What is Reddit's opinion of
FreeTube?
From 3.5 billion Reddit comments
73 reviews of this app found across Reddit:
Nope. YouTube is now property of google, and they make the rules.
I suggest using newpipe (also check out Newpipe sponsorblock) on Android and Freetube on pc
Using freetubeapp.io on desktop (and linux mobiles) and NewPipe on Android may help with your YouTube issue. No account is needed for both while still providing local subscriptions and they can be configured to only indirectly access the YouTube servers.
Is it more comfy than Freetube? Serious question. Because Freetube is really super comfy. Even more comfy than Youtube itself.
It runs locally. You can subscribe to channels and it gets stored locally. No accounts needed. It comes with Sponsorblock and Unhooked Youtube integrated. You can set it up to ask Invidious to get your videos for you instead of directly getting them from Youtube and you can set your subscription into RSS mode. That's kinda privacy-y. It's like using Youtube, just locally, without a webbrowser, but with privacy and whatever. ...And it has an integrated downloader too.
I tried posting about this multiple times, but nearly all of my comments on youtube are deleted. You cannot talk about age restrictions, youtube policies that essentially amount to genocide denial or alternatives to youtube in youtube comments. They will get deleted, probably by an automated system. Tried to poke holes into it by talking in code, but even that doesn't help.
Those looking for an alternative way to get access to videos censored by youtube, I suggest using FreeTube which is a opensource frontend for youtube. It essentially replaces the youtube website while still giving you access to the youtube library. No restrictions, no google account(or any other account for that matter) needed. All subscriptions and viewing history is stored on your computer.
Sur ordinateur, il existe FreeTube, un client gratuit et open-source qui permet d'accéder à YouTube sans pubs (c'est discutable oui) et sans restriction d'age à travers des instances Individious : https://freetubeapp.io/
Le seul inconvénient à cela est qu'il n'y a pas d'interactions possibles avec les vidéos : impossible d'aimer ou de commenter.
Sur Android, il existe l'application NewPipe qui fonctionne d'une façon similaire.
Yeah! Its a part of Google and google always spy us. Use https://freetubeapp.io/ or NewPipe (Lightweight YouTube frontend) - https://f-droid.org/packages/org.schabi.newpipe Or SkyTube (A simple and feature-rich YouTube player) - https://f-droid.org/packages/free.rm.skytube.oss
Freetube is also an option, they just rewrote their API call to be independent, and it works quite well. You still have the option to choose the Invidious API, but it defaults to their new one.
Been using it since yesterday when it was released and have not had an issue with it. No account required, everything is stored locally (subscriptions, etc).
Vu que chacun y va de sa petite solution, je me permet de proposer FreeTube, un client desktop open source qui permet d'avoir accès aux fonctions d'abonnement, de téléchargement, de personnalisation et tout et tout sans avoir besoin de compte (et aussi sans pub)
L'application n'est pas exempte de soucis mais personnellement, je suis conquis
To ensure content is available only to its appropriate audience, YouTube will redirect users who attempt to watch age-restricted videos on most third-party websites to its own site where they will be asked to sign in and prove they are over the age of 18.
Do you think I should not be worried about this then? I use https://freetubeapp.io
Ironically, in the past I have faced youtube glitches on chromium.
Firefox works good for me. In case you face issues I'd recommend choosing an alternate front end like Piped or Invidious websites or leave the browser and use Freetube - a desktop app for youtube. Although not being able to log in to your google account and comment on videos might be an issue to some of you guys.
Ich benutze am PC das Programm FreeTube, da hab ich keine Werbung. Lässt sich allerdings nicht mit YT Account verwenden, du müsstest also bei YT deine Abos exportieren und dann in FreeTube importieren.
I found links in your comment that were not hyperlinked:
I did the honors for you.
^delete ^| ^information ^| ^<3
I found links in your comment that were not hyperlinked:
I did the honors for you.
^delete ^| ^information ^| ^<3
The answer is yes. If you care about privacy and don't want a website/service (in this case YouTube) to know who you are or your browsing habits being logged in to the service would be completely counterproductive as YouTube would be able to get all the information it needed through your account and directly link it back to you.
What I would recommend is using FreeTube (Website , Github) when on desktop if you want to keep your subscriptions/history/favorites without sending all that data to YouTube.
FreeTube uses the Invidious API and only loads what's absolutely necessary to play the video and nothing more. Subscriptions and History are saved locally. FreeTube also allows you to Route your traffic through the Tor Network so Google can't link your activity through your IP address.
hehe, yey for linux ! it's not any harder than windows, just a matter of getting used to something different (for me, everytime I have to use windows I find it quite hard now), and there's a lot of people to help you if you need it.
I use freetube for youtube https://freetubeapp.io, it's a nice app that uses invidious for the videos, I don't have an account, and I just have subscriptions, and there's basic functionality for sponsorblock. I really just wanted to stop using a google account while still keeping subscriptions. I also have NewPipe on android https://github.com/polymorphicshade/NewPipe. where you can export and import subscriptions across both apps.
for twitch, I just use a web app from the website that I create from webapp manager https://github.com/linuxmint/webapp-manager. It's really just twitch, but alone in its own mini profile, without the tab, address bar, or any kind of UI, just the website, as an app.
you could use the youtube app as a web app the same way if you want to keep your account and the algorithm's recomended.
We send as little information as we possibly can to YouTube. Most of this information can be avoided by using a VPN and / or switching to the Invidious API in your settings page.
More information over what's sent can be found on our Privacy Page
https://freetubeapp.io/ Tästä freetube tulille, ei tarvitse kirjautua youtubeen ja voit silti seurata kanavia, estää ikärajablokit, mainokset yms. Vain desktopille, kännykälle sitten NewPipe.
FreeTube (an open source desktop YouTube player) is currently able to get around the age restriction without needing to use a VPN or give credit card. There's probably something similar for mobile.
For youtube, try consuming it using apps like NewPipe, FreeTube. Or from websites like invidious.snopyta.org
I have been summoned :P
The general argument of Electron as a privacy tool is typically seen as acceptable. There are many privacy tools (a lot of them are recommended on the PrivacyTools site) that uses Electron one way or another. Signal, Wire, Tutanota, Joplin, and Standard Notes just to name a few examples. I would argue that every single one of those apps would contain more sensitive information than what FreeTube would. Some of them are also companies that rely on privacy as their main source of income. If they can get away with using Electron with their privacy apps, why can't FreeTube?
My other reasoning for using Electron is simply because I'm only one person who works on FreeTube in my spare time. I simply don't have the time nor motivation to make dedicated apps for each platform. I would love to make a dedicated app for FreeTube but if I did that it would be devoted to just Linux and I would lose roughly half of my users.
Finally, I do my best to make sure that as many things run locally when possible. FreeTube does not make a connection to any site that is not stated in the privacy policy. You can also connect FreeTube to Tor and filter all traffic through Tor for extra privacy. As was mentioned by other people in this thread, you can always confirm that what I say is true by browsing the source code yourself. You can also compile your own build without any difference to the official downloads.
Recently, on my Android phone, I denied microphone access to a bunch of apps including Google stuff (I have no need for voice recognition input) and noticed that my memory usage went down (anecdotally, I might add, I haven't measured it over a period of time or anything) - makes me suspect that something must have been using the microphone. Still keeping an eye out to see if this breaks anything.
Is that enough, or do you think there even more 'novel' ways they have of listening in?
> Also as an aside, Youtube does not enable anonymous viewing
Well there's NewPipe for Android, FreeTube for desktop, invidio.us for browsers - all ways to view YouTube videos that don't use the YouTube player or YouTube's APIs - presumably this would bypass a lot of Google's tracking as you're just connecting to the video directly on the Google video server (which will still see your IP address of course).
If youtube is what you need then lemme introduce you to this gem: freetube. It's an amazing privacy respecting 3rd party client for youtube (even listed on privacyguides). You can login to Google Takeout (just search on duckduckgo, should be the the top searches) to export all your youtube subscriptions.
that's a kinda fun video!
if you don't want to sign in to YT or get age verified you can always install FreeTube on your PC and then simply copy and paste the YT link into FreeTube and bypass all the bullshit,
I don't like sharing any data with Google these days.
Newpipe is good for mobile and for PC I recently discovered Piped from this other post. So far I'm liking it. Freetube is another another option if you don't mind having to install it.
not that i know of, you'll need to use streamlink from the command line, the syntax is not complicated tho but it might take you 10-15 minutes to set up everything initially.
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if you don't want to mess around with the command line you can alternatively use freetube which removes ads and other garbage
If you want just to use youtube without ads, the most simple method would be to install Ublock Origin https://ublockorigin.com/ in your company's laptop web browser, then just use youtube in it without being logged in.
As an alternative, you can install FreeTube: https://freetubeapp.io/
It's a open source client for youtube focused on privacy, so you only can use it without being logged in, but will let you save subscriptions and even import them from your youtube account; all of this in a local profile so won't sync online: https://docs.freetubeapp.io/usage/importing-subscriptions/
Of course, all of this depends of the restrictions you may have to install new software on your work laptop. YMMV
Instead you can also use FreeTube, it has uBlock and Sponsorblock (has to be activated in the settings) built in and allows you to save videos. Plus you don't need to have a Google account to make playlists or follow channels.
if you can't access this youtube vid download and install this standalone youtube player and copy and paste the youtube link into it's search bar,
it will bypass age restrictions and regional restrictions, no need to sign in,
The sole reason why Google and other companies can constantly get away with the worst decisions at the expense of users is because they know entirely that people will just be mad for a while, but continue to use it. This has happened every time YouTube made a shit decision. Why would they start to care now when there has been genuinely zero consequences for bad decisions, and never will be?
I just don't go on YouTube anymore, and if I do want to watch something on it I use FreeTube, complaining is good for frustration but it is not going to change anything. One of the best things that could happen would be some mass user exodus to a better alternative, and letting YouTube continue to make its stupid decisions. Odysee seems nice, and its only weakness is the lack of variety that YouTube has due to less users.
I can't watch some youtube stuff without signing in and verifying my age,
I refuse to share those details with google so lately I've been using a standalone YT player I can just put the YT link into and hey presto no age limits or regional lockouts,
Website: https://freetubeapp.io
About: https://freetubeapp.io/about.php
> # Our Mission > > Privacy is something that has become more important as the years go by. Every day something new is being created to take advantage of you and your data. Many of those that are aware of these violations feel helpless and eventually accept the new normal. These same people might even be aware that alternatives exist however they find difficulty switching due to one reason or another. YouTube has become one such platform where those that use it still enjoy the service however they're not pleased with the misuse of their information when using the platform. Alternatives that are out there won't have the same content creators as the ones you are used to. With FreeTube, our mission is to provide a happy medium for these people where they can use YouTube on their own terms. We aim to show those that struggle with privacy that privacy can be easy and achievable. We want FreeTube to be accesible to all types of users by being as user-friendly and as feature-rich as possible while also maintaining as much privacy as possible while using YouTube.
> # History > > FreeTube was started in late December of 2017 as a personal desire. I started to have a grown interest in privacy and was in the transitional process of getting rid of some of the apps that I used daily that ended up becoming too invasive for me. YouTube was one of those apps that I wanted to get rid of…
Source code: https://github.com/FreeTubeApp/FreeTube
This sounds a little like withdrawal from Social Media. I know I went through this personally years ago.
You might be able to find new hobbies to fill that time. I found myself with a lot of free time when I went through the Social Media purge & wasn't head-deep at work & study. So through that extra time I found new topics of interest & new activities I enjoyed.
I discovered I really enjoyed studying different aspects of Human Languages
I had time to begin my own learning of Russian
I re-discovered just how much I use to listen to music & finally got myself some good quality audio gear
I got into Privacy, Security, & OpSec as a hobby
I had more time to spend with my close friends on social activities
As for alternative platform replacements:
YouTube: Watch in a web browser using Invidious or on Desktop using FreeTube
Discord: Matrix/Element
Instagram: Bibliogram
The last sentence in your post sort of concerns me.
> Please let me know any apps I can use to talk to people
I would personally reconsider whether or not abandoning of those platforms as left you Social Isolated from people you use to interact with. The first step I took before abandoning those platform was to migrate as many people in my life over to Private & Secure platforms like Signal -- that way I could easily communicate with them.
What is the criteria for a program to be listed? I want to use Freetube as a candidate next to Firefox and Chromium, so I tried modifying freetube.desktop to look more like one of the installed browsers, but it still doesn't show up in Junction
[Desktop Entry] Name=Freetube StartupWMClass=freetube GenericName=Web Browser Icon=freetube Type=Application Categories=Network;WebBrowser; Exec=/opt/Freetube/freetube %u Terminal=false StartupNotify=true MimeType=text/html;text/xml;application/xhtml+xml;application/xml;application/rdf+xml;x-scheme-handler/http;x-scheme-handler/https; Keywords=Browser
Freetube is a desktop Youtube client https://freetubeapp.io
I'm using Debian 11 Gnome X11 desktop and installed the Junction flatpak
YouTube w/ Safari & 1Blocker is so bad, I now only use Firefox & uBlock.
I'm even considering options like FreeTube. https://freetubeapp.io I'd use youtube-dl more if I could figure out how to sync devices.
I only use my Google account for Youtube subscriptions. I don't want Google to be tracking me either so I'm waiting for FreeTube to come out of beta with a few more features then I can delete my Google account as well.
The connection is perfect their website is just slow as hell when I want to download their client
https://freetubeapp.io/#download
It's the second time now that it failed the download all of the sudden for no reason after a few minutes, great... can someone mirror pls :(
download freetubeapp.io use it to replace youtube. search like normal. No tracking, no ads, no commercials. :) oh yeah, you can download any video for off line viewing . privacy and quality. f google
I could have added this galdly...but...the list contains applications that are compatible for android. An application that is made just for desktop can’t be included in the list. But if that desktop app can work on an android device then Im ready to add the app to the list. Thanks :)
I'd recommend checking out FreeTube, a privacy focused YouTube frontend client that supports subscriptions: https://freetubeapp.io/
I hope this helps with watching YouTube content without the fuss.
exactly. i refuse to hand over my sensitive info a company that is known to divulge private data to 3rd parties, just to wants a funny video where people fall over on a fus ro dah background. luckily i found https://freetubeapp.io/ after i first saw this crap and got annoyed, so now i only use that to watch ALL youtube.
If there's no filter to already do that, inspect the "verify your age" message, then make a filter for it based off it's attributes. Currently I can't make it because I am based in the US.
Of course I would recommend just to stop using YouTube period. It has tracking scripts and recommendation is not that good. I recommend you to use a different YT frontend like FreeTube or Invidious instead.
Auf dem (Android) Handy: NewPipe oder YouTube Vanced.
Auf dem Desktop: Invidious mit der privacy redirect extension verwenden. Beim Klick auf einen YouTube link wird man dann auf eine zufällige invidious Instanz weitergeleitet. Unterstützt in der Regel nur maximal 720p und einige Instanzen gehen gerne auch mal gar nicht. Es gibt auch FreeTube, aber das scheint bei mir meist nicht gut zu funktionieren
>Sur Ordi Firefox + uBlock + No Script.
Sur desktop, j'utilise FreeTube qui, en plus de dégager les publicités et de télécharger les vidéos, permet de profiter du gros des avantages de Youtube, comme la gestion des abonnements, des playlists, résolution par défaut et compagnie et ce, sans avoir besoin de compte, tout est géré en local.
En revanche, le projet est encore en plein développement et même s'il est prometteur, quelques bugs peuvent apparaître.
The following solution from StackOverflow works for me:
I would also suggest that if you're not using YouTube with a Google account, you'd be better off using the open-source, privacy-respecting FreeTube client. It does a pretty good job of simulating the signed-in experience without sending any of your data to Google, in addition to other useful features like auto HD and the ability to disable various UI elements. I only ever use the browser version as a backup when Google's updates deliberately break the third-party clients.
There's FreeTube, but it's still in beta: it originally used Invidious as backend, but its development has recently stalled, thus the FreeTube developer rewrote that to primarily use a local API instead... and it's still very rough.
My experience is that it works okay for watching videos in my feed and that's about it. The cons are that it's based on Chromium, which eats up lots of resources on my system, and playlists and search seem broken.
TLDR; Summary (from article)
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YouTube is Google-owned and therefore an inherent privacy risk, however you can take steps to maximise your privacy:
- On Phones & Tablets, get the NewPipe app.
- On Desktops & Laptops, use an Invidious instance in your browser, or install the FreeTube desktop software.
- You can subscribe to channel RSS feeds by adding this link to your RSS Feed (and replacing ‘ChannelID’ with the channel ID):
Freetube for desktop is great. It allows you to watch YouTube video's through any invidio.us instance via a proxy. It also allows you to subscribe to channels without an account. There even is an option to not route your traffic through Freetube. I definitely recommend it.
I found links in your comment that were not hyperlinked:
I did the honors for you.
^delete ^| ^information ^| ^<3
Windowson FreeTube, Androidon NewPipe a megoldás. Utóbbit sajnos aktívan próbálja kinyírni a Google, tehát egy-két havonta elkezdi nem betölteni a videókat, de mindig javítják pár napon belül. Google fiók nélkül működik, de ugyanúgy lehet feliratkozni, kapod az értesítést az új videókról. Nulla reklám, lejátszás a háttérben. Mindez nyílt forráskóddal, ingyenesen.
Totally legit. FreeTube is a free and open source client for YouTube. It’s available for macOS, Linux and Windows. It’s recommended all the time on different privacy related subreddits. Pretty neat app.
Freetube is an app. But you can try Invidious if you dont want an app. I recommand using Privacy Redirect add-on to open YouTube link on an Invidious instances.
(Freetube use Invidious instances)
Browser: ublock origin
Program: FreeTube
Mobile App: NewPipe (this app is awesome because it lets you stream music while the phone is locked)
go to invidious.snopyta.org or freetubeapp.io which are youtube proxies so every video you watch looks like they're watching it instead of you
The exact same here. Maybe Saturday.
You can check out other instances as a temporary solution.
Hopefully someone forks Invidious or FreeTube moves to more platforms soon.
You might like Freetube It still relies on an invidious instance, but allows you to take your subscriptions between invidious instances and even export them to Newpipe to have a subscriptions list that isn't dependent on anyone.
Slack: University uses it.
Steam: I've had the account for 8 years & have many many games in them. It's also a way of socializing with friends while in lockdown.
Telegram: I use it as an SMS replacement, not as a private messenger. That's what I use Signal for. It's also because I live in a place with little-to-no cell reception, and SMS to Email with my VOIP mobile numbers is implemented pretty shitty (note I'm in Australia, so I don't have Google Voice).
Google Search: I use it quarterly when I do my deep Internet searches for personal information. It's search is just unparalleled for this purpose.
With YouTube, you can export your subscriptions then import them into the FreeTube desktop app & also import them into NewPipe to use on Android.
Unfortunately Invidious quality is up to 720p. But there’s a desktop app called Freetube that is based on Invidious but with a layout more similar to the Youtube one, and more importantly has a quality up to 1080p. Its only limitation is that it can show only up to 30 comments.
Try using Freetube it's a open source windows client.
You don't have or need an account there but you can export your youtube subscriptions or just subscribe to new channels it's just amazing.
For those of you looking for a youtube alternative there are several in testing right now. I am trying this one out because it is usable on multiple platforms https://freetubeapp.io/
Good luck with this. Using uBlock I am able to block all ads but get hung up on the 'surveys'. If you find a good list please let us know. I have moved most of my youtube viewing to https://freetubeapp.io/. Works pretty good.
Yes there is a website invidio.us and an app called Freetube.
I'm not sure if any supported android phones have more private hardware then others. The pixel if often reccomended for GrapheneOS support (which is more secure, but lacking microG not much works). Otherwise you just want to look at which phone will probably be supported by Lineage well into the future.
If you want to watch youtube videos and youtube.com isn't working great for you, might I recommend using something like https://invidio.us/ or https://freetubeapp.io/
It's always helpful in a pinch when youtube itself isn't loading fast or well enough, since it'll cut down on the bloat and give you just the video and stuff you need by default. (It also happens to be great privacy-wise, if you must use youtube often)
I use a similar setup to what you are proposing. I haven't had any issues with staying signed in with multiple accounts. In theory, such a setup should improve privacy, but there is no way to confirm that Google doesn't agglomerate all your accounts into one "virtual account" using metadata. Even if their privacy policy says they don't, we don't really know. It's possible they don't do it for people based in the EU, but do it for everyone else - who knows?
One option with Youtube is to use FreeTube. It allows you to subscribe to channels without a Google account. It works really well. The UI/UX is pretty similar to the YT web client and it has a dark mode. Unfortunately FreeTube doesn't have an Android client and account sync is manual.
FreeTube is decent. I've never used it for live streams though...I'd assume it doesn't work very well in terms of the comments, etc. I know that you can load up comments for regular videos though.
I'm just going to link to the website and the github because apparently there are some NSFW items that may pop up when you search for it
ProtonMail's app and back-end server are proprietary closed source.
While Firefox Focus is great, it unfortunately doesn't have the ability to disable WebRTC that could undermine user privacy when using VPN as it could expose one's real IP.
Concerning youtube for desktop, you can use FreeTube and it has invidious as instance instead of directly watching from youtube site.
Youtube is scummy as hell for that, the best answer to this is keep using youtube but don't use the Website. I use a Application called Freetube that let's me play and download videos and subscribe to channels without giving Youtube the clicks or add revenue.
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When not watching videos it's shockingly quiet when it comes to network traffic, I left it installed on it's own for a while and it "phones" github once a week to check for updates and it doesnt force them on you either (a refreshing change).
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My only real complaint about it is occasionally a back button goes missing, and the odd video refuses to play (normally fixed by a refresh) but there is a scummy trick that YT is doing with recorded live streams in preperation for a new advert push they are going to be trialing and traffic count massageing, that it's not great at filtering out yet. But no addblocker has really caught up with that yet, so I don't blame the freetube devs.
Try https://www.invidio.us/ it accesses the youtube api for you to prevent tracking
You can even use an application called Freetube to keep track of your subscriptions and play their videos through invidious.