I believe Apple opened up progressive web apps outside the EU so you could use Freetube as a PWA on your iPad possibly
this post was submitted on 01 Feb 2025
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Looks like you're getting mostly advice, so I have some questions
How much did you watch YT before? I don't mean that to sound snarky, just curious.
What are you looking forward to watching on the other video apps?
LOL, yeah lots of advice, but they’re all appreciated anyway. After about two weeks, I’ll have to try them out.
My YT use has been highly variable. If I’m doing something else, I can have YT videos in the background. Usually something where the actual video component is more or less irrelevant while the audio part actually matters. When I’m listening to videos like that, I can easily go through several hours every day. If I actually use my eyeballs for watching the videos, I could probably watch about 1-2 hours every day. Who knows really. These estimates could be be way off.
I’m looking forward to finding new videos I had never even heard of. If you spend lots of time on YT and ignore all the other platforms, you could miss some really cool stuff. So far, the local TV channels have delivered 99% trash and 1% meh videos. I did watch one documentary on Mark Zuckerberg, and that was mostly tolerable. Way too sensational to be taken completely seriously, which would have deserved a downvote and an negative comment had it been on YT.
Actually, watching videos has become a mildly boring thing again, which means I’ll probably be doing non-video related things too. Probably a good thing in the long run. Also looking forward to getting bored and occupying my time with more useful stuff.
Adding on to this - what do you watch on YouTube that it's a challenge stay away? I hardly watch a video a week, so I'm trying to understand.
Have a nice journey! Me using Lemmy started as "1 month popular sites alternatives challenge" which I arranged for myself after growing increasingly more annoyed by moderation at sites like Reddit and 4chan. Some other systems I started using more as a result of that are Mastodon and Bluesky.
Thanks! I am aware that it might end up being more than just a brief experiment. What if I get used to not having any of the annoyances that are common on YT. What if going back will truly open my eyes and I’ll see how bad it really is. If that happens, I may end up cutting back a lot more than I ever anticipated.
Quitting Reddit and switching to Lemmy wasn’t really a problem at all. There was only one really interesting subreddit, but it turned into a complete dumpster fire just before the APIcalypse, so even that one wasn’t holding me back. Most subreddits worth following have already been sufficiently replicated on Lemmy, so I don’t really miss Reddit at all. Besides, I also like the vibe of a smaller place.
I like your ethos here, especially the idea of this being an experiment. I think that can lead to a greater sense of mindfulness about media consumption habits, which is increasingly valuable in the current landscape
Install Firefox on Android and uninstall the YouTube app.
Revanced
Edit: sorry, didn't see ios. Revanced is for android only.
1blocker + sponsor block + safari is what I've used when I had to use iOS or iPadOS. Never installed the YouTube app.
Added benefit of being able to airplay video to the TV and have it skip ads and utilize sponsor lock without needing to set up smarttubenext on the TV.
Great! I’ll try that out when I get back home.
Presumably you have a phone, too? Install LibreTube and enable local stream extraction in Settings
Thanks. I’ll try that out when I get back home and the challenge ends.
I'm also allergic to ads, so I think I would do the same in your situation.
On Android I have Tubular which removes ads and uses sponsor block.
You can set your vpn to a country like Romania and then you won’t get ads.
Amazing. Never even thought of trying that. Well, in about two weeks I’ll find out.
I block ads on safari on my iPhone when watching YouTube using adguard
I use Firefox focus for YouTube on iPhone.
I did that too for a very long time. Recently, something changed on YT, and now there’s an aggressive ad-blocker-blocker. All videos run for about 60 seconds and then they just stop. It applies to all mobile browsers and all ad-blockers I’ve ever tried. Still not a major issue, since real computers are unaffected.
Hasn’t affected adguard for me
My guess is, YT is experimenting with different ways to discourage ad blocking. We’ve seen similar tactics before. During an experiment like this, a new feature is rolled out to only some users. If it works out as expected, it becomes a standard feature for the entire platform and every user.
I may just be one of the lucky few Guinea pigs.