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.
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.
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.
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.
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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!
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.
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
Inb4 YouTube starts charging for API access… too soon? :(
I’m sure they’re watching the reddit situation very closely.
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.
