Thankfully there are better frontends for many social media sites. For YouTube, you can use Piped and Invidious. LibRedirect is a browser addon that automatically redirects all YouTube links to your selected frontend. If you want a native desktop app, check out FreeTube. On Android you can use LibreTube, NewPipe or a fork of it called Tubular. On iOS, you can configure Yattee to work with Piped and Invidious, this guide explains it: https://gonzoknows.com/posts/yattee/.
Doesn't piped completely remove the tracking and what not? Which.. I know it sounds bad but I want that. YouTube's algorithm honestly gives me some really cool shit based on what I've watched
Without tracking, it recommends stuff based on the current video. No idea how different the results might be if you have whole history for them to evaluate
I think randomness seems to work better than their algorithm. Youtube didn't recommend Cayley Odle because of anything I'd watched before, but ... damn.
On Android, there's also ReVanced which lets you apply patches to a bunch of apps, not just YouTube. Unlike some other ways of patching apps (like Magisk modules), ReVanced doesn't need root since it patches the APK before you install the app.
Oh yeah I completely forgot about SmartTube. I left out ReVanced on purpose, because it still uses the proprietary YouTube app. But if you're ok with this, there's also uYouPlus for iOS.
It's an awesome website with an awesome community. Definitely check out their Lemmy community ![email protected] and the forum discuss.privacyguides.net
It often overcorrects, like not every shitpost really needs a title that sounds like a news article. But for some really clickbaity YouTubers (most) it makes the titles much more usable. The titles are submitted by users, so if the streamer is very small there might be no one to write the titles.
"This 90s Microwave is Better Than Yours" is clickbait sure, but it's also literally the point of the video. It got corrected to something like "review of the Panasonic yadda yadda from 1996" and like, that's a less accurate title, guys, it's not actually a review of old kitchen stuff lol
Yeah, that is annoying. But for the "You won't BELIEVE what this microwave can do! 🤯🤯🤯" or worse the "This appliance from the 90s is going to REVOLUTIONIZE your kitchen!" at least become something that gives you some idea if you want to watch. Unfortunately some good videos are hidden behind shitty titles I otherwise wouldn't click.
Not technology connections obviously, their titles are fine.
Yeah, I'd really prefer something that supplements the titles rather than replacing them. If the title asks a question or is deliberately vague about a particular piece of information then a plugin that provided the answer (while still leaving the original title and thumbnail in place) could be useful, but as it is I shut off dearrow after a few minutes. It was just making things worse.
Hmm. Interesting extension. But for me, not being a heavy Youtube consumer, think I prefer to see the original title and clickbait thumbnail so I can avoid the over-the-top clickbaity stuff easier and not waste my time or give them bastards a view.
Unfortuanlty the clickbait is super effective against the mass-audiences. This makes everything else seem less favorable to the algorithm.
If a channel wants to get views, they have to join in to get new viewers or they will get burried by the allgorithum. For full time YouTube's that is financially devastating.
If people only click on "you won't belive X", then unfortuanlty thats what all the channels have to do. Some do it more subtle than others, but most videos names are some form of clickbait.
I get it why they have to do it, I dont like it, buts that's current reality of how YT works.
It does bother alot me is when channels complty lie in their title.
There's a difference between "STOP USING LINUX MAJOR EXPLOIT LINUX IS DEAD" and "MAJOR EXPLOIT FOUND IN LINUX"
DeArrow let's us change both to an approiate title and we can choose to watch a video because we are interested in the topic or creator, while the creator makes BS titles in attempt to get enough views from the masses to feed themselves.
Also I don't why so many de-arrow contributors feel the need to use the word "explaining" at the start of every title. Like "how VR has changed over the years is fine", you don't need to make it "Explaining how VR has changed over the years".
SponsorBlock automatically skips the entire sponsorship as soon as it starts, so a lot of the time you wouldn’t even know it was there if you didn’t see the green section of the playback bar.
It’s not just for sponsorships, either. You can set it to skip intro animations, reminders to subscribe, self promotion, etc.
It's all crowdsourced. Users can submit labeled segements (intro/intermission, sponsor, self-promotion, non-music, filler, etc.) and you can adjust the client side settings to either prompt to skip, automatically skip, or ignore segments for those categories. It's a huge time saver.
Skips not just sponsors, but also intros, outros, interaction requests "like, comment, subscribe, buy out merch", filler & jokes if you want. It can easily cut vids down to half the length in some cases (without actually missing any real content).
Got 2 monitors. Sometimes I think I have another program focused, but turns out YouTube was focused. The other program also has 0-9 as keybinds (or just writing a number). Now the video jumped to a random timestamp.
You can't just say that and not give a link! I use quite a few of the hotkeys, but those ones in particular cause me grief. If you have an extension that lets you pick and chose, I beg you to save us from that pain.
You can use Invidious or Piped. These have a much better, less bloated UI and Piped comes with SponsorBlock and DeArrow built in. You also don't get any ads or Google trackers.
When Christian Selig announced his independent Apple Vision YouTube App, I thought twice about actually getting one, just so I would’t have to use YouTubes ridiculous Application and Web UIs.
for the longest time the annotations switch in the settings menu existed, up until like 2018 i wanna say? They removed annotations in 2016 iirc, may have been 2018, and i'm fuzzing the years, it's been a hot while give me some slack.
I don't care about video comments anymore; in my experience it was filled with attention-seeking content and incels trying to look cool. It's also full of bots in the reply sections.
Instead, I use mpv media player to watch YouTube. I pick a video off my recommendations or the subscription page then I copy the video link and then I just have to do mpv <video link> in my terminal. It's also much faster on my low-end PC.
It doesn't have sponser-block support, but it does have ad-blocker. I haven't really checked sponser-block support yet either.
Mozilla on mobile lets you watch stuff in browser and you can get ublock as well! It also lets you play videos while it's running in the background again. It's truly heaven.
I use the Newpipe Sponsorblock fork, but use the main YouTube client to find content then "share" it to Newpipe. A little fiddly as the share dialog is built to be hostile.
Look into ReVanced (Android only). Get yourself a copy of the recommended YouTube apk version from apkmirror as specified in the patch manager. Load it from the internal storage, patch it right on your phone and install. Follow the prompts to sign in with your YT account on load. Good as new. The process got simplified, so it's easier than ever. Also, they're pretty on top of the emerging api changes and bugs. If you need more details, DM me. I'll try to reply promptly.
Thankfully there are better frontends for many social media sites. For YouTube, you can use Piped and Invidious. LibRedirect is a browser addon that automatically redirects all YouTube links to your selected frontend. If you want a native desktop app, check out FreeTube. On Android you can use LibreTube, NewPipe or a fork of it called Tubular. On iOS, you can configure Yattee to work with Piped and Invidious, this guide explains it: https://gonzoknows.com/posts/yattee/.
Doesn't piped completely remove the tracking and what not? Which.. I know it sounds bad but I want that. YouTube's algorithm honestly gives me some really cool shit based on what I've watched
Without tracking, it recommends stuff based on the current video. No idea how different the results might be if you have whole history for them to evaluate
That's... Something. It would still give me cool stuff I guess. I might start looking into this
I think randomness seems to work better than their algorithm. Youtube didn't recommend Cayley Odle because of anything I'd watched before, but ... damn.
Or SmartTube on Android TV.
On Android, there's also ReVanced which lets you apply patches to a bunch of apps, not just YouTube. Unlike some other ways of patching apps (like Magisk modules), ReVanced doesn't need root since it patches the APK before you install the app.
Oh yeah I completely forgot about SmartTube. I left out ReVanced on purpose, because it still uses the proprietary YouTube app. But if you're ok with this, there's also uYouPlus for iOS.
ReVanced used the proprietary app, but it patches out a bunch of stuff. I like it because it still works like the regular app.
I've not encountered Privacy Guides before, but that's a really lovely website!
It's an awesome website with an awesome community. Definitely check out their Lemmy community ![email protected] and the forum discuss.privacyguides.net
Is dearrow actually good? Does it work for small streamers?
It often overcorrects, like not every shitpost really needs a title that sounds like a news article. But for some really clickbaity YouTubers (most) it makes the titles much more usable. The titles are submitted by users, so if the streamer is very small there might be no one to write the titles.
Tech Connections is a great example imo
"This 90s Microwave is Better Than Yours" is clickbait sure, but it's also literally the point of the video. It got corrected to something like "review of the Panasonic yadda yadda from 1996" and like, that's a less accurate title, guys, it's not actually a review of old kitchen stuff lol
Yeah, that is annoying. But for the "You won't BELIEVE what this microwave can do! 🤯🤯🤯" or worse the "This appliance from the 90s is going to REVOLUTIONIZE your kitchen!" at least become something that gives you some idea if you want to watch. Unfortunately some good videos are hidden behind shitty titles I otherwise wouldn't click.
Not technology connections obviously, their titles are fine.
He’s great. And active on Mastodon.
https://mas.to/@TechConnectify
It's been a while since I watched his videos, looks like my day off is planed out.
Yeah, I'd really prefer something that supplements the titles rather than replacing them. If the title asks a question or is deliberately vague about a particular piece of information then a plugin that provided the answer (while still leaving the original title and thumbnail in place) could be useful, but as it is I shut off dearrow after a few minutes. It was just making things worse.
id personally be up for something that replaces the main title, but still displays the original title.
You can exclude channels from dearrow, do that with him
Hmm. Interesting extension. But for me, not being a heavy Youtube consumer, think I prefer to see the original title and clickbait thumbnail so I can avoid the over-the-top clickbaity stuff easier and not waste my time or give them bastards a view.
Unfortuanlty the clickbait is super effective against the mass-audiences. This makes everything else seem less favorable to the algorithm. If a channel wants to get views, they have to join in to get new viewers or they will get burried by the allgorithum. For full time YouTube's that is financially devastating.
If people only click on "you won't belive X", then unfortuanlty thats what all the channels have to do. Some do it more subtle than others, but most videos names are some form of clickbait.
I get it why they have to do it, I dont like it, buts that's current reality of how YT works. It does bother alot me is when channels complty lie in their title. There's a difference between "STOP USING LINUX MAJOR EXPLOIT LINUX IS DEAD" and "MAJOR EXPLOIT FOUND IN LINUX"
DeArrow let's us change both to an approiate title and we can choose to watch a video because we are interested in the topic or creator, while the creator makes BS titles in attempt to get enough views from the masses to feed themselves.
Also I don't why so many de-arrow contributors feel the need to use the word "explaining" at the start of every title. Like "how VR has changed over the years is fine", you don't need to make it "Explaining how VR has changed over the years".
I absolutely prefer the latter, adding "Explaining" makes it a readable title for me that I won't skip over.
It would be nice if they could automatically strip "and this happened" from titles.
It really only serves to perpetuate the behaviour you're trying to avoid cuz to the creator there's still views coming in.
Just my two cents.
I wish I installed sponsorblock sooner.
I didn't for so long despite knowing about it, and now i cannot deal with YouTube without it
Imagine that being automatic. There is no interruption at all.
SponsorBlock automatically skips the entire sponsorship as soon as it starts, so a lot of the time you wouldn’t even know it was there if you didn’t see the green section of the playback bar.
It’s not just for sponsorships, either. You can set it to skip intro animations, reminders to subscribe, self promotion, etc.
It's all crowdsourced. Users can submit labeled segements (intro/intermission, sponsor, self-promotion, non-music, filler, etc.) and you can adjust the client side settings to either prompt to skip, automatically skip, or ignore segments for those categories. It's a huge time saver.
Skips not just sponsors, but also intros, outros, interaction requests "like, comment, subscribe, buy out merch", filler & jokes if you want. It can easily cut vids down to half the length in some cases (without actually missing any real content).
I'm so glad that ReVanced has it built in. It's wonderful.
I recently discovered there are extensions to disable YouTube hotkeys. I personally disabled numbers 0-9, so annoying and useless.
EDIT: the extension I use is Disable YouTube Seek by Number
I didn't even check if it is open source. So if it's secretly a Bitcoin miner don't blame me.
Got 2 monitors. Sometimes I think I have another program focused, but turns out YouTube was focused. The other program also has 0-9 as keybinds (or just writing a number). Now the video jumped to a random timestamp.
Had this happen to me many times 🥲
cat
^ this
You can't just say that and not give a link! I use quite a few of the hotkeys, but those ones in particular cause me grief. If you have an extension that lets you pick and chose, I beg you to save us from that pain.
I don't give link because:
what extension? i hit those accidentally way too often
looked up "youtube shortcut" in firefox's add ons and found "disable youtube number keyboard shortcuts"
Not useless! I personally love quickly skipping the first chunk of a video with them.
wait until you find out about the arrow keys, or even better the media keys, which do 10 seconds at a time.
The amount of userscripts I have for YouTube is getting ridiculous...
You can use Invidious or Piped. These have a much better, less bloated UI and Piped comes with SponsorBlock and DeArrow built in. You also don't get any ads or Google trackers.
They're moving comments?? Why??
The UI department will probably get massive layoffs if they don't change anything, so they're forced to """"innovate"""".
Yeah. Like the Gmail login page.
Invidious
Or Piped
Not as nice (in my opinion)
When Christian Selig announced his independent Apple Vision YouTube App, I thought twice about actually getting one, just so I would’t have to use YouTubes ridiculous Application and Web UIs.
@[email protected]
Then I decided that it would be silly to spend any money on a 1st Gen Apple Vision.
Come to think about it, it's been ages since I've seen or at least noticed a red arrow thumbnail. Is that just me or are they in decline?
😱😲 that's because these two boys are more effective.
Every thumbnail has someone gasping over what happened in the video.
for the longest time the annotations switch in the settings menu existed, up until like 2018 i wanna say? They removed annotations in 2016 iirc, may have been 2018, and i'm fuzzing the years, it's been a hot while give me some slack.
Still sad about annotations.
You should also try YT Redux
You can replace some of them with a userstyle extension (not Stylish, that tracks you) and applying a style someone else already made.
I don't care about video comments anymore; in my experience it was filled with attention-seeking content and incels trying to look cool. It's also full of bots in the reply sections.
Instead, I use
mpvmedia player to watch YouTube. I pick a video off my recommendations or the subscription page then I copy the video link and then I just have to dompv <video link>in my terminal. It's also much faster on my low-end PC.It doesn't have sponser-block support, but it does have ad-blocker. I haven't really checked sponser-block support yet either.
Edit: found this for sponser-block support.
There's even a firefox addon that lets you open videos in mpv with one click: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ff2mpv/
On macOS, I recommend a fork of mpv called IINA. It also has a Firefox addon: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/open-in-iina-x/
This is me with the last few “redesigns” of chrome. Stop adding dead space to my fuckin bookmarks!
at least with chrome there's alternatives
Use Firefox or LibreWolf
Is privacy badger still considered good for blocking embedded Twitter stuff?
Yes it works great for that.
invidious is a good option
You can use Piped on desktop and LibreTube on Android and use a Piped account to sync your watch history, subscriptions and playlists.
I actually had the comments on the right for only a day or two, looks like you're part of a test batch.
As a mobile user, I'm just stuck with the stock YouTube app.
I do miss Vanced :-(
Have you tried revanced?
It took me a minute to figure out but thats bc im a dirt-eating cave dweller, so if you arent that you shouldnt have any trouble :3
https://github.com/ReVanced/revanced-manager/releases
Look into revanced
Mozilla on mobile lets you watch stuff in browser and you can get ublock as well! It also lets you play videos while it's running in the background again. It's truly heaven.
I use Newpipe, it's not as good as Vanced, but better than reVanced. And good enough that I recoil in horror at the stock app.
I use the Newpipe Sponsorblock fork, but use the main YouTube client to find content then "share" it to Newpipe. A little fiddly as the share dialog is built to be hostile.
How does that make sense? reVanced is just Vanced on steroids
Look into ReVanced (Android only). Get yourself a copy of the recommended YouTube apk version from apkmirror as specified in the patch manager. Load it from the internal storage, patch it right on your phone and install. Follow the prompts to sign in with your YT account on load. Good as new. The process got simplified, so it's easier than ever. Also, they're pretty on top of the emerging api changes and bugs. If you need more details, DM me. I'll try to reply promptly.
play with mpv and mpv sponsorblock and good.
Play with mpv is the only way I can have youtube hw acceleration on my laptop
Anyone know of a TamperMonkey addon to get the old YouTube UI back? Need to bookmark it for whenever YouTube makes the change on my account.
Eww, still using the official spyware?
Why not try out a privacy respecting frontend?
https://www.privacyguides.org/en/frontends/#youtube
what allows to bring subscribed tab back
Change your bookmark to https://www.youtube.com/feed/subscriptions -- then you'll always start on the subscriptions page
not that, on the channels page, so i can see other channels of people
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://www.piped.video/feed/subscriptions
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.