I really hope the answer is “yes,” but gosh-darned if I can find one. The FreeTube app still works as long as my VPN is off, but as for Invidious . . . (also, sorry if this has already been covered earlier).
EDIT: Ok, well now it looks like I can get FreeTube to work with some Mullvad locations but not others . . .
I use invidious to search, copy the link, and use yt-dlp to download the video. You can get 1080p that way. If I wasn’t lazy, I would write a script
Is there a good guide to self host?
Self-hosted piped/invidious still working great if you want to follow this route. Everything from no-ads/sponsor block/comments works without any issues.
One downside however, is that you’re exposing your own public IP to Google/YouTube :/.
yt-dlp works, magic-tape works, too, if you don’t mind terminal interface.
My self hosted instance works great
The below website provides the answer to your question: https://redirect.invidious.io/
Freetube on desktop, NewPipe on smartphone. And I have no problems with VPNs on both devices!
I don’t think so, YouTube’s new method for blocking third party clients seems to be difficult to work around. I have the Linux version of the NewPipe app and that seems to be working but I don’t use VPNs, so I don’t know if that would work for you.
NewPipe works for me on Android
It stopped working for me recently. It’ll play the first 5 seconds or so of the video and then just freeze up.
Not really at this point
What works for me is freetube on desktop, and tubular/newpipe on AOSP.
Ups, I just got to enjoy piped and in particular pipeline on gnu+linux and libretube on AOSP.
Pipeline in particular allows to totally avoid electron (freetube), and in both cases the piped instance is the one communicating with youtube, not me, :) And both applications support sponsorblock (tubular does, but newpipe doesn’t). But not talking directly to youtube is a win. Did I mention dropping another electron app, :) ?
But… I installed pipeline from AUR, because I don’t like flatpak… Not sure if other user repos offer it as well…
I use freetube and grayjay
I still use Invidious and Piped for searches and looking at comments, but they are currently broken (as far as I’ve seen).
I’ve been trying for weeks. Sometimes, using a random IP address with Proton VPN works for a few hours, but eventually, Freetube (or YouTube) seems to catch on and shuts me down. Gravitywell mentioned a piped instance, which was great but only worked for a minute or two for me. I think the days of being anonymous on YouTube are over—time to move on if privacy is important to you.
I’d like to know if any of these frontends work with Mullvad VPN, because all the Mullvad servers I’ve tried have been blocked. Even on youtube.com I’m getting throttled to the point where all videos are 360p. Ridiculous, but I’m not turning my VPN off just for YouTube videos.
For me it usually works to change server/country if a video is not working. Sometimes it takes 2-3 tries, and it is annoying.
Yeah, same here! I have to turn off Mullvad when watching FreeTube which is definitely annoying.
Yeah, I was also using FreeTube when Mullvad got blocked. Mullvad’s South African servers worked for me for a while but they’re now blocked too, and I’ve tried a bunch of countries and all blocked. Annoyingly even yt-dlp is blocked with Mullvad on now, so I can’t even use that to watch YouTube.
That reminds me, I think I remember reading on the FreeTube page that they recommended using a VPN with it (this was before the current issues with Mullvad); anyone know why? Are FreeTube users in any danger of being hunted down by Sundar Pichai & co.?
