I have troubles understanding what's the value added by Yattee if it's only a "front end", while piped already claims it's a front end for YT. Can you help me get a clearer understanding ? I'm interested in ditching YT in favor of a privacy friendly / ad-free alternative.
Yattee aims to fit more in line as a native Apple subscription organizer and player application suite, with native window controls and tighter integrations, but it's mostly up to you to decide how'd you like your setup to be.
Ideally, you could self host only the Piped framework and connect this to Yattee without hosting the WebUI frontend, but without the latter, you cannot create a user for yourself to store subscriptions, and using the provided AIO Docker Images is overkill for self hosting as you are required to purchase and point to DNS records for this system (mostly to the benefit of publically hosting an instance of Piped).
Invidious is more suited for this regard, but has issues with parsing some videos and their metadata (usually new uploads for a week, Vevo Music Videos etc.)
Also check out a FOSS Android app LibreTube[1]. No ads, SponsorBlock, ReturnYouTubeDislike, can proxy all the videos through a Piped instance, subscription sync with a Piped account, offline and online playlists are supported
Considering how many viewers they have using televisions/set top boxes/streaming usb sticks that will never get an update, do you see that happening any time soon?
Likely by means of reverse-engineered APIs from smart TVs (or similar) with limited capability to provide integrity, although I'm sure there are steps Google can take to make that harder
Invidious is also a great frontend. From what I can tell, a lot lighter an simpler. From what I can tell, Piped also uses a custom fonts to render controls(?), so it doesn't work well with remote fonts disabled.
With a name like "Piped" I wonder if it's related to the NewPipe app, one of my favorite apps on Graphene OS and something that I really wish existed on iOS.
Piped is indeed 'related' to NewPipe: Both NewPipe and Piped use "NewPipe Extractor" to extract Video information (AFAIK including stream data) from streaming sites like YouTube.
I believe the main difference is that NewPipe is an Android App frontend and Piped is a web frontend with the Extractor library as a core dependency.
Which makes the NewPipe Extractor library a great starting point for building more, different frontend applications.
Disclaimer: I'm no expert and this is an oversimplified explanation.
Aren't these services (and even adblockers) against YouTube's TOS? As much as I don't like ads as the next person, my Google account is one thing I don't want to risk.
Anybody hear of this happening or think it's a possibility down the road?
Google can block you at any time for any reason. Terms of Service are never relevant. If you're doing something many other people do, you're okay.
Besides, suppose they do block you. What's the worst that going to happen? If you can think of something really bad (e.g. I'm going to lose all my photos) then you should do something to address that. Regardless.
Photos would be a one evening worth trivial task to back up to another system .
Switching your phone from android or changing an email address with hundreds of contacts over many years is far more difficult and expensive.
Google or Apple for that matter can make life difficult for a single person by banding their account , there is not a whole lot an average person can do to mitigate that risk.
> Aren't these services (and even adblockers) against YouTube's TOS?
It's probably a grey area. It's hard to claim that I'm acting against YouTube's TOS by using Piped. Aside from the fact that I haven't agreed to them, I'm also not interacting with YouTube.
As for the devs: they're merely writing a proxy. I'm sure some creative lawyer can find a way to portrait this as illegal, but it's likely a stretch.
This is my question too. If I am going to risk my Google Account getting banned, there is no way I want to try something like this. If it is actually explicitly allowed, then sure I will use it.
I don't think it allows you to login with your Google account. You can have a local account on the instance but it does not have anything with your google account.
So you cannot interact with videos (comment, like..etc) although you can create Playlists that will be linked to your local instance account.
I can't speak for piped, but I use a self-hosted Invidious instance to watch Youtube. You don't log into it with your Google account, it has its own authentication so that it can save your (distinct) subscriptions. Even if Google decided to crack down on alternate front-end usage, they can't correlate it back to your actual account.
> they can't correlate it back to your actual account.
Can't is a strong word. They might not bother, but if you're logged in to your Google account on other services from the same IP they might tie those together. Wouldn't be 100% accurate but if they decided to go nuclear ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I use the SmartTube frontend on my TV and do not have it linked to my Google account for exactly this reason. I just leave it set as the default user.
Yes, it's a bit of a pain if I find a channel that I would like to subscribe to, that I need to do it twice (once on the TV, once in YT on my phone), but that's a very hurdle.
I recommend having a separate account where important data is stored (Gmail, photos) and another for everything else (search, youtube, hangouts, etc.). I also still keep personal backups of all import data (see takeout.google.com).
Since they have started blocking invidious instances, I've switched to the Freetube app as a YT client. Work great imo & no dependence on external services/hosts. Hopefully they are not plannign on enforcing WEI soon..
Readit News
Yattee is a good front end app for both piped and invidious for Apple TV (and iOS and macOS but I prefer the browser on those platforms)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37900458
Ideally, you could self host only the Piped framework and connect this to Yattee without hosting the WebUI frontend, but without the latter, you cannot create a user for yourself to store subscriptions, and using the provided AIO Docker Images is overkill for self hosting as you are required to purchase and point to DNS records for this system (mostly to the benefit of publically hosting an instance of Piped). Invidious is more suited for this regard, but has issues with parsing some videos and their metadata (usually new uploads for a week, Vevo Music Videos etc.)
Show HN: Firefox add-on to open YouTube videos in alternative front ends - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37881771 - Oct 2023 (128 comments)
Tell HN: Cloudflare Is Blocking Piped - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33667236 - Nov 2022 (120 comments)
LibreTube: Alternative YouTube front end for Android built with Piped - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30746420 - March 2022 (46 comments)
Piped: A privacy-friendly YouTube front end which is efficient by design - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27869188 - July 2021 (230 comments)
[1]: https://github.com/libre-tube/LibreTube
They will not, that is the whole point of WEI.
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My go-to instance is: https://yewtu.be/
Occasionally it might be down, but it's easy to find others.
I believe the main difference is that NewPipe is an Android App frontend and Piped is a web frontend with the Extractor library as a core dependency.
Which makes the NewPipe Extractor library a great starting point for building more, different frontend applications.
Disclaimer: I'm no expert and this is an oversimplified explanation.
Anybody hear of this happening or think it's a possibility down the road?
Besides, suppose they do block you. What's the worst that going to happen? If you can think of something really bad (e.g. I'm going to lose all my photos) then you should do something to address that. Regardless.
Switching your phone from android or changing an email address with hundreds of contacts over many years is far more difficult and expensive.
Google or Apple for that matter can make life difficult for a single person by banding their account , there is not a whole lot an average person can do to mitigate that risk.
It's probably a grey area. It's hard to claim that I'm acting against YouTube's TOS by using Piped. Aside from the fact that I haven't agreed to them, I'm also not interacting with YouTube.
As for the devs: they're merely writing a proxy. I'm sure some creative lawyer can find a way to portrait this as illegal, but it's likely a stretch.
Also, don't associate your google account with your youtube usage. Problem solved.
So you cannot interact with videos (comment, like..etc) although you can create Playlists that will be linked to your local instance account.
Can't is a strong word. They might not bother, but if you're logged in to your Google account on other services from the same IP they might tie those together. Wouldn't be 100% accurate but if they decided to go nuclear ¯\_(ツ)_/¯