FreeTube - Watch all of Youtubes content in a clean, ad-free and privacy focused app

[TimStr]

We had some talk in this community about the enshitification of Youtube and the interface and search algorithm becoming lower quality. I too struggled with this issue for quite some time now. My solution since a couple of months is to ditch the official interface of Youtube entirely and use independantly developed frontend alternatives. It's basically like a complete redesign of the website that ditches all the shit stuff, meaning all ads, trackers, cookies or recommendation algorhithms etc, but it still allows you to watch all of youtubes content.

The most straightforward way to do this is to install FreeTube on your computer (runs on any OS). It's a lightweight, open-source and free / donation based Youtube client. Check the official website here: https://freetubeapp.io/

This app also has the option to filter out certain content (e.g. Youtube Shorts, blacklisted Channels etc.) and it even has a distraction free mode, that you can use to hide distracting elements of the UI. You can also subscribe to channels right from the app without an account. Since it is more lightweight, it's also much faster than the Youtube Website most of the time. And it adds a download button to every video.

There is also a way to set up and automatic redirect so that any Youtube URL you open is automatically opened in Freetube. Here is a guide:
https://github.com/FreeTubeApp/FreeTube?tab=readme-ov-file#browser-extensions

It gets buggy with age restricted content, sometimes. Other than that, the only downside I found to this is that you now have to find another way to support your favourite Youtubers since they don't get ad revenue by you now. But it's easy nowadays to send most people a couple of dollars on patreon.

Bonus Tip 1:
If you want to take extra care about your privacy and you are not afraid to get nerdy, there is also a project called Invidious (which FreeTube is based on), that you can self host so you have maximum control where your data goes to. Link here: https://invidious.io/ 
If you want to use an alternative Youtube Frontend on your phone, a publically hosted Invidious instance it the way to go! Here is a list of such instances: https://redirect.invidious.io/

Bonus Tip 2:
There are alternative frontends for many websites, that are enshitified. Find the ones to suit your needs for making your online experiance more bareable, it's really worth the time. Here's a pretty comprehensive list: https://libredirect.github.io/

Edited July 3 by TimStr
Typos

[UnbornTao]

Taking a look at it.

[Princess Arabia]

I could be wrong but seems like YT is finding a way to not allow for content creators to profit as much off their platform. Since they've grown over the years they've introduced so many new changes and the ads are getting more per episode and the amount of ads depends on the size of the channel. Is this app by the original Youtube itself. Will they charge for anything there in the future and will existing content creators on the original channel lose more than just ad revenues. 

I'll just go check it out. Maybe I'll find my answers there.

Edited July 3 by Princess Arabia

[Princess Arabia]

Testing.....

[Princess Arabia]

So I copied the above video from Freetube but it plays on regular Youtube. How's that. Still getting a feel for this so I might be missing something. I downloaded it already. Will explore some more.

[TimStr]

@Princess Arabia
 

1 hour ago, Princess Arabia said:

Is this app by the original Youtube itself. Will they charge for anything there in the future and will existing content creators on the original channel lose more than just ad revenues. 

The app is not made by Youtube but by independant developers. Since it's open source, you won't ever be charged for using it.
 

1 hour ago, Princess Arabia said:

So I copied the above video from Freetube but it plays on regular Youtube. How's that. Still getting a feel for this so I might be missing something. I downloaded it already. Will explore some more.

To clarify, this is just for watching videos yourself. It's not meant for embedding them. It's an app, that you would use instead of the youtube website. And if you play a Youtube link in the browser, its still going to be on the youtube website.

[Princess Arabia]

2 hours ago, TimStr said:

@Princess Arabia
 

The app is not made by Youtube but by independant developers. Since it's open source, you won't ever be charged for using it.
 

To clarify, this is just for watching videos yourself. It's not meant for embedding them. It's an app, that you would use instead of the youtube website. And if you play a Youtube link in the browser, its still going to be on the youtube website.

Ok, gotcha.

[Joshe]

I’m guessing it uses yt-dlp under the hood, which is a good command line interface for downloading yt vids. You could set up your own frontend UI with a form that accepts the URL and download options and just download vids directly. You’d have to figure something else out for the browsing part. Maybe some web scraping of your fav channels or maybe use Claude code to create a browser extension to add a “download” button next to every video, and tie that into your frontend which could display the vids in card style layout. Claude code could handle all of this. 

Thing I don’t like about apps like this is if they get too popular, YT will refactor how they serve vids and these tools will no longer work. So I wouldn’t announce to the world. YT-DLP has already had significant hurdles. 

Edited July 4 by Joshe

[TimStr]

23 minutes ago, Joshe said:

Thing I don’t like about apps like this is if they get too popular, YT will refactor how they serve vids and these tools will no longer work. So I wouldn’t announce to the world. YT-DLP has already had significant hurdles. 

Thats definately an issue. Invidious, the outher project I shared (which btw is the service, that freetube uses to stream videos) is allready facing legal troubles by google. And since these are open source projects and anyone can just copy the code, this is a real thread that google cannot really control. So you might be right, Youtube might actually change how it's working under the hood if too many people start using these services. 

[Deziree]

You can watch youtube ad free. Problem solved. And regarding the algorithm, it depends on or aligns with what you have already been watching. I didn't find it disruptive. 

[Joshe]

Interesting how its working. Thanks for sharing. 

[TimStr]

49 minutes ago, Deziree said:

You can watch youtube ad free. Problem solved. And regarding the algorithm, it depends on or aligns with what you have already been watching. I didn't find it disruptive. 

That depends a little bit on the use case. If you just want to be ad free, yes, running an adblocker (like uBlock Origin) will do the job just fine. However if you want a clean, undistracting and fast interface of if you're privacy focused or you want to escape the Google ecosystem alltogether (like me), just going ad free is not sufficient.

The youtube algorhythm objetively sucks since a couple of years now. And it sucks for user and creators alike! There are many issues with it. But my main concern is that crappy, clickbaity short videos get ranked higher than actual valuable content, even in your personalized feed. And also targeted advertisement is a thing on youtube, as in getting shown videos, that include products that you're likely to buy. Creaters have to tailor their content to this ecosystem in order to get views, so the overall quality of content steadily decreases as we've seen for the last years now.

Edited July 4 by TimStr