It's a good piece of software, but it breaks every couple of weeks because youtube is trying to block third party clients and the team behind freetube has to find another way to patch around it.
this post was submitted on 27 Jun 2025
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DeGoogle Yourself
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For the times it is down, the Freetube UI offers an easy way to "open in " or "open embedded player", both of which are much better than dealing with the default youtube UI.
Thanks for the info. I'll be sticking with YouTube ReVanced for mobile and SmartTubeNext for my TV. Both have been working flawlessly for years without issue.
While you're at it..... Try Newpipe sponsor block on your Android phone.
Checking it out, thanks for the recommendation.
I've been a long term freetube user, but lately I'm finding pipeline built locally through AUR, formerly known as feetuber, a much better experience at least for me. I've set it up to use ytdlp and mpv all the time, so I don't care about Piped sites. It supports Peertube already, and it's way light, at least with mpv playing it is
Needs an android version with ATV UI
What's wrong with SmartTube? I use it daily without issues and they're very good and quick at fixing shit that Google puts in their way.
Cause having multiple options doesn't hurt anybody
What happens after the Dev gets tired of trying to fix what Google is purposely breaking?
Never put your eggs in one basket. It's why there is no longer a modded 3rd party twitch client on Android TV without any ads because the dev (S0und TV) pussied out and wants to put his app on the play store so he's pleasing Google now by not breaking the TOS
why not just https://redirect.invidious.io/
I didn't know about the web interfaces of Invidious instances. Definitey looks cool, and this redicrect domain is handy to quickly find a working instance.
Still, FreeTube has a couple of major advantages. One is that even if your go-to Invidious instance becomes unusable, your local FreeTube configuration (subscriptions, blocks, ricings, you name it) remains 100% in effect, because FreeTube just picks a different instance. Even when Google again makes all Invidious instances dysfunctional, FreeTube may still be usable by accessing YouTube directly. Also, FreeTube likely has A LOT more options—the settings page is quite sizeable. Finally, I find it increasingly nice that it's a standalone client separate from your browser. It makes it more deliberate to start watching videos, so that I'm less likely to go on senseless watching sprees; and conversely, when I'm watching useful videos, I'm less likely to interrupt them by going to some irrelevant website.