Freetube is the best way to watch YouTube
Freetube enhances YouTube viewing by allowing customization, disabling features, and improving privacy by storing data locally. It is available for desktop but lacks a mobile version. Users can import subscriptions.
Read original article
Freetube is an application designed to enhance the YouTube viewing experience by allowing users to customize their interface and control what content they see. Unlike the standard YouTube website, which is structured to keep viewers engaged for extended periods, Freetube enables users to disable features such as comments, recommended videos, and autoplay. It also offers privacy benefits by storing watch history locally on the user's computer rather than on YouTube's servers. Freetube utilizes Invidious, an open-source frontend for YouTube, which prevents Google from tracking user activity. The application is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux, but lacks a mobile version. Users can import their YouTube subscriptions and watch history into Freetube, allowing for a seamless transition from the traditional platform. The settings menu provides options to further customize the viewing experience, including the ability to hide distractions and automatically skip certain video segments. Overall, Freetube aims to provide a more user-controlled and less intrusive way to enjoy YouTube content.
- Freetube allows users to customize their YouTube experience by disabling unwanted features.
- The application enhances privacy by storing watch history locally and preventing Google tracking.
- It is available for desktop operating systems but does not have a mobile version.
- Users can import their YouTube subscriptions and watch history for a smoother transition.
- Freetube utilizes Invidious to access YouTube content without the usual distractions.
14 commentsThere is an unwritten social contract here. Google is willing to host and organise a vast number of videos because that'll attract an audience for ads. If there are too may freeloaders resisting the ads then Google won't host the videos, and on the path to that the freeloaders are really just leeching off a system in an entitled way (unless their goal is to destroy YouTube in which case good on them for consistency and for picking a worthy target).
If people aren't going to be polite and accept that contract then fine, enforcement was always by an honour system. But strategically if Google's social contract doesn't work for someone then they shouldn't use YouTube - they'd just be feeding the beast. They should go make PeerTube work or investigate the long list of alternative video platforms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_online_video_platforms .
I have no moral issue with this either. If Google wants money then they need to be more legitimate in their business dealings. No ignoring DMCA abuse, no ending user accounts with no appeal, no dark patterns period.
After a few minutes I would say this is easily the worst way to watch YouTube short of printing the videos out.
They present a perfectly valid choice to you, and it works great. It’s a reasonable enough price (not great but reasonable), but it supports the creators you watch with part of your subscription money.
Plus it has other benefits if you care, like free TV shows and movies and YouTube music. I don’t use that stuff but it is there.
https://github.com/FreeTubeApp/FreeTube?tab=readme-ov-file#d...
I am looking for a better open-source alternative tbh.