this post was submitted on 27 Feb 2024
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I am starting to detangle myself from Google and one of the services I use is YouTube.

I learned that piped exists the other day but that is just a front end for Google.

Is there a tool that I can host on my server that will let me give it YouTube links, that will then download/stream to my server and then server to my phone or computer?

I guess I am looking for a tool that will cache my YouTube videos locally and even download my subscriptions when they upload new stuff.

I'm not sure what this buys me that Piped does not, except that I am backing up videos in case they are removed.

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[–] [email protected] 27 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Yes it's called Invidious.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Or piped, depending on what you prefer.

[–] Chocrates 4 points 8 months ago (3 children)

Piped is just a front end and the data is still on Youtube servers right? Honestly that is probably enough but I'll check out the one /u/[email protected] suggested.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 months ago (1 children)

That's right, but from a user data perspective, Google does not know that you are the one watching the video, so it cannot sell your data.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

Depends on how many other users are using the same proxy. If you host piped for yourself using your home internet connection, Google will absolutely know who is watching the video.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Your plan sounds like exactly what Piped or Invidious are doing, just that you do want to do it yourself, on your server, so it's worse in terms of privacy.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Piped consists of a frontend, a backend and a proxy. The frontend is the site you see, the backend stores all the data like video information, user accounts and subscriptions, and the proxy loads the videos you watch from YT. The only thing it doesn't do is download and store the videos, it'll always stream them on demand.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 months ago (1 children)

https://www.tubearchivist.com/

I've liked this one. Let's you subscribe to channels/playlists and download en-masse if your inclined

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

This is really cool. I'm still struggling to find a good replacement for my use case. I almost exclusively watch youtube on my Nvidia Shield on SmartTube with sponsorblock.

I do use Jellyfin already and I see there is a Jellyfin plugin. Do you know if Jellyfin gets sponsorblock information as chapters? That would probably be an okay solution, even if it doesn't automatically skip them.

[–] AtariDump 1 points 8 months ago

Use YT-dlp to download them using the sponsor block flags.

[–] JackSkellington 5 points 8 months ago

Self host invidious maybe?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 months ago

AFAIK, Piped always proxies the videos through a server.

I am more familiar with Invidious. Find an Invidious server that lets you enable proxying. Some examples are yewtu.be, invidious.protokolla.fi and inv.nadeko.net. Then find an RSS app that lets you download the content, as well as supports cookies. Use the invidious server's cookies in your RSS app to proxy the content you download. Invidious servers can provide RSS feeds for individual channels, as well as your complete subscription feed.

And if possible donate a dollar or two, regularly, to the invidious server that you use, since it takes up a lot of bandwidth and motivates the hoster to keep up what they are doing.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago (1 children)

PeerTube can do this (yes, out of the box!).

[–] federatingIsTooHard 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

can you explain that or link to the relevant documentation?