Alternative to youtube

Hi,
I guess there is already a discussion about this but couldnt find it.
Does somebody know a nice alternative to YouTube ?
And another one to spotify?
Thank you :slight_smile:

Regain your privacy! Adopt /e/ the unGoogled mobile OS and online servicesphone

My first go to website to look for alternatives is usually alternativeTo. I agree with the top results shown after searching for “Youtube”:

PeerTube is probably my favorite, I rarely use others such as LBRY but I probably should try it more often and I encourage you to try out both. The benefit of something like PeerTube is that it’s decentralized and works similarly to things like Mastodon and PixelFed (which are, respectively, Twitter and Instagram decentralized alternatives).

The thing is PeerTube or LBRY are alternatives to YouTube functionality-wise, which is video hosting. However the content is very lacking in comparison since clearly almost everyone prefers to upload to YouTube. As a workaround you have front-end alternatives that leverage Youtube’s content but without the tracking, namely NewPipe(Android) and Invidious(Web browser).

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Regarding a Spotify alternative, I recommend funkwhale. It’s based on Activity Pub, which is the back bone of the fediverse (i.e. Mastodon, PeerTube, etc.).

You can also check out Resonate. They do utilize DRM, which I’m not a big fan of. But it is a co-op, and is community-centric (kind of like /e/).

The Free Software Foundation has a great DRM-free guide for audio.

Discord Records has their entire catalogue available! And this is just one example.

Dan.

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Out of topic…Discord or Dischord?I love Dischord, thanks!

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Is Invidious working?
I thought they could not continue working as Youtube alternative.

Thank you

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I thought they could not continue workint as Youtube alternative.

Just to clarify on this, Invidious is an alternative front-end to YouTube. This only means that you can access YouTube’s content without the tracking that is present in their website. This also means some extra features don’t work the same for example the “cards” that link to other videos… you actually get to see the person on a video pointing nowhere and looks hilarious sometimes :slight_smile:

But yes, Invidious still works although the creator stepped down from development but the project continues to exist since it’s open-source. It’s also designed so that anyone can self-host their own instance and therefore there are plenty to choose from. Bear in mind that YouTube’s API changes frequently and that makes things work problematically sometimes, which granted is a little frustrating.

There are also a number of projects that leverage Invidious to work in similar ways (I can recommend FreeTube).

By the way I forgot to mention one alternative that I recently discovered: mediagoblin, which again is decentralized and has many instances to choose from.

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Thank you for your complete answers, its really helped me. I searched for this answers on internet but didnt find nothing so clear.
I’m going to check all your options :slight_smile:

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Someone tried to build a list about “de-googling” : https://github.com/tycrek/degoogle

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Another alternative specifically for documentaries is Curiosity Stream if you are interested. I’m mentioning it because there are obviously a lot of documentaries on YouTube, so this may be a good alternative to consider for this type of content.

It’s not free, you have to pay for a subscription, however there’s a sell going on for Cyber-Monday that costs about US$15/year. The content is excellent so for me is pretty much worth it.

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Also don’t forget UntrackMe and UntrackMe Lite. It converts YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, and Google Maps links to respective Invidious, Nitter, Bibliogram, and OpenStreetMap alternatives in your browsers. Works really well.

As far as alternatives to the YouTube app, but not the service, there are others besides NewPipe such as SkyTube/SkyTube Extra, YaShlang, and HoloPlay (uses Invidious) among others.

Also, NewPipe is a multi-service app. It also does SoundCloud, MediaCCC, and PeerTube/FramaTube. From the slide out menu click on the little dropdown arrow next to the YouTube name to expose them.
PeerTube instances can be added via Settings -> Content -> Peertube instances.

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Thank you @marcdw for the detailed feedback, and letting me discover a lot of new possibilities.
In terms of apps, I preferred NewPipe (Legacy) to SkyTube (I use it in an old device, and it has all the features I may need). But my question was related to a possibility of YT alternatives when using a browser, and then, thanks to your post, I discovered this page:

Great, thanks! :+1:

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The newpipe in F-droid is to old.

One way is to use the newpipe repro or the releases on github.

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More on this can be found here:

Just be aware it won’t automatically update if you install it that way. You will get a notification when new version is ready and then you have to install manually. It’s very easy to do (just follow the links) but it’s worth noting that.

Skytube from f-droid.org works the best.

Not really an alternative, but when I look for a video I do it with DuckDuckGo --> Videos and watch it from there. In this way even if the video is hosted(?) on YouTube I do not need to access the YouTube’s website.

Example: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=music+video&iax=videos&ia=videos

That sounds like bad advice, YouTube itself is very explicit about it:

ddg_screen

This warning has been up for a long time, you can read more about it in this article

But it doesn’t seem to work with Tracker Control on.

See this post.

I really like Newpipe Legacy (available on Fdroid).
You can import your subscriptions, no more ads while watching videos.

Recently, I also tried Odysee to follow popular youtubers such as Defakator.
You can also take a look at Imago (french video platform focusing on social and environmental videos)

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