Anyone who’s been using privacy-respecting frontends for some time will recognise Piped. A YouTube frontend with no ads, integrated SponsorBlock, return dislikes, and a customisable UI.
Piped also allows you to subscribe to as many channels as you want without ever logging into a Google account. You can export your subs list from YouTube and import them to Piped seamlessly.
If you’ve never heard of it, give it a glance at https://piped.video. For more instances, check here.
can definitely recommend this, but just a head’s up - Google has a habit of hitting the main instance with rate limiting, which causes videos to not load until it gets fixed. but thankfully Piped has multiple instances, so if the main one is down, you can keep watching.
Nice!
Inb4 YouTube starts charging for API access… too soon? :(
Piped (and similar projects like NewPipe, Invidious, and FreeTube) scrape YouTube instead of using an API; so just like Nitter, they won’t be affected by a paid API.
Ironically Nitter stopped working lately, since Twitter started requiring users to be logged in to read anything.
Invidious does use a YouTube API. FreeTube uses Invidious, so probably same story there. I don’t know about the others.
I recently had a back and forth with one of invidious’s developers. Judge for yourself.
I’m sure they’re watching the reddit situation very closely.
Is this a similar concept to NewPipe?
Yep, Piped uses the NewPipeExtractor to load videos, just like NewPipe. However, Piped runs it server side, and NewPipe runs it client side. YouTube likes to rate limit the big instances too, so all you have to do is use a smaller one like il.ax or piped.adminforge.de.
Doesn’t this make NewPipe better in that instance? If it’s client side you aren’t going to be rate limited.
There is also a fork of NewPipe that integrates SponsorBlock (I don’t know if Piped has that).
It has SponsorBlock integrated
If you don’t have a VPN you can hide your ip and overall traffic with the other users on the instance. Pretty cool
What’s the advantage of running this server side?
That youtube don’t know YOU scrape their website. in fact, they don’t even know you’re watching a video.
However, YouTube rate limits big Piped instances, so it’s better to use NewPipe or a small instance.
Small instances it is ^^
A couple days ago I found a service called Farside, apparently you can replace youtube.com with farside.link/piped to redirect to a random smaller Piped instance. It works pretty well for me, although sometimes I just use il.ax because I’m just lazy and don’t want to type that much.
I use it for about a year new. There are a few hiccups now and then, but you can just switch instance. That’s why I recommend using Libredirect with it. If you have trouble with an instance just ping the instances in Libredirect and chose a new one. Backup your preferences from the old instance and import it to the new. Your settings and subscriptions are available again.
SmartTube for Google/Android TVs! So amazing. AdBlock and sponsorblock built in.
Really the only solution to watch YouTube on TV. I sideloaded it to my shield. github
How’s the UI? I remember using it over a year ago and it felt really crusty compared to the Chromecast YouTube app
Much better than before, I’d imagine. I haven’t used it for that long but I find it really smooth and nice to use, I haven’t had any issues, really.
Hell yeah most of my consumption is on my tv so I’ll try again
Excellent timing! With the rumblings of YT attacking anti-ad users and me using my new iPad Pro for watching stuff on the go, I’ve just started looking into side-loading.
Looks like I’ll be going with an app that utilizes this fw. Good share!
Having a lot of troubles with viewing content in any of the instances. Unfortunate since things are looking a lil’ bleak on YouTube as a whole.
How does it compare to invidious? Worth switching?
Completely new to this. I click a video and it says, initial player response not valid. What do I do from there?
I have noticed this happening over the past couple of days. This happened on the instance I host, and the Garuda Linux instance. Not sure why, but it is annoying. Hope it gets fixed.
Update: There is an issue open for it on GitHub, and apparently there are some instances listed there that don’t have this issue while they fix it for the rest of the instances. https://github.com/TeamPiped/Piped/issues/2487
Initial player response is not valid. Doesn’t inspire confidence that it is immediately broken.
eh, i don’t think it’s fair to discount a youtube frontend for having a bug, especially not a frontend as new as this one. projects at this early a stage always have issues, & youtube frontends have to deal with the added bonus of google randomly rate-limiting & consistently trying to break them. youtube frontends are always going to have issues & need constant updates by nature, there’s not much any of them can do about it
main instance is being rate limited - basically Google likes to go ‘fuck you’ and kill the main instance for a few days. just switch to a smaller instance and you’ll be good
Do any of these frontends have a “watch later” function? What I really need is the “remove watched” button, since its just a playlist.
is there any way for me to sign into my youtube account by way of piped so I can get my sub feed and stuff?
You can export your Youtube subscription into a csv file that can be imported into Piped. If you enable cookies you don’t even need to create an account and can still have a personal feed. That’s the main reason for me to use it above Invidious
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Piped is excellent. Even live streams and 4K videos are working.
I am self-hosting my own instance. The setup was a bit more involved than for other alternative frontends, but definitely worth it.
Hello there, I’m the author of Piped and would love to answer any questions you may have! 👋
