Bjarne Verschorre

Why this is relevant

Seeing that YouTube is getting worse and worse with their recommendations and the way they force ads down your throat, I switched to a different way of watching YouTube. I want to share this for the people that don’t know about it yet.

The Problems

• Recommendations: They are pushing you the shlopiest content they can find, just to keep you on the platform.
• Ads: They are getting more and more intrusive, with mid-roll ads and even ads in the middle of the video.
• Tracking: They track you everywhere, even if you’re not logged in.
• Sponsorships: I do not care about their NorthVPN promo or their Trianglespace ad. I just want the content.
• You can’t block channels or topics you don’t like.
• No native way to download videos.
• No way to watch videos in a different player. I could keep going..

The Solution

FreeTube

FreeTube^↗ is a free and open-source YouTube client for Windows, Mac, and Linux. It has everything I want and WAY more, I could list the features but there are too many. Just check it out for yourself.

It’s also nice to have everything locally, this makes it easily to move your data to something else like NewPipe.

NewPipe

NewPipe^↗ go-to app for watching YouTube on my phone. It’s also free and open-source and has a lot of features that the official YouTube app doesn’t have.

My Browsers

I use Librewolf^↗ along with uBlock Origin^↗ if I ever watch YouTube in my browser but I normally avoid it.

YouTube Alternatives

Instead of using YouTube, you can use one of these alternatives:

• Odysee^↗, a decentralized video platform.
• PeerTube^↗, a decentralized video platform.
• Invidious^↗, a front-end for YouTube without ads and tracking.