/id...
        
         | elashri wrote:
         | The app is tracking location and user information
        
           | comprev wrote:
           | I've looked in iOS settings and can't see anything other than
           | mobile data on/off and Siri?
        
             | elashri wrote:
             | Apps now require to report what they collect and what
             | tracking they are using. This information is available on
             | app store page of the app.
        
               | varenc wrote:
               | I see that in the app privacy report, but it doesn't ask
               | for location permission. Not really sure what to think.
               | Perhaps it's just tracking/logging your IP's geo location
               | and that alone is enough to require disclosure?
        
       | squarefoot wrote:
       | Is there something similar built as Kodi addon? I made heavy use
       | of its YT addon in the past, then a few years ago Google revoked
       | their free API keys so that anyone wanting to watch YouTube
       | videos had to login using their personal API key (which I don't
       | have and don't plan to get) with all privacy implications. I can
       | watch videos on a PC, so why do I have to give my credentials to
       | do the same on Kodi? In both early 2021 and early 2022 I spent
       | hours in bed every day because of severe health issues and being
       | able to watch my favorite channels would have helped a lot to
       | kill that time.
        
         | mongol wrote:
         | The Kodi Youtube addon can play videos without API key. On
         | Android you can share a Youtube URL to the Yatse remote control
         | app and it will play on Kodi
        
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       (page generated 2022-11-28 05:00 UTC)