Customize YouTube to work exactly the way you want it to.

I’m using this all the time myself. There is no login to YouTube required and it supports adding subscriptions and doing everything important you can do on YouTube.

And the best part is no ads whatsoever.

  • _sideffect@lemmy.worldEnglish
    29·
    2 months ago

    My lg tv is jailbroken so I have the ad blocked version of YouTube on it, but I was on my Chromecast with Google tv yesterday and decided to go back to the regular YouTube app since I was there.

    I was watching a video of 20 minutes in length, and got one 30 second ad at the start; ok fine.

    After 4 minutes, they decided to show me a 50 second unskippable ad.

    I backed out of the video, and deleted the regular app.

    Fuck Google.

  • doodledup@lemmy.worldEnglish
    582·
    2 months ago

    Am I the only one that hates third-party clients for Desktop? They all have terrible UI and UX. Firefox + UBlock + Youtube is the way to go. For the phone it’s NewPipe or Grayjay.

    • fross@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      2 months ago

      Revanced app had the superior UI/UX.

      Not because if taste, but because it is the YouTube UI that then allows you to add and remove stuff from the UI, getting away from all the user-hostile stuff. If you want to.

    • leadore@lemmy.worldEnglish
      31·
      2 months ago

      Firefox + UBlock + Youtube is the way to go.

      Unless you don’t like Google tracking everything you watch on youtube, that is.

      • person420@lemmynsfw.comEnglish
        1·
        2 months ago

        Let’s be real, no matter how you’re watching YouTube, if you’re accessing the video directly and not cached through a third party server, Google is still tracking you.

      • dan@upvote.auEnglish
        2·
        2 months ago

        ReVanced isn’t a third-party client though. It’s patches applied to the official client.

    • daq@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
      2·
      2 months ago

      I use the same combo on my phone without any issues or ads. Why use a client on the phone?

    • PenisDuckCuck9001@lemmynsfw.comEnglish
      21·
      2 months ago

      If you use ublock origin and watch a lot, they’ll eventually put your ip address on a list where you have to log in to watch anything. Newpipe seems to be able to circumvent this but yt-dlp can’t. I haven’t tried freetube but maybe freetube can circumvent that.

    • Kanda@reddthat.comEnglish
      2·
      2 months ago

      I use Firefox with ublock on desktop, works like a charm. My favourite on android is YouTube revanced

    • Psythik@lemmy.worldEnglish
      9·
      2 months ago

      Don’t forget about Enhancer for YouTube, SponsorBlock, and DeArrow! They’re all a must-have for desktop YT.

    • xthexder@l.sw0.comEnglish
      11·
      2 months ago

      Personally I still use the Firefox + uBlock + SponsorBlock + YouTube combo on my phone too. Maybe if I watched more YouTube on my phone it’d be worth figuring out an app with a better mobile UI, but I like that it’s a consistent experience anywhere I watch from.

    • EngineerGaming@feddit.nlEnglish
      41·
      2 months ago

      I used to think it is redundant too, but now see it as a quality-of-life difference. Because I can track my subscriptions and watch history, as well as have playlists. That is a massive improvement over folders of bookmarks.

  • Nima@leminal.spaceEnglish
    113·
    2 months ago

    i constantly gotta swap invidious instances because youtube is being relentless in their war against invidious.

    but the ui is awesome and I use it every day.

    • wulf@lemmy.worldEnglish
      6·
      2 months ago

      Invidious is awesome, if possible, self hosting one in docker is great and keeps it up to date

      • Dr. Wesker@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
        31·
        2 months ago

        It seems to be at random, and many of the instances don’t work correctly. You’re better off finding one that does, and setting it as default.

        • dan@upvote.auEnglish
          3·
          2 months ago

          Or host your own :) less likely to be blocked by Google if it’s just you using it.

    • kinship@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
      3·
      2 months ago

      How do I go about doing that (finding a good one and setting it up)? Its been a month that either the video loads or it doesn’t and when it does work it is extremely slow to the point I can’t watch on 1080p.

      • Nima@leminal.spaceEnglish
        2·
        2 months ago

        honestly I keep a tab open with the list of invidious instances open. because every day I usually have to change the instance. or swap it around.

        invidious is fighting youtube very hard, but youtube is fighting back. so its difficult to keep up with.

        i would keep an eye on the invidious instances list. and change to a different one if need be.

  • Elven_Mithril@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    71·
    2 months ago

    yeah I agree! My wife would hear bitchin me if we would watch something on her iphone as i would constantly point out the fucking ads… I use in on my Fedora but sometimes (like once a month) I have a problem with the invidous instances. I wish there would be something similar to use on android, bu fortunately with Firefox& SponsorBlock it seems to block most of them…

  • FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.worldEnglish
    39·
    2 months ago

    I’d argue that Brave is the best way. The adblock is seamless and requires no add-ons, and you retain the full functionality of the site.

    • Olgratin_Magmatoe@lemmy.worldEnglish
      5·
      2 months ago

      Youtube/google/alphabet are almost certainly aware it exists already. The only real risk is too many people switching to it.

      But even then there isn’t much they can do to stop it’s use. They can’t tighten up or remove their api, but then page scraping will take over. They can obfuscation their page, but that will not work forever.

      It’s a cat and mouse game that is impossible to win for them.

      • nforminvasion@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        2 months ago

        You know the same thing was said with Beeper’s imessage on Android pytorch success. “Apple won’t be able to change this. They’d have to change the very nature of imessage itself to block this!” And then, two days later it was blocked completely so, as much as I would hope Google couldn’t block FreeTube, don’t expect such huge successes without tempering expectation.

        • Olgratin_Magmatoe@lemmy.worldEnglish
          1·
          2 months ago

          I can’t say I’m familiar with that particular event. But I’m guessing there is a difference there in that iMessage is well, a messaging service. YouTube isn’t, their videos are on public webpages.

          All Freetube and company needs to do, if it comes to it, is find a way extract a video from a public webpage. There’s a million ways to do that.

          iMessage is not a public webpage, and so there is no real way around it unless you go through their api.

  • LarmyOfLone@lemm.eeEnglish
    1·
    2 months ago

    Have been using it a while since the browser fiasco. It’s awesome but the workflow has a few niggles:

    I’d love a theater mode that uses the full width of the window but still allow the title and comments below. No sidebar or scrollbar besides the video, more like MPV.

    Also LibRedirect isn’t perfect with embedded videos. I’d just like to have a link I can click so it opens in FreeTube.

    And links from the browser are always opened in the first active window instead of opening a new window.

    • c10l@lemmy.worldEnglish
      31·
      2 months ago

      On iOS I’ve been using Vinegar - Tube Cleaner by developer And a Dinosaur. It doesn’t replace YouTube as a whole - only the video player. Better interface, no ads.

      • QuarterSwede@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        2 months ago

        Using uYou via AltStore and it’s such a better experience. I’d rather stop using YouTube altogether than pay Alphabet to use YouTube without ads. I’m not enabling user hostile behavior to push people into Premium. Screw that.

    • Sneezycat@sopuli.xyzEnglish
      196·
      2 months ago

      More like using iOS is not cool. At least in the EU they get some more things, but I was trying the other day to show a workmate how to install an ad blocker and it turns out you can’t even install firefox extensions on iOS!