Alternative frontends for YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, Reddit, Google

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Invidious is an alternative front-end to YouTube

• Audio-only mode (and no need to keep window open on mobile)
• Free software (AGPLv3 licensed)
• No ads
• No need to create a Google account to save subscriptions
• Lightweight (homepage is ~4 KB compressed)
• Tools for managing subscriptions:
  
  • Only show unseen videos
  • Only show latest (or latest unseen) video from each channel
  • Delivers notifications from all subscribed channels
  • Automatically redirect homepage to feed
  • Import subscriptions from YouTube
• Dark mode
• Embed support
• Set default player options (speed, quality, autoplay, loop)
• Does not require JS to play videos
• Support for Reddit comments in place of YT comments
• Import/Export subscriptions, watch history, preferences
• Does not use any of the official YouTube APIs
• Developer API

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https://github.com/iv-org/invidious
List of instances

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youtube-local

youtube-local is a browser-based client written in Python for watching Youtube anonymously and without the lag of the slow page used by Youtube. One of the primary features is that all requests are routed through Tor, except for the video file at googlevideo.com. This is analogous to what HookTube (defunct) and Invidious do, except that you do not have to trust a third-party to respect your privacy.

Features

• Standard pages of Youtube: search, channels, playlists
• Anonymity from Google's tracking by routing requests through Tor
• Local playlists: These solve the two problems with creating playlists on Youtube: (1) they're datamined and (2) videos frequently get deleted by Youtube and lost from the playlist, making it very difficult to find a reupload as the title of the deleted video is not displayed.
• Themes: Light, Gray, and Dark
• Subtitles
• Easily download videos or their audio
• No ads
• View comments
• Javascript not required
• Theater and non-theater mode
• Subscriptions that are independent from Youtube
• Fast page
• Settings allow fine-tuned control over when/how comments or related videos are shown
• Optionally skip sponsored segments using SponsorBlock's API
• Custom video speeds
• Video transcript
• Supports all available video qualities: 144p through 2160p

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https://github.com/user234683/youtube-local
List of instances (N/A)

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Piped

YouTube has an extremely invasive privacy policy which relies on using user data in unethical ways. You give them a lot of data - ranging from ideas, music taste, content, political opinions, and much more than you think.

By using Piped, you can freely watch and listen to content without the fear of prying eyes watching everything you are doing.

Features

User Features

• No Ads
• No Tracking
• Lightweight on server and client
• Infinite Scrolling
• Light/Dark themes
• Login
• Feeds
• Playlists
• Integration with SponsorBlock
• Integration with LBRY for streaming
• Integration with Return YouTube Dislike via RYD-Proxy
• 4K support
• No connections to Google's servers
• Playing just audio
• PWA support
• Support for iOS
• Locally saved Preferences
• Available in many languages, thanks to our translators
• Embedded video support

Technical Features

• Multi-region load-balancing
• Performant by design, designed to handle 1000s of users concurrently
• Does not use official YouTube APIs
• Uses NewPipeExtractor to extract information
• Public JSON API

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https://github.com/TeamPiped/Piped
List of instances

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Nitter (WIP)
A free and open source alternative Twitter front-end focused on privacy.
Inspired by the invidio.us project.

• No JavaScript or ads
• All requests go through the backend, client never talks to Twitter
• Prevents Twitter from tracking your IP or JavaScript fingerprint
• Unofficial API (no rate limits or developer account required)
• Lightweight (for @nim_lang, 36KB vs 580KB from twitter.com)
• RSS feeds
• Themes
• Mobile support (responsive design)
• AGPLv3 licensed, no proprietary instances permitted

Todo (roughly in this order)

• Embeds
• Caching + archiving tweets/profiles
• Simple account system with customizable feed
• Json API endpoints
• Emoji support (WIP, uses native font for now)

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https://github.com/zedeus/nitter
List of instances

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Bibliogram
An alternative front-end for Instagram.

Bibliogram works without client-side JavaScript, has no ads or tracking, and doesn't urge you to sign up.
See also: Invidious, a front-end for YouTube.
Join the Bibliogram discussion room on Matrix: #bibliogram:matrix.org

Features

• View profile and timeline, Infinite scroll, User memory cache, RSS (latest 12 posts), View post, Galleries, Homepage, Videos, Galleries of videos, Optimised for mobile, Instance list, Clickable usernames and hashtags, Proper error checking, Favicon
• Not implemented yet: Image disk cache, Settings (e.g. data saving), List view, IGTV, Test suite, Rate limiting, Public API, Explore hashtags, Explore locations, more...?

These features may not be able to be implemented for technical reasons:

• Stories

These features will not be added, unless you ask reallllly nicely:

• Comments
• Tagging users

These features will not be added, and I will not investigate adding them:

• Viewing or interacting with a private profile's timeline

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https://github.com/cloudrac3r/bibliogram
List of instances

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teddit

A free and open source alternative Reddit front-end focused on privacy. Inspired by the Nitter project.

• No JavaScript or ads
• All requests go through the backend, client never talks to Reddit
• Prevents Reddit from tracking your IP or JavaScript fingerprint
• Unofficial API (RSS & JSON support, no rate limits or Reddit account required)
• Lightweight (teddit frontpage: ~30 HTTP requests with ~270 KB of data downloaded vs. Reddit frontpage: ~190 requests with ~24 MB)
• Self-hostable. Anyone can setup an instance. An instance can either use Reddit's API with or without OAuth (so Reddit API key is not necessarily needed).

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https://codeberg.org/teddit/teddit
List of instances

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Libreddit

10 second pitch: Libreddit is a portmanteau of "libre" (meaning freedom) and "Reddit". It is a private front-end like Invidious but for Reddit. Browse the coldest takes of r/unpopularopinion without being tracked.

• Fast: written in Rust for blazing fast speeds and memory safety
• Light: no JavaScript, no ads, no tracking, no bloat
• Private: all requests are proxied through the server, including media
• Secure: strong Content Security Policy prevents browser requests to Reddit

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https://github.com/spikecodes/libreddit
List of instances

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Whoogle Search

Get Google search results, but without any ads, javascript, AMP links, cookies, or IP address tracking. Easily deployable in one click as a Docker app, and customizable with a single config file. Quick and simple to implement as a primary search engine replacement on both desktop and mobile.

Features

• No ads or sponsored content
• No javascript
• No cookies
• No tracking/linking of your personal IP address*
• No AMP links
• No URL tracking tags (i.e. utm=%s)
• No referrer header
• Tor and HTTP/SOCKS proxy support
• Autocomplete/search suggestions
• POST request search and suggestion queries (when possible)
• View images at full res without site redirect (currently mobile only)
• Dark mode
• Randomly generated User Agent
• Easy to install/deploy
• DDG-style bang (i.e. !<tag> <query>) searches
• Optional location-based searching (i.e. results near <city>)
• Optional NoJS mode to disable all Javascript in results

*If deployed to a remote server, or configured to send requests through a VPN, Tor, proxy, etc.

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https://github.com/benbusby/whoogle-search
List of instances

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Wikiless

A free open source alternative Wikipedia front-end focused on privacy.

• No JavaScript or ads.
• All requests go through the backend, client never talks to Wikipedia.
• Prevents Wikipedia getting your IP address.
• Self-hostable. Anyone can setup a private or public instance.

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https://codeberg.org/orenom/wikiless
List of instances

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4get

What is this?
This is a metasearch engine that gets results from other engines, and strips away all of the tracking parameters and Microsoft/globohomo bullshit they add. Most of the other alternatives to Google jack themselves off about being ""privacy respecting"" or whatever the fuck but it always turns out to be a total lie, and I just got fed up with their shit honestly. Alternatives like Searx or YaCy all fucking sucks so I made my own thing.

My goal
Provide users with a privacy oriented, extremely lightweight, ad free, free as in freedom (and free beer!) way to search for documents around the internet, with minimal, optional javascript code. My long term goal would be to build my own index (that doesn't suck) and provide users with an unbiased search engine, with no political inclinations.

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https://git.lolcat.ca/lolcat/4get
List of instances

Thanks for sharing this. They look great, and Invidious is the one I can see myself using as a full substitute of the original service. I'll try to adapt to using it (not that I use YouTube a lot :eek13:)

i was keen on Invidious since youtube started with these "We’ll stop supporting this browser soon" banners. unfortunately though Invidious doesn't work with older browsers either. the pages are fine but playing the videos doesn't work.

How old are we talking about? In theory it's supposed to work on anything that supports HTML5 and has the required codecs.

2016 and html5 is supported. i checked the log and found the following errors:

Code:

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Uncaught SyntaxError: Block-scoped declarations (let, const, function, class) not yet supported outside strict mode

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Code:

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Refused to connect to 'https:// ... googlevideo.com' because it violates the following Content Security Policy directive: "connect-src 'self'".

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i grabbed an addon to disable the content security policy but still no dice. however right click and and opening the video in a new tab works so this is still much better than having an unusable youtube of course.

Was surfing through the documentation and found a workaround for you. If you add raw=1 to the query string, you get redirected straight to the video stream.

Code:

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https://invidio.us/watch?v=InQS6kzqGes&raw=1

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There's also a local parameter which can be true or false (not 1 or 0, confusingly) to proxy the video through Invidious or not, and quality which can be one of dash, hd720 or medium.

Updated the first post to add Teddit and Libreddit.

Updated the first post to add Whoogle Search.

Updated the first post to add Wikiless, which I found by pure chance.

One good thing about all of these projects is that they're much lighter and faster than the official interfaces. YouTube has become bloated to the point opening a video freezes my browser for a few seconds :suicide:

Updated the first post to add youtube-local.

at the bottom of https://github.com/user234683/youtube-local there's a list with even more.

Saw that, but I haven't tried most of them yet. One feature that was never officially available but they all seem to have is audio-only mode :music:

Bonus track: LinkTube. Been using it for years to rewrite embedded videos in my main browser after disabling Flash and multimedia to keep things secure.

yeah audio-only is great. actually my default for invidious.

Let's say you have a slow computer and want to read Reddit without having to sleep 60 on every page load, but neither Libreddit or teddit are good enough for you. You can try this...

• disable JavaScript for reddit.com and all subdomains.
• open https://old.reddit.com/personalization and run the following code in your browser's console.
  
  Code:

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  document.cookie = "redesign_optout=true; Expires=Sun, 17 Jan 2038 19:14:07 GMT; Path=/; Secure; Domain=.reddit.com; SameSite=None"
document.cookie = "listingsignupbar_dismiss=1; Expires=Sun, 17 Jan 2038 19:14:07 GMT; Path=/; Secure; Domain=.reddit.com; SameSite=None"
document.cookie = "over18=1; Expires=Sun, 17 Jan 2038 19:14:07 GMT; Path=/; Secure; Domain=.reddit.com; SameSite=None"
document.cookie = "_options=%7B%22pref_quarantine_optin%22%3A%20true%7D; Expires=Sun, 17 Jan 2038 19:14:07 GMT; Path=/; Secure; Domain=.reddit.com; SameSite=None"

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  Now you can open www.reddit.com links without loading the new design. (This was pretty hard to find! It seems everyone wants you to install browser addons or create an account and disable the redesign via preferences. No thanks.)
• optional but recommended - apply the following CSS code.
  
  Code:

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  /* Expand search bars, comments and posts by default */
#searchexpando, .comment.collapsed .usertext, .comment.collapsed .child, .comment.collapsed .buttons {
        display: block !important;
}
.thing.link.spoiler .expando, .thing.link.over18 .expando {
        display: block !important;
}
.media-preview {
        visibility: visible !important;
}
/* Hide signup, Reddit Premium and sponsored content banners */
.listingsignupbar, .infobar.commentsignupbar, .premium-banner, .link.promotedlink.promoted, .link.promotedlink.external {
        display: none !important;
}

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Updated the first post to add Piped.

As of this writing, when using some alternative YouTube frontends, you may see a 5 minute long warning claiming that "the following content is not available on this app" instead of the desired video. This is due to Google deprecating some of the clients they emulate (remember the v2 GData API?) but should be easy to fix.

https://m.youtube.com/?persist_app=1&app=m works to force the mobile interface on the official site. It's much faster, but videos can't be made wide (fullscreen is fine) and playback stops and discards the buffer when you switch tabs or windows. https://www.youtube.com/?persist_app=1&app=desktop reverts this change.

Bad news for Bibliogram. The project has been discontinued because the developer got tired of looking for workarounds to keep it working. But something similar happened to Invidious some months after this thread was started, so you never know.

https://cadence.moe/blog/2022-09-01-...ing-bibliogram

These two offer similar functionality, but are not open source projects like the ones in the first post.

https://imginn.com/
https://dumpor.com/

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Originally Posted by anon

If you add raw=1 to the query string, you get redirected straight to the video stream... there's also a local parameter which can be true or false (not 1 or 0, confusingly) to proxy the video through Invidious or not, and quality which can be one of dash, hd720 or medium.

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Can also be used from a terminal.

Code:

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wget "https://invidious.snopyta.org/watch?v=q6o49pbJaDo&quality=medium&local=false&raw=1"

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Adding &listen=1 downloads the audio track instead. Neither preserves the original name, but at least they'll work if you can't or don't want to install anything.

Bad news for Invidious.

https://torrentfreak.com/youtube-ord...7-days-230609/
https://github.com/iv-org/invidious/issues/3872

Some instances are currently blocked with a "video returned by YouTube isn't the requested one" error, which has happened before, but given context is unlikely to be a coincidence.

Indivious instances, or at least the ones I use, are no longer being aggressively blocked. Rotating IPv6 addresses was suggested as a workaround on their issue tracker, and either it worked or YouTube has dropped any targeted efforts. The latter seems more likely as they haven't gone forward with their legal threats and could just block entire IPv6 prefixes instead.

Indeed, great. I used piped.video in the meantime but didn't like the ui. More than happy to have Indivious back :happy:

https://github.com/mendel5/alternative-front-ends :wthink:

For a long time I use a pretty useful extension called LibRedirect, it allows you to configure redirects for these sites:

YouTube > Invidious, Piped, Piped-Material, CloudTube, PokeTube, FreeTube, Yattee
YouTube Music > Beatbump, Hyperpipe
Twitter > Nitter
TikTok > ProxiTok
Reddit > Libreddit, Teddit
Imgur > Rimgo
Pixiv > PixivFE
Medium > Scribe, LibMedium
Quora > Quetre
IMDb > LibreMDb
Fandom > BreezeWiki
Pinterest > Binternet
Search > SearXNG, SearX, Whoogle, LibreX
Translate > SimplyTranslate, LingvaTranslate, LibreTranslate
Google Maps > OpenStreetMap, FacilMap
Send Files > Send
Paste Text > PrivateBin
Reuters > Neuters
Genius > Dumb
Urban Dictionary > Rural Dictionary
Stack Overflow > AnonymousOverflow
Goodreads > BiblioReads
Wikipedia > Wikiless
Snopes > Suds
Wayback Machine > Wayback Classic
Github > Gothub
Bilibili > MikuInvidious
Instructables > Indestructables
Bandcamp > Tent
Wolfram Alpha > WolfreeAlpha
Meet > Jitsi
Speed Test > LibreSpeed

It is interesting that we can add instances based on their ping, status, and switch instances (very important for libreddit after the api nuke) on the fly.

You can get it here: https://libredirect.github.io/download.html

Also you can turn off the "Fetch public instances" to do it manually to avoid browser behavior tracking.

Updated the first post to add 4get (which seems to be fairly unknown).

Quote:

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Originally Posted by sbestran

For a long time I use a pretty useful extension called LibRedirect, it allows you to configure redirects for these sites:

YouTube > Invidious, Piped, Piped-Material, CloudTube, PokeTube, FreeTube, Yattee
YouTube Music > Beatbump, Hyperpipe
Twitter > Nitter
TikTok > ProxiTok
Reddit > Libreddit, Teddit
Imgur > Rimgo
Pixiv > PixivFE
Medium > Scribe, LibMedium
Quora > Quetre
IMDb > LibreMDb
Fandom > BreezeWiki
Pinterest > Binternet
Search > SearXNG, SearX, Whoogle, LibreX
Translate > SimplyTranslate, LingvaTranslate, LibreTranslate
Google Maps > OpenStreetMap, FacilMap
Send Files > Send
Paste Text > PrivateBin
Reuters > Neuters
Genius > Dumb
Urban Dictionary > Rural Dictionary
Stack Overflow > AnonymousOverflow
Goodreads > BiblioReads
Wikipedia > Wikiless
Snopes > Suds
Wayback Machine > Wayback Classic
Github > Gothub
Bilibili > MikuInvidious
Instructables > Indestructables
Bandcamp > Tent
Wolfram Alpha > WolfreeAlpha
Meet > Jitsi
Speed Test > LibreSpeed

It is interesting that we can add instances based on their ping, status, and switch instances (very important for libreddit after the api nuke) on the fly.

You can get it here: https://libredirect.github.io/download.html

Also you can turn off the "Fetch public instances" to do it manually to avoid browser behavior tracking.

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Thanks for the list , I did not know those websites

Nitter has been discontinued due to new restrictions imposed by Twitter. Some instances continue to work, but are still subject to rate limiting.