this post was submitted on 07 Aug 2023
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Hello guys, I have noticed that all the big internet services are starting to get worse and worse. And I am forced to migrate to foss alternatives. I have moved from Windows to OpenSUSE, from Reddit to Lemmy, etc. But I have an issue with moving from youtube. It is not that my favourite channels are not bringing me alternative they do but it is somewhat fragmented. Some of them are on PeerTube, some on Floatplane, and some on Nebula and I would rather pay those than youtube. My issue is that each of these has its app and I would like to have them united in one app to which I link all my accounts to. Does something like this exist?

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[–] [email protected] 33 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

You can't really make your favorite content creators switch to other platforms, so the best thing you can do for now is use a privacy-preseving frontend for YT. I can highly recommend Piped for PC and LibreTube for Android. They allow you to watch all YT videos and manage your subs/playlists without having a YT account or using the YT site or app. You can even self-host a Piped server if you want to.

Edit: So the major difference between Piped+LibreTube and NewPipe is that Piped is a website that handles the YT scraping and sub/playlist management for you, and the LibreTube app just connects to it like the YT app connects to the YT website. This means you can access it from your browser, synchronize your subs/playlists between devices and also hide your IP from Google servers. NewPipe accesses YT directly from your phone, so it has to do all that by itself and on every device separately.

Basically:

  • YouTube app or browser => YouTube website (has user data)
  • NewPipe app (has user data) => YouTube website
  • LibreTube app or browser => Piped website (has user data) => YouTube website
[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

@shrugal
What about NewPipe? Its nice and it also works with peertube, soundcloud, bandcamp. Its neat to have all these in the same app
@opensource

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

The main difference that has me using LibreTube rather than NewPipe is because my subscriptions are on my piped account so they are synced between phone and desktop (browser). Piped is built on top of NewPipe's extractor library anyway.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

I've been a NewPipe user since forever but I tried LibreTube like a month ago and I have completely switched.

I don't consume Soundcloud or Bandcamp, and I'd like to consume PeerTube with an account, but NewPipe is fully local.

So that makes NewPipe only useful for YouTube (for me), and FreeTube has a few extra features that made me switch:

  • sync a Piped account to sync subs and playlists
  • livestreams can be easily found
  • you can share videos without timestamp (I still cannot believe how NewPipe does this always wrong)
  • nested comments!!
  • dislike counts
[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Sounds interesting. I'll try that out.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

@NaoPb
I just edited previous post because i confused the name of the app other pipebuzzname.

Its funny, i've been using it for years and i still confuse the name

Let me know your thoughts once you've tried it

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I was wondering if there would be app which is not hosting videos itself only shows me content from nebula and all other services maybe including youtube in one convinient place so it work kind of like wefwef.app just provide me nice interface for existing services so to check if there is new interesting video i need to check only one app and not the whole bunch of apps.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I think your best option would be something like an RSS reader. Most website offer RSS feeds for channels or subs, so you can add those to the reader and create one list of new videos.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Actually you are right i am using rss for news and for notifications even from lemmy if someone adds new comment but when i was creating my account on nebula they didnt suport rss now they do so thank you. I would still like if i can get updates for all my nebula subscribed channels because right now i have to add them manually one by one. Maybe i will create some app to which you can link various video services and it will show you timeline with all new videos from multiple places since nothing like it aparently does not exist.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

What you mention is similar to NewPipe, isn't it?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Piped and Newpipe have similar names, but Piped is a separate project that is a frontend and relies on someone hosting an instance, it's more similar to Invidious than it is to Newpipe

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Piped uses the Newpipe Extractor, so they basically use the same tech. But IMO the biggest advantage of Piped is that you can sync your subs and playlists between devices. Piped is also more private as it's not your phone that talks with YouTube.