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?

  • jagged_circle@feddit.nl
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    11 days ago

    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.

    • Kiuyn@lemmy.ml
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      8 days ago

      I personally think Freetube is the best for desktop right now. Recently, there is also grayjay for desktop. The UI is still buggy IMO, but also seem promising.

        • Kiuyn@lemmy.ml
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          8 days ago

          That is a fair point. Source first software isn’t a part of FLOSS, but even in worst case scenarios it still can be considered as “source available”. Which is better in term of transparency compared to closed source App. OP asked for “private” way to watch Youtube not open source way, so I think grayjay could still be a great choice. We are talking about watching from YouTube which is a corpo closed source spyware anyway.

          • Blender Dumbass@lm.madiator.cloud
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            8 days ago

            but wait a second. Privacy is good because it is a Freedom. And because it make Freedom as a whole more possible. But using software with which you have no freedom, kind of defeats the purpose. Like you gain +1 freedom points and lose -1 freedom points. It’s net zero.

            Transparency is good to see privacy, but if it is not Libre, you are not gaining any freedom.

            I just woke up, I don’t know if I am making any sense

    • plm00@lemmy.ml
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      12 days ago

      I’ve had a good experience with GrayJay. It’s a bit young and missing features but it’s never broken for me.

      • land@lemmy.ml
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        12 days ago

        Btw, they also have a desktop app, but it’s currently in beta.

        FreeTube is more stable for desktop.

        • plm00@lemmy.ml
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          12 days ago

          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.

          • land@lemmy.ml
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            12 days ago

            I’ve used it for a few days, but it lacks several fundamental features. Additionally, it’s quite resource-intensive.

    • corvus@lemmy.ml
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      11 days ago

      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.

        • corvus@lemmy.ml
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          10 days ago

          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.

          • Karyoplasma@discuss.tchncs.de
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            9 days ago

            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.

  • llama@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    12 days ago

    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.

    • countrypunk@slrpnk.net
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      11 days ago

      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.

      • Zerush@lemmy.ml
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        10 days ago

        FreeTube also is based on Invidious instances, changing the instance may work, but better to set the SMplayer as extern player, then you can open the Video in this player which works almost always.

          • Zerush@lemmy.ml
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            9 days ago

            Yes, if you find a workng Invidious instance it’s ok, but if not, FreeTube without SMplayer is useless.

  • iortega@lemmy.eus
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    10 days ago

    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.

    • jagged_circle@feddit.nl
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      11 days ago

      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.

      • good_hunter@lemmy.world
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        11 days ago

        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.

  • drascus@sh.itjust.works
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    11 days ago

    Freetube and newpipe for me. However I will say they just don’t work sometimes. So then I just am left with my browser.

  • normalexit@lemmy.world
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    10 days ago

    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.

    • Kiuyn@lemmy.ml
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      8 days ago

      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