13 ms·

Invidious: an alternative front-end to YouTube

216 points by yarapavan 7y ago

ZoomZoomZoom 7y ago
What's your plan on possible user account terminations, if Google decides to act on their Terms Of Service? > YouTube may terminate your access, or your Google account’s access to all or part of the Service if YouTube reasonably believes that its provision of the Service to you is no longer commercially viable. https://www.youtube.com/static?gl=GB&template=terms https://www.youtube.com/static?gl=GB&template=terms
- thinkingemote 7y ago
  They have clarified that this means they can terminate their services, not your accounts. However with recent balls ups it was easy to read it differently
  - krageon 7y ago
    If the text hasn't been changed, what they say it means isn't relevant - they can still end up going for a different interpretation later and be entirely in the right.
  - user0191 7y ago
    It written right ther: > Terminations and Suspensions by YouTube for Cause > YouTube may suspend or terminate your access, your Google account, or your Google account’s access to all or part of the Service The question is why we still don't believe it even when it's written in black and white?
    - ekianjo 7y ago
      What is there to terminate if you browse Youtube without signing in?
      - desdiv 7y ago
        When regular users visit youtube.com, they get a page with some videos on it. Regardless of whether they're logged in or not, there are videos there. Banned users visiting youtube.com will just get a text page[0] with zero video content. Google will use all the dirty tracking tricks to make sure that banned users remain banned even when their IP or device changes. [0] https://i.imgur.com/qTTGhhG.png https://i.imgur.com/qTTGhhG.png
        thedaemon 7y ago
        Please, do you know how to get banned from Google? I'd love to not be tracked by them anymore.
        hombre_fatal 7y ago
        Open an Adsense account and click your own ads. Though I'd think these days it just bans you from the Adsense program.
        thedaemon 7y ago
        Why am I getting down voted for asking an honest question?
        jobigoud 7y ago
        Didn't he just described that they were in fact heavily tracking you in order to make sure you didn't see the content?
        trickstra 7y ago
        Incognito window, different browser, clear cookies... any of these will make you look like a new user to youtube. Just don't sign in of course.
        kevin_thibedeau 7y ago
        I stopped signing in when they broke Gmail on Firefox. Now I just use Chromium as my mail browser and everything else is on my secure browser.
  - ganeshkrishnan 7y ago
    This is not true. They can and will suspend your accounts for blocking ads or not being "Economically viable". One reason I removed youtube vanced and reinstalled official youtube app.
    - eyeundersand 7y ago
      Hmm. The reason doesn't look immediately obvious to me. What does your switching from Vanced to the official yt app have to do with someone's account getting suspended? Care to expand on it?
      - sliken 7y ago
        By using the official app then you get the ads, and won't be singled out as unprofitable by google. Hopefull as a result hopefully you won't be banned.
    - jobigoud 7y ago
      I'm fairly sure this applies to content creators, not consumers. To avoid storage and bandwidth for content that doesn't show ads but has a high maintenance cost. If they really intended to remove the bandwidth cost from people watching youtube without ads they would start by implementing ad blocker detection.
  - Ogopogostick 7y ago
    Has it been verified in a lawsuit? It seems silly to give the benefit of the doubt in this situation. Especially when the grammar of the wording empowers them to do more than just terminate services.
- Fnoord 7y ago
  As long as you don't use your account, it'll remain working. Google can't just ban 33% of the internet users (read: those with adblockers) over night without repercussions. If they'd, a YouTube clone with network effect would rise up right away. So they'll want to play some kind of other game. A long game (Manifest v3), a FUD game, who knows?
  - ZoomZoomZoom 7y ago
    May be they can't do it to 33%, but they might start with some smaller strata, Invidious users for example.
kgraves 7y ago
This looks neat! Without all the Google/Alphabet spying. I’ve noticed that this project is written in Crystal, is Crystal production ready? I've looked into it months ago and it seems that there are a lot of breaking changes on every release and this scares me from using it.
- K0SM0S 7y ago
  I wouldn't consider v0.30 "production ready", especially for a programming language. Breaking changes should be expected until they reach 1.0.
- faissaloo 7y ago
  Crystal is most certainly not production ready but nonetheless I find it interesting and useful and use it for https://ratwires.space https://ratwires.space (nsfw)
- rvz 7y ago
  > I've looked into it months ago and it seems that there are a lot of breaking changes on every release and this scares me from using it. Don't worry, as soon as Auntie Apple, Uncle Uber or someone as large as Mr Microsoft goes and adopts Crystal as soon as it reaches 1.0, then we will all immediately run to learning it just like we all did for Kubernetes, Docker, Elixir, Go and finally with its great success and without any formal introduction, we have all wanted to purse learning Mozilla's new and most excellent general-purpose programming language: Rust.
- omarroth 7y ago
  Breaking changes have been fairly minor and I haven't found them to be an issue for the project. It's also possible to anticipate most changes early (compile with `crystal --warnings all`). I'm not sure I would recommend it for something on the scale of Apple or Microsoft, but for a personal project like this I've found it a very enjoyable experience.
piecu 7y ago
Is it possible to display my "Subscriptions" screen from YT? That's the only thing I use to decide what's to watch next.
- piecu 7y ago
  Also, what is registering for? Does it only save my preferences?
  - vallode 7y ago
    I believe registering also provides a non-google way of tracking subscriptions :)
- pndy 7y ago
  For that I'd suggest different approach: using FreeTube[1][2] client which carries subscriptions locally; you can export and import channels in FreeTube format, NewPipe and OPML. FreeTube uses invidious to fetch and play videos - among other two players; it's also possible to change the instance in case of any issues. Sadly, I can't tell if it's possible to import YT subscriptions since I don't use the service with Google account for years. [1] - https://freetubeapp.io/ https://freetubeapp.io/ [2] - https://github.com/FreeTubeApp/FreeTube https://github.com/FreeTubeApp/FreeTube
- trickstra 7y ago
  I think youtube subscriptions can be exported into opml and then import them into invidious
patchtopic 7y ago
Looks great, except the search seems very limited.
- omarroth 7y ago
  Would you mind clarifying what you mean? If you're looking for search filters you can use them using operators[0][1], similar to Google or DDG. 0. https://github.com/omarroth/invidious/wiki/Search-operators https://github.com/omarroth/invidious/wiki/Search-operators 1. https://invidio.us/search?q=type%3Aplaylist+sort%3Adate+music https://invidio.us/search?q=type%3Aplaylist+sort%3Adate+musi...
bestnameever 7y ago
We seem to be going from pirated movies and music to pirated youtube. Not really sure how I feel about that.
- t0astbread 7y ago
  Does it hurt artists really? I imagine a lot of YouTube users use ad blockers anyways, so a lot of artists have switched to in-video paid promotions.
  - cameronbrown 7y ago
    Absolutely. Source: I watch YouTube. In all seriousness you hear creators talking about collapsing revenues due to adblockers all the time. Bigger ones survive with tools like Patreon but if you're new with only a small fan base? (<10k) It's not viable anymore. The good thing about YT was always being able to take that passion full time. Artists will always create content, but they will always need to eat too.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - MrGilbert 7y ago
      > Artists will always create content, but they will always need to eat too. So do devs, which is quite often neglected when talking about open source. It often goes along the "well, then do it in your spare time"-line. Maybe there is a huge gap between expectations and what we, as people, can actually do. There are a few who can make a living off of their channel, but you shouldn't start a youtube channel today, expecting to make some "big money". The more traditional way would be to start small, gain more and more visibility over time, and at some point companies might be interested in "in-video" promotions, like LTT does.
      - eeZah7Ux 7y ago
        > "well, then do it in your spare time" Or, get paid to do FLOSS. (paid, not donations)
jboynyc 7y ago
If you are using Firefox, there's a great add-on called Invidition that you can install. It redirects Youtube to Invidious and Twitter to Nitter. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/android/addon/invidition/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/android/addon/invidition/
- oriettaxx 7y ago
  wow, great! I am too on the "I do not like google to know what I see in youtube"
- mosselman 7y ago
  I have used that add-on for a while, but half the time the video's stop playing after a while. Instead I now have a youtube container and have set firefox to open all youtube urls in that container. That way all cookies and session are contained.
- mosselman 7y ago
  I have used that add-on for a while, but half the time the video's stop playing after a while. Instead I now have a youtube container and have set firefox to open all youtube urls in that container. That way all cookies and session are contained. What you can also do is delete all cookies and site data when you close your browser and then add some sites to a whitelist (github, HN, etc) in order to prevent having to login all the time. In combination with a good password manager that shouldn't be a big problem anyway.
- trickstra 7y ago
  There is also https://github.com/SimonBrazell/privacy-redirect https://github.com/SimonBrazell/privacy-redirect which works for both firefox and chrome
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
sdan 7y ago
If you included fairtrending.com into the trending page, that'd be a 100% reason to use this. Unfortunately they took their page down since they didn't find it financially sensible (and after emailing them he doesn't want to open source it) If you could implement real trending based on views/hours or some logical way that'd be amazing (understandably, this is open-source, so if I find the time I'd love to help too).
phito 7y ago
Tried to log in with my Google account, got a message saying that it was temporarly disabled.
vanderZwan 7y ago
How many alternative YT front-ends are out there? I remember https://toogl.es/ https://toogl.es/
- user234683 7y ago
  Newpipe (app for android): https://newpipe.schabi.org/ https://newpipe.schabi.org/ mps-youtube (terminal-only): https://github.com/mps-youtube/mps-youtube https://github.com/mps-youtube/mps-youtube youtube-viewer: https://github.com/trizen/youtube-viewer https://github.com/trizen/youtube-viewer FreeTube (which uses the invidious API): https://github.com/FreeTubeApp/FreeTube https://github.com/FreeTubeApp/FreeTube youtube-local (my project): https://github.com/user234683/youtube-local https://github.com/user234683/youtube-local smtube: https://www.smtube.org/ https://www.smtube.org/ Minitube: https://flavio.tordini.org/minitube https://flavio.tordini.org/minitube, https://github.com/flaviotordini/minitube https://github.com/flaviotordini/minitube
- dredmorbius 7y ago
  http://fixyt.com http://fixyt.com (Note that that's HTTP only, no HTTPS support.)
izacus 7y ago
So this allows free bypass of features that YouTube wants you to pay for via Premium subscription. Why is this acceptable for YouTube? Can we start building and publishing plugins that bypass paid subscriptions for other SaaS services here too? This is especially strange for music - music artists (in my experience) usually want you to pay for playing their music without video via subscription or by buying an album. This allows complete bypass of that - it's essentially Napster again.
- __david__ 7y ago
  > Can we start building and publishing plugins that bypass paid subscriptions for other SaaS services here too? You mean like [1]? Yes! [1] https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-firefox https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-firefox
- cameronbrown 7y ago
  Piracy is a service problem. And so is adblocking.
  - robertoandred 7y ago
    "Piracy is a service problem." is an excuse thieves use.
    - cyborgx7 7y ago
      Copyright infringement is not stealing. It's as much stealing as it's sharing.
      - robertoandred 7y ago
        And jumping turnstiles is just borrowing a ride.
    - cameronbrown 7y ago
      I don't pirate and don't use adblockers. It does not refute my statement. The absolute state of the film/TV industry should be enough evidence that piracy is definitely a service problem.
thinkingemote 7y ago
I tried writing a front end for youtube gaming to be able to list live streams of your subscriptions. Turns out the API doesn't expose this what I would assume to be a much needed bit of information. Discovery of live streams is hugely lacking compared to Twitch. Turns out that the API in general hasn't been really updated for half a decade, and the calls there appear to be focused on helping a channel owner rather than viewers I gave up.
fidla 7y ago
Not available yet on Android?
- soylentcola 7y ago
  I use YouTube Vanced on Android. It's essentially a modded YouTube that you can install alongside the real one without issues (it doesn't replace the standard app). https://forum.xda-developers.com/android/apps-games/app-youtube-vanced-edition-t3758757 https://forum.xda-developers.com/android/apps-games/app-yout... https://www.xda-developers.com/youtube-vanced-apk/ https://www.xda-developers.com/youtube-vanced-apk/ Aside from a few additional options and interface tweaks, the main reason I use it is for playback with the screen off.
foray1010 7y ago
maximum resolution in Invidious is 720p even 1080p is supported when goes to youtube. Are there some technical limitations?
- ajayyy 7y ago
  Yes, 720p and past is only stored on the google servers with audio and video seperate. So, the only way to watch at those resolutions is for invidious to pass through the video. I think there is a plan to get 1080p working though
- omarroth 7y ago
  You can watch 1080p if you set "dash" as your default quality in preferences, or by adding `&quality=dash` to the end of a video URL. The reason it isn't enabled by default is that it requires proxying streams, which is more bandwidth intensive[0]. 0. https://github.com/omarroth/invidious/issues/34 https://github.com/omarroth/invidious/issues/34
  - rasz 7y ago
    You shouldnt need to proxy anything, there are in browser js muxers that can splice separate video/audio streams into one, or find jsvideo player capable of playing it directly.
    - omarroth 7y ago
      I would recommend reading the issue I linked for why it's necessary. JS needs special access to resources that can't be provided without proxying. You can see this yourself in a DASH player[0] and testing with e.g. https://invidio.us/api/manifest/dash/id/CvFH_6DNRCY https://invidio.us/api/manifest/dash/id/CvFH_6DNRCY. It will fail with > Access to XMLHttpRequest at 'https://r5---sn-ab5l6nzy.googlevideo.com/videoplayback' https://r5---sn-ab5l6nzy.googlevideo.com/videoplayback' from origin 'http://reference.dashif.org' http://reference.dashif.org' has been blocked by CORS policy: Response to preflight request doesn't pass access control check: No 'Access-Control-Allow-Origin' header is present on the requested resource. 0. http://reference.dashif.org/dash.js/nightly/samples/dash-if-reference-player/index.html http://reference.dashif.org/dash.js/nightly/samples/dash-if-...
Allezxandre 7y ago
While an interesting project, at first glance I don't really see what this front-end brings to YouTube compared to the original front-end. Speed, maybe? But this comes at the cost the UX. I would much rather see something like this implemented: https://uxdesign.cc/my-attempt-at-redesigning-youtube-for-a-more-intuitive-and-modern-experience-dbd7707c135c https://uxdesign.cc/my-attempt-at-redesigning-youtube-for-a-...
- 9dl 7y ago
  So do you see on your front-page of yt relevant videos and channels?
- pjc50 7y ago
  "play audio in background on mobile" is quite a big feature.
  - timar 7y ago
    cant find it hm :?
    - pjc50 7y ago
      First bullet point of the original Invidious linked page README: > Audio-only mode (and no need to keep window open on mobile)
- jstanley 7y ago
  Lots of people like the content on YouTube but don't like all the Googley parts. I frequently watch YouTube over Tor, and they've started making me do lots of reCAPTCHAs and occasionally even rejecting me after I've completed the reCAPTCHAs. HookTube is an improvement over the real YouTube interface in the sense that it never makes me do CAPTCHAs, except some proportion of videos don't work on HookTube, it just gives a black box saying "Watch this video on YouTube". From a sample of 1 video that I couldn't watch on HookTube, it worked straight away on Invidious. So it's useful in that sense if nothing else.
- 7y ago
tartoran 7y ago
How does the audiomode work? I tried playing a video and the backround and it doesn’t seem to continue streaming. Is it because i’m on IOS?
- tartoran 7y ago
  Actually I’ll take that back. Halfway though. Some videos go in streaming mode while others dont. Also some videos support pinch to fullscreen on IOS while others don’t. Youtube is weird
fredley 7y ago
'Log in with Google' asks me for my google account and password. Wat. No. You should never, ever be asking people for this information, even if you're transparently passing it upstream. This is a tier-one no-no.
- morpheuskafka 7y ago
  I am guessing that this service falls squarely into "prohibited by Google's AUP" and thus they don't have much of a choice. Either that or, to prevent clones like this one, Google has deliberately not exposed an API to do whatever this app needs to do.
  - imglorp 7y ago
    Yep. Hooktube's been through this already. https://hooktube.com/changelog https://hooktube.com/changelog
- monkeynotes 7y ago
  Giving a fake username and password results in > Expected Array for #[]?(index : Int), not Int64 > Traceback: > Getting lookup...done, returned 200. > Getting challenge...done, returned 400. So, yeah, nope. Why not use Google's SSO to connect accounts?
  - ajayyy 7y ago
    Google has a history of disabling oath for services like these. There is also an invidious account system you can use to avoid using your Google account.
- omarroth 7y ago
  I agree. Unfortunately OAuth is impractical for this project, as it requires registering your application with Google. Instead I've done my best to make clear how it works[0][1] and what is stored[2]. As mentioned in a sibling comment Google does not have a good track record with similar projects. AFAIK the only project that provides similar functionality is youtube-dl[3], which works the same way. Important to note is that this functionality is optional; you do not need to log in with Google to store subscriptions or preferences. The main benefit currently is that it will automatically sync subscriptions with YouTube, otherwise I would recommend creating a new account on Invidious and then importing subscriptions from YouTube. 0. https://www.reddit.com/r/SideProject/comments/8wvazc/invidous_alternative_frontend_to_youtube/e1zygk2/ https://www.reddit.com/r/SideProject/comments/8wvazc/invidou... 1. https://github.com/omarroth/invidious/blob/8af87f1/src/invidious.cr#L1434-L1706 https://github.com/omarroth/invidious/blob/8af87f1/src/invid... 2. https://invidio.us/privacy https://invidio.us/privacy 3. https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/blob/76e510b/youtube_dl/extractor/youtube.py#L85-L250 https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/blob/76e510b/youtube_...
gavinray 7y ago
Fun fact: This app is written in Crystal, with SSR Crystal + HTML templates. It's source code is pretty interesting. One of the most popular Crystal apps I know of. (Huge fan of both Invidious and Crystal) https://github.com/omarroth/invidious https://github.com/omarroth/invidious
jszymborski 7y ago
I've been consuming my YouTube videos via RSS and youtube-dl these days. I have a little python script that collects the video urls from the feed, downloads them, and then NewsBlur notifies me of the new videos. NewsBlur has become the way I find new academic papers (arXiv/journal RSS feeds), consume the news, webcomics, and YouTube videos.
- ad404b8a372f2b9 7y ago
  I didn't know arxiv had an rss feed, I usually find interesting papers through reddit, twitter and paperscape. Do you do any filtering on the feed to find the good stuff?
  - jszymborski 7y ago
    No, but I've definitely thought of using sklearn's Naive Baye's implementation to give me paper highlights (a la Mendeley, minus Elsevier). You can train on paper abstracts you've previously found interesting/uninteresting. Luckily arXiv RSS feeds are by category, so I scan the titles of all e.g. qbio papers for a day and add the interesting ones to my reading list.
  - ssivark 7y ago
    ArXiv feeds are organized by category (more like tags in that papers could be cross-listed, but need a primary category). Daily traffic in different categories is very different. Eg, at some point I used to subscribe to hep-ph/hep-th/gr-qc and they combined to something between 50-100 papers a day. I’d mostly just scan the titles/abstracts, to pull out particularly interesting papers.
- xxpor 7y ago
  FWIW youtube-dl supports downloading from a channel directly, and with a flag can spit out a file with every previously downloaded video. So the next time you run youtube-dl itll just grab new stuff.
- vagab0nd 7y ago
  Could you elaborate on how you find new papers that you are interested in? Do you just subscribe to RSS sources and going through all of them? Or do you have some way of filtering?
chvid 7y ago
Very useful - no ads and I can run it in background audio only on my iPhone just using the webapp.
- chvid 7y ago
  It does not ask for a login. Here is a full Pink Floyd album for your streaming pleasure. https://invidio.us/watch?v=k_MP8URO-Xc https://invidio.us/watch?v=k_MP8URO-Xc Works perfectly in a private safari window on my iPhone. Great work!
finnjohnsen2 7y ago
How will this website not be killed by Google lawyers at any moment?
- omarroth 7y ago
  Essentially because it replicates the way a browser works, similar to youtube-dl. I would very much recommend taking a look through [0] for some more info, but one of the main goals of the project is to avoid use of any Google APIs. This also includes login, as mentioned in an earlier comment[1]. 0. https://github.com/omarroth/invidious/issues/130 https://github.com/omarroth/invidious/issues/130 1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21545348 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21545348
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
swebs 7y ago
Woah, this is amazing! When you click on a video, it just stays in one place and loads. It doesn't jump around the page resizing itself while you attempt to hit the play button.
znpy 7y ago
it's fantastic. it's clean, it uses all my screen estate really well, I love it.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
tkidanu 7y ago
This is going to come in handy in avoiding Youtube's terrible recommendations engine.
angel_j 7y ago
Is there an ingest for my YT data?
mirimir 7y ago
This is very cool. Especially: kgg2m7yk5aybusll.onion axqzx4s6s54s32yentfqojs3x5i7faxza6xo3ehd4bzzsg2ii4fv2iid.onion
senwrmjwer 7y ago
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veysel-im 7y ago
Kemal framework used. Interesting.
rasz 7y ago
I was very confused at first. I didnt log into anything, yet https://invidio.us/ https://invidio.us/ has plenty of creators from my YT subscriptions :o How the heck? Do the owner curate whats on the front page? I can only counts a couple video channels I have no interest in whatsoever (pie, h3, vox), or did Google finally started curating? No low value garbage on first page, something YT is usually struggling with. Still Peterson in related/recommendations tho.
- omarroth 7y ago
  The main algorithm is described here[0]. It's the most recent videos from the 40 most subscribed channels on the instance. YouTube's recommendations are still used. They'll appear the same as if you viewed YouTube with a clean browser session, although you can disable them in your preferences if you'd like (under "Show related videos"). 0. https://github.com/omarroth/invidious/issues/217#issuecomment-436503761 https://github.com/omarroth/invidious/issues/217#issuecommen...

216 points by yarapavan 7y ago

What's your plan on possible user account terminations, if Google decides to act on their Terms Of Service? > YouTube may terminate your access, or your Google account’s access to all or part of the Service if YouTube reasonably believes that its provision of the Service to you is no longer commercially viable. https://www.youtube.com/static?gl=GB&template=terms https://www.youtube.com/static?gl=GB&template=terms

thinkingemote 7y ago
They have clarified that this means they can terminate their services, not your accounts. However with recent balls ups it was easy to read it differently
- krageon 7y ago
  If the text hasn't been changed, what they say it means isn't relevant - they can still end up going for a different interpretation later and be entirely in the right.
- user0191 7y ago
  It written right ther: > Terminations and Suspensions by YouTube for Cause > YouTube may suspend or terminate your access, your Google account, or your Google account’s access to all or part of the Service The question is why we still don't believe it even when it's written in black and white?
  - ekianjo 7y ago
    What is there to terminate if you browse Youtube without signing in?
    - desdiv 7y ago
      When regular users visit youtube.com, they get a page with some videos on it. Regardless of whether they're logged in or not, there are videos there. Banned users visiting youtube.com will just get a text page[0] with zero video content. Google will use all the dirty tracking tricks to make sure that banned users remain banned even when their IP or device changes. [0] https://i.imgur.com/qTTGhhG.png https://i.imgur.com/qTTGhhG.png
      - thedaemon 7y ago
        Please, do you know how to get banned from Google? I'd love to not be tracked by them anymore.
        hombre_fatal 7y ago
        Open an Adsense account and click your own ads. Though I'd think these days it just bans you from the Adsense program.
        thedaemon 7y ago
        Why am I getting down voted for asking an honest question?
        jobigoud 7y ago
        Didn't he just described that they were in fact heavily tracking you in order to make sure you didn't see the content?
      - trickstra 7y ago
        Incognito window, different browser, clear cookies... any of these will make you look like a new user to youtube. Just don't sign in of course.
        kevin_thibedeau 7y ago
        I stopped signing in when they broke Gmail on Firefox. Now I just use Chromium as my mail browser and everything else is on my secure browser.
- ganeshkrishnan 7y ago
  This is not true. They can and will suspend your accounts for blocking ads or not being "Economically viable". One reason I removed youtube vanced and reinstalled official youtube app.
  - eyeundersand 7y ago
    Hmm. The reason doesn't look immediately obvious to me. What does your switching from Vanced to the official yt app have to do with someone's account getting suspended? Care to expand on it?
    - sliken 7y ago
      By using the official app then you get the ads, and won't be singled out as unprofitable by google. Hopefull as a result hopefully you won't be banned.
  - jobigoud 7y ago
    I'm fairly sure this applies to content creators, not consumers. To avoid storage and bandwidth for content that doesn't show ads but has a high maintenance cost. If they really intended to remove the bandwidth cost from people watching youtube without ads they would start by implementing ad blocker detection.
- Ogopogostick 7y ago
  Has it been verified in a lawsuit? It seems silly to give the benefit of the doubt in this situation. Especially when the grammar of the wording empowers them to do more than just terminate services.
Fnoord 7y ago
As long as you don't use your account, it'll remain working. Google can't just ban 33% of the internet users (read: those with adblockers) over night without repercussions. If they'd, a YouTube clone with network effect would rise up right away. So they'll want to play some kind of other game. A long game (Manifest v3), a FUD game, who knows?
- ZoomZoomZoom 7y ago
  May be they can't do it to 33%, but they might start with some smaller strata, Invidious users for example.

kgraves 7y ago

This looks neat! Without all the Google/Alphabet spying. I’ve noticed that this project is written in Crystal, is Crystal production ready? I've looked into it months ago and it seems that there are a lot of breaking changes on every release and this scares me from using it.

K0SM0S 7y ago
I wouldn't consider v0.30 "production ready", especially for a programming language. Breaking changes should be expected until they reach 1.0.
faissaloo 7y ago
Crystal is most certainly not production ready but nonetheless I find it interesting and useful and use it for https://ratwires.space https://ratwires.space (nsfw)
rvz 7y ago
> I've looked into it months ago and it seems that there are a lot of breaking changes on every release and this scares me from using it. Don't worry, as soon as Auntie Apple, Uncle Uber or someone as large as Mr Microsoft goes and adopts Crystal as soon as it reaches 1.0, then we will all immediately run to learning it just like we all did for Kubernetes, Docker, Elixir, Go and finally with its great success and without any formal introduction, we have all wanted to purse learning Mozilla's new and most excellent general-purpose programming language: Rust.
omarroth 7y ago
Breaking changes have been fairly minor and I haven't found them to be an issue for the project. It's also possible to anticipate most changes early (compile with `crystal --warnings all`). I'm not sure I would recommend it for something on the scale of Apple or Microsoft, but for a personal project like this I've found it a very enjoyable experience.

piecu 7y ago

Is it possible to display my "Subscriptions" screen from YT? That's the only thing I use to decide what's to watch next.

piecu 7y ago
Also, what is registering for? Does it only save my preferences?
- vallode 7y ago
  I believe registering also provides a non-google way of tracking subscriptions :)
pndy 7y ago
For that I'd suggest different approach: using FreeTube[1][2] client which carries subscriptions locally; you can export and import channels in FreeTube format, NewPipe and OPML. FreeTube uses invidious to fetch and play videos - among other two players; it's also possible to change the instance in case of any issues. Sadly, I can't tell if it's possible to import YT subscriptions since I don't use the service with Google account for years. [1] - https://freetubeapp.io/ https://freetubeapp.io/ [2] - https://github.com/FreeTubeApp/FreeTube https://github.com/FreeTubeApp/FreeTube
trickstra 7y ago
I think youtube subscriptions can be exported into opml and then import them into invidious

patchtopic 7y ago

Looks great, except the search seems very limited.

omarroth 7y ago
Would you mind clarifying what you mean? If you're looking for search filters you can use them using operators[0][1], similar to Google or DDG. 0. https://github.com/omarroth/invidious/wiki/Search-operators https://github.com/omarroth/invidious/wiki/Search-operators 1. https://invidio.us/search?q=type%3Aplaylist+sort%3Adate+music https://invidio.us/search?q=type%3Aplaylist+sort%3Adate+musi...

bestnameever 7y ago

We seem to be going from pirated movies and music to pirated youtube. Not really sure how I feel about that.

t0astbread 7y ago
Does it hurt artists really? I imagine a lot of YouTube users use ad blockers anyways, so a lot of artists have switched to in-video paid promotions.
- cameronbrown 7y ago
  Absolutely. Source: I watch YouTube. In all seriousness you hear creators talking about collapsing revenues due to adblockers all the time. Bigger ones survive with tools like Patreon but if you're new with only a small fan base? (<10k) It's not viable anymore. The good thing about YT was always being able to take that passion full time. Artists will always create content, but they will always need to eat too.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - MrGilbert 7y ago
    > Artists will always create content, but they will always need to eat too. So do devs, which is quite often neglected when talking about open source. It often goes along the "well, then do it in your spare time"-line. Maybe there is a huge gap between expectations and what we, as people, can actually do. There are a few who can make a living off of their channel, but you shouldn't start a youtube channel today, expecting to make some "big money". The more traditional way would be to start small, gain more and more visibility over time, and at some point companies might be interested in "in-video" promotions, like LTT does.
    - eeZah7Ux 7y ago
      > "well, then do it in your spare time" Or, get paid to do FLOSS. (paid, not donations)

jboynyc 7y ago

If you are using Firefox, there's a great add-on called Invidition that you can install. It redirects Youtube to Invidious and Twitter to Nitter. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/android/addon/invidition/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/android/addon/invidition/

oriettaxx 7y ago
wow, great! I am too on the "I do not like google to know what I see in youtube"
mosselman 7y ago
I have used that add-on for a while, but half the time the video's stop playing after a while. Instead I now have a youtube container and have set firefox to open all youtube urls in that container. That way all cookies and session are contained.
mosselman 7y ago
I have used that add-on for a while, but half the time the video's stop playing after a while. Instead I now have a youtube container and have set firefox to open all youtube urls in that container. That way all cookies and session are contained. What you can also do is delete all cookies and site data when you close your browser and then add some sites to a whitelist (github, HN, etc) in order to prevent having to login all the time. In combination with a good password manager that shouldn't be a big problem anyway.
trickstra 7y ago
There is also https://github.com/SimonBrazell/privacy-redirect https://github.com/SimonBrazell/privacy-redirect which works for both firefox and chrome

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

sdan 7y ago

If you included fairtrending.com into the trending page, that'd be a 100% reason to use this. Unfortunately they took their page down since they didn't find it financially sensible (and after emailing them he doesn't want to open source it) If you could implement real trending based on views/hours or some logical way that'd be amazing (understandably, this is open-source, so if I find the time I'd love to help too).

phito 7y ago

Tried to log in with my Google account, got a message saying that it was temporarly disabled.

vanderZwan 7y ago

How many alternative YT front-ends are out there? I remember https://toogl.es/ https://toogl.es/

user234683 7y ago
Newpipe (app for android): https://newpipe.schabi.org/ https://newpipe.schabi.org/ mps-youtube (terminal-only): https://github.com/mps-youtube/mps-youtube https://github.com/mps-youtube/mps-youtube youtube-viewer: https://github.com/trizen/youtube-viewer https://github.com/trizen/youtube-viewer FreeTube (which uses the invidious API): https://github.com/FreeTubeApp/FreeTube https://github.com/FreeTubeApp/FreeTube youtube-local (my project): https://github.com/user234683/youtube-local https://github.com/user234683/youtube-local smtube: https://www.smtube.org/ https://www.smtube.org/ Minitube: https://flavio.tordini.org/minitube https://flavio.tordini.org/minitube, https://github.com/flaviotordini/minitube https://github.com/flaviotordini/minitube
dredmorbius 7y ago
http://fixyt.com http://fixyt.com (Note that that's HTTP only, no HTTPS support.)

izacus 7y ago

So this allows free bypass of features that YouTube wants you to pay for via Premium subscription. Why is this acceptable for YouTube? Can we start building and publishing plugins that bypass paid subscriptions for other SaaS services here too? This is especially strange for music - music artists (in my experience) usually want you to pay for playing their music without video via subscription or by buying an album. This allows complete bypass of that - it's essentially Napster again.

__david__ 7y ago
> Can we start building and publishing plugins that bypass paid subscriptions for other SaaS services here too? You mean like [1]? Yes! [1] https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-firefox https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-firefox
cameronbrown 7y ago
Piracy is a service problem. And so is adblocking.
- robertoandred 7y ago
  "Piracy is a service problem." is an excuse thieves use.
  - cyborgx7 7y ago
    Copyright infringement is not stealing. It's as much stealing as it's sharing.
    - robertoandred 7y ago
      And jumping turnstiles is just borrowing a ride.
  - cameronbrown 7y ago
    I don't pirate and don't use adblockers. It does not refute my statement. The absolute state of the film/TV industry should be enough evidence that piracy is definitely a service problem.

thinkingemote 7y ago

I tried writing a front end for youtube gaming to be able to list live streams of your subscriptions. Turns out the API doesn't expose this what I would assume to be a much needed bit of information. Discovery of live streams is hugely lacking compared to Twitch. Turns out that the API in general hasn't been really updated for half a decade, and the calls there appear to be focused on helping a channel owner rather than viewers I gave up.

fidla 7y ago

Not available yet on Android?

soylentcola 7y ago
I use YouTube Vanced on Android. It's essentially a modded YouTube that you can install alongside the real one without issues (it doesn't replace the standard app). https://forum.xda-developers.com/android/apps-games/app-youtube-vanced-edition-t3758757 https://forum.xda-developers.com/android/apps-games/app-yout... https://www.xda-developers.com/youtube-vanced-apk/ https://www.xda-developers.com/youtube-vanced-apk/ Aside from a few additional options and interface tweaks, the main reason I use it is for playback with the screen off.

foray1010 7y ago

maximum resolution in Invidious is 720p even 1080p is supported when goes to youtube. Are there some technical limitations?

ajayyy 7y ago
Yes, 720p and past is only stored on the google servers with audio and video seperate. So, the only way to watch at those resolutions is for invidious to pass through the video. I think there is a plan to get 1080p working though
omarroth 7y ago
You can watch 1080p if you set "dash" as your default quality in preferences, or by adding `&quality=dash` to the end of a video URL. The reason it isn't enabled by default is that it requires proxying streams, which is more bandwidth intensive[0]. 0. https://github.com/omarroth/invidious/issues/34 https://github.com/omarroth/invidious/issues/34
- rasz 7y ago
  You shouldnt need to proxy anything, there are in browser js muxers that can splice separate video/audio streams into one, or find jsvideo player capable of playing it directly.
  - omarroth 7y ago
    I would recommend reading the issue I linked for why it's necessary. JS needs special access to resources that can't be provided without proxying. You can see this yourself in a DASH player[0] and testing with e.g. https://invidio.us/api/manifest/dash/id/CvFH_6DNRCY https://invidio.us/api/manifest/dash/id/CvFH_6DNRCY. It will fail with > Access to XMLHttpRequest at 'https://r5---sn-ab5l6nzy.googlevideo.com/videoplayback' https://r5---sn-ab5l6nzy.googlevideo.com/videoplayback' from origin 'http://reference.dashif.org' http://reference.dashif.org' has been blocked by CORS policy: Response to preflight request doesn't pass access control check: No 'Access-Control-Allow-Origin' header is present on the requested resource. 0. http://reference.dashif.org/dash.js/nightly/samples/dash-if-reference-player/index.html http://reference.dashif.org/dash.js/nightly/samples/dash-if-...

Allezxandre 7y ago

While an interesting project, at first glance I don't really see what this front-end brings to YouTube compared to the original front-end. Speed, maybe? But this comes at the cost the UX. I would much rather see something like this implemented: https://uxdesign.cc/my-attempt-at-redesigning-youtube-for-a-more-intuitive-and-modern-experience-dbd7707c135c https://uxdesign.cc/my-attempt-at-redesigning-youtube-for-a-...

9dl 7y ago
So do you see on your front-page of yt relevant videos and channels?
pjc50 7y ago
"play audio in background on mobile" is quite a big feature.
- timar 7y ago
  cant find it hm :?
  - pjc50 7y ago
    First bullet point of the original Invidious linked page README: > Audio-only mode (and no need to keep window open on mobile)
jstanley 7y ago
Lots of people like the content on YouTube but don't like all the Googley parts. I frequently watch YouTube over Tor, and they've started making me do lots of reCAPTCHAs and occasionally even rejecting me after I've completed the reCAPTCHAs. HookTube is an improvement over the real YouTube interface in the sense that it never makes me do CAPTCHAs, except some proportion of videos don't work on HookTube, it just gives a black box saying "Watch this video on YouTube". From a sample of 1 video that I couldn't watch on HookTube, it worked straight away on Invidious. So it's useful in that sense if nothing else.
7y ago

tartoran 7y ago

How does the audiomode work? I tried playing a video and the backround and it doesn’t seem to continue streaming. Is it because i’m on IOS?

tartoran 7y ago
Actually I’ll take that back. Halfway though. Some videos go in streaming mode while others dont. Also some videos support pinch to fullscreen on IOS while others don’t. Youtube is weird

fredley 7y ago

'Log in with Google' asks me for my google account and password. Wat. No. You should never, ever be asking people for this information, even if you're transparently passing it upstream. This is a tier-one no-no.

morpheuskafka 7y ago
I am guessing that this service falls squarely into "prohibited by Google's AUP" and thus they don't have much of a choice. Either that or, to prevent clones like this one, Google has deliberately not exposed an API to do whatever this app needs to do.
- imglorp 7y ago
  Yep. Hooktube's been through this already. https://hooktube.com/changelog https://hooktube.com/changelog
monkeynotes 7y ago
Giving a fake username and password results in > Expected Array for #[]?(index : Int), not Int64 > Traceback: > Getting lookup...done, returned 200. > Getting challenge...done, returned 400. So, yeah, nope. Why not use Google's SSO to connect accounts?
- ajayyy 7y ago
  Google has a history of disabling oath for services like these. There is also an invidious account system you can use to avoid using your Google account.
omarroth 7y ago
I agree. Unfortunately OAuth is impractical for this project, as it requires registering your application with Google. Instead I've done my best to make clear how it works[0][1] and what is stored[2]. As mentioned in a sibling comment Google does not have a good track record with similar projects. AFAIK the only project that provides similar functionality is youtube-dl[3], which works the same way. Important to note is that this functionality is optional; you do not need to log in with Google to store subscriptions or preferences. The main benefit currently is that it will automatically sync subscriptions with YouTube, otherwise I would recommend creating a new account on Invidious and then importing subscriptions from YouTube. 0. https://www.reddit.com/r/SideProject/comments/8wvazc/invidous_alternative_frontend_to_youtube/e1zygk2/ https://www.reddit.com/r/SideProject/comments/8wvazc/invidou... 1. https://github.com/omarroth/invidious/blob/8af87f1/src/invidious.cr#L1434-L1706 https://github.com/omarroth/invidious/blob/8af87f1/src/invid... 2. https://invidio.us/privacy https://invidio.us/privacy 3. https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/blob/76e510b/youtube_dl/extractor/youtube.py#L85-L250 https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/blob/76e510b/youtube_...

gavinray 7y ago

Fun fact: This app is written in Crystal, with SSR Crystal + HTML templates. It's source code is pretty interesting. One of the most popular Crystal apps I know of. (Huge fan of both Invidious and Crystal) https://github.com/omarroth/invidious https://github.com/omarroth/invidious

jszymborski 7y ago

I've been consuming my YouTube videos via RSS and youtube-dl these days. I have a little python script that collects the video urls from the feed, downloads them, and then NewsBlur notifies me of the new videos. NewsBlur has become the way I find new academic papers (arXiv/journal RSS feeds), consume the news, webcomics, and YouTube videos.

ad404b8a372f2b9 7y ago
I didn't know arxiv had an rss feed, I usually find interesting papers through reddit, twitter and paperscape. Do you do any filtering on the feed to find the good stuff?
- jszymborski 7y ago
  No, but I've definitely thought of using sklearn's Naive Baye's implementation to give me paper highlights (a la Mendeley, minus Elsevier). You can train on paper abstracts you've previously found interesting/uninteresting. Luckily arXiv RSS feeds are by category, so I scan the titles of all e.g. qbio papers for a day and add the interesting ones to my reading list.
- ssivark 7y ago
  ArXiv feeds are organized by category (more like tags in that papers could be cross-listed, but need a primary category). Daily traffic in different categories is very different. Eg, at some point I used to subscribe to hep-ph/hep-th/gr-qc and they combined to something between 50-100 papers a day. I’d mostly just scan the titles/abstracts, to pull out particularly interesting papers.
xxpor 7y ago
FWIW youtube-dl supports downloading from a channel directly, and with a flag can spit out a file with every previously downloaded video. So the next time you run youtube-dl itll just grab new stuff.
vagab0nd 7y ago
Could you elaborate on how you find new papers that you are interested in? Do you just subscribe to RSS sources and going through all of them? Or do you have some way of filtering?

chvid 7y ago

Very useful - no ads and I can run it in background audio only on my iPhone just using the webapp.

chvid 7y ago
It does not ask for a login. Here is a full Pink Floyd album for your streaming pleasure. https://invidio.us/watch?v=k_MP8URO-Xc https://invidio.us/watch?v=k_MP8URO-Xc Works perfectly in a private safari window on my iPhone. Great work!

finnjohnsen2 7y ago

How will this website not be killed by Google lawyers at any moment?

omarroth 7y ago
Essentially because it replicates the way a browser works, similar to youtube-dl. I would very much recommend taking a look through [0] for some more info, but one of the main goals of the project is to avoid use of any Google APIs. This also includes login, as mentioned in an earlier comment[1]. 0. https://github.com/omarroth/invidious/issues/130 https://github.com/omarroth/invidious/issues/130 1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21545348 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21545348
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]

swebs 7y ago

Woah, this is amazing! When you click on a video, it just stays in one place and loads. It doesn't jump around the page resizing itself while you attempt to hit the play button.

znpy 7y ago

it's fantastic. it's clean, it uses all my screen estate really well, I love it.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

tkidanu 7y ago

This is going to come in handy in avoiding Youtube's terrible recommendations engine.

angel_j 7y ago

Is there an ingest for my YT data?

mirimir 7y ago

This is very cool. Especially: kgg2m7yk5aybusll.onion axqzx4s6s54s32yentfqojs3x5i7faxza6xo3ehd4bzzsg2ii4fv2iid.onion

senwrmjwer 7y ago

wrtjw545k

senwrmjwer 7y ago

sdbftrhhj

senwrmjwer 7y ago

sdhsehjshshsehserh

senwrmjwer 7y ago

sethtjrtjj

senwrmjwer 7y ago

ehqerhh

veysel-im 7y ago

Kemal framework used. Interesting.

rasz 7y ago

I was very confused at first. I didnt log into anything, yet https://invidio.us/ https://invidio.us/ has plenty of creators from my YT subscriptions :o How the heck? Do the owner curate whats on the front page? I can only counts a couple video channels I have no interest in whatsoever (pie, h3, vox), or did Google finally started curating? No low value garbage on first page, something YT is usually struggling with. Still Peterson in related/recommendations tho.

omarroth 7y ago
The main algorithm is described here[0]. It's the most recent videos from the 40 most subscribed channels on the instance. YouTube's recommendations are still used. They'll appear the same as if you viewed YouTube with a clean browser session, although you can disable them in your preferences if you'd like (under "Show related videos"). 0. https://github.com/omarroth/invidious/issues/217#issuecomment-436503761 https://github.com/omarroth/invidious/issues/217#issuecommen...