Why Would You Switch Away from YouTube?
This question is understandable, but not correct. You are not leaving
YouTube
You are just leaving the following things behind:
- Forced creation of an Account to subscribe to channels
- Watching Advertisements
- (Optionally) Skipping sponsored segments
- Slow, Bloated Site
- Tracking from YouTube itself
This now raises the following question:
Why?
The answer is simple. Because I don’t want to have a Google Account (because
of the tracking), I don’t want to use a slow website, and I also don’t want to
be tracked.
But Isn’t It Slower/Worse/Looking?
No. Definitely not.
The application I am talking about is called
FreeTube.
Let me quote from their site:
“FreeTube is a YouTube client for Windows, Mac, and Linux built around using
YouTube more privately. You can enjoy your favorite content and creators without
your habits being tracked. All of your user data is stored locally and never
sent or published to the internet. FreeTube grabs data by scraping the
information it needs (with either local methods or by optionally utilizing the
Invidious API). With many features similar to YouTube, FreeTube has become one
of the best methods to watch YouTube privately on desktop.”
Because you have the tracking, no bloat, and no ads, the overall experience
feels much faster and more responsive.
The looks of the application are also pretty awesome, in my opinion. You have
five different themes (Light, Dark, Black, Dracula, Catpuccin, Mocha) and a
ton of different Main and secondary accent colors.
You can also adjust the scale of the application, which is pretty important to
me because my main monitor has a resolution of 3840x3160p.
What Can You Do with FreeTube?
Let me also use their text from their Website
- Subscriptions Subscribe to channels without an account
- Local Data All Subscriptions and histories are stored locally
- No Ads Enjoy an ad-free experience as you watch
- Private Your viewing habits are not tracked by us or YouTube
- Familiar Design A design similar to YouTube makes it easy to transition to
FreeTube - Open Source FreeTube is Free and Open Source Software under the AGPLv3
License - Import Subscriptions Import your subscriptions from YouTube to see your
feed instantly - Multi Platform Runs on Windows, Mac, and several Linux distributions
- Multilingual Translated into many languages
How Did the Transition Feel?
For me, it was pretty simple. Just install the app using either your package
manager, or the Windows download.
I personally never imported my subscriptions from YouTube, though. Why?
Because I literally had 2,000+ subscriptions. And I only actively watched
10–20 of them.
I decided to manually subscribe to all channels I like to watch. Because of
this, my YouTube consumption has also decreased. Why? I literally forgot
about some channels I never watched.
How Do You Live Without an Algorithm Serving You Everything?
By using my brain. No, seriously, I just watch what I want to. I watch the
channels I subscribe to and what I search for, and that’s it. This is also a
huge benefit. You won’t believe how much time you had spent watching YouTube!
For me, it was like a “hole”. I watched some videos, and bang! It’s now 5
hours later.
This changed. Why? Because you no longer have this really bad (or good,
depending on your perspective) algorithm doing its best to force you to watch
another video. And another one. And maybe one more.
Special Features I Love About FreeTube
I love that on FreeTube you have so many
distraction-free settings.
This allows you to remove lots of clutter you don’t really need.
I also love that you can enable/change the “Thumbnail Preference” in FreeTube.
This allows you to remove those clickbait thumbnails, and replace them with some
actual frames of the video. This change to frame-based thumbnails was actually
really weird for me at first. Why? Because my brain was actually trained to
just focus on those big red arrow thumbnails. Pretty creepy, if you ask me.
I also really love that you can block sponsored segments. FreeTube has
integrated YouTube SponsorBlock support, which allows you to select what you
want to skip and then skip it. If you don’t know what I mean, This will skip
those annoying ads YouTubers include in their videos. Not the ads playing
before/in the video. This is for ads the creators include on their own.
Another big point is that you don’t have to view any ads. Not before, in, or
even after the video. This saves so much time; you wouldn’t believe it.
How Can You Live Without an Algorithm Serving You Content?
In my opinion, it’s really concerning that someone even asks this kind of
question.
In my opinion, you should only consume content when you want to. And only what
you already chose to watch.
I find it really concerning that most people just watch/consume content like a
brain-dead robot. Just watching one thing after the next, and so on. And before
you can notice, 5 hours have passed. And if I ask you what you watched the last
few hours? I think you will have no idea.
Because of those points, I am really thankful for not having such an
algorithm!
Not having this algorithm, which just “forces” you to watch longer, is really
nice. I just love watching what I want to, from the channels I want to.
If I want to watch something regarding the topic X, I just search for it.
The Bad Things I Experienced
Yes, this does also exist.
I have and had some problems with FreeTube. A few months ago, I had a really
annoying problem. Some of the videos simply caused FreeTube to crash. The
screen just went blank, and that was it. I instantly contacted the developers
via email and reported the bug (sending the error, a message, and a Video).
But this request was ignored. Yes, I know that you normally should use their
Bug Tracker. But I don’t want to create a GitHub account. Because of this, I
was not so mad about it that I received no response at all.
Another really annoying thing are the Invidious instances. Some of them won’t
work, and some of them are so laggy that you can’t watch anything. Here, I am
not mad at anyone as well. Those instances are hosted, most of the time, by
people like you and me. It is just something that can sometimes annoy you
when you just want to watch something, and it is not loading/just gives an
error.
And then there is also the quality. YouTube, at least for me, no longer supports
1080p. Because of this, you may want to use an Invidious instance, which can
send you 1080p video material. But boy, those are rare. I only had 3–5 instances
actually send me 1080p videos. But those also have a huge problem:
Buffering. For me it is not worth it trying to watch a 1080p video, when it
is buffering every 5s.
Instead, I watch my videos in 720p. This is not a huge issue for me, because I
don’t watch videos where graphics are that important.
It is important to note that all of those said things are only happening
currently at the time of writing. Those things may be fixed in the future.
Should You Use FreeTube
Yes!!
All in all, it is a really solid alternative to the YouTube website. It is
faster than the official YouTube site, (in my opinion) looks better, and (the
best part) is not tracking you. The last point (not tracking) alone would be
reason enough to use it for me.
How to Install FreeTube
If you want to see the newest/up-to-date installation methods, be sure to check
out FreeTube’s Website!