Basically Most videos don’t load on first try for me on Freetube. so I have to go back and forth to reload the video hoping this time it will load? they have removed the reload button, and the team are just closing issues on GitHub that demand reinstating the reload button. Plus comments have stopping loading as well.
Invidious doesn’t work half of the times. and piped is dead.
What do you recommend using on desktop. or is paying for youtube Red the only option left?
Invidious.
I tried with FreeTube, I really did. But Invidious is just more reliable.
Are you the author of the recent issue about bringing back the reload button from earlier this week? I share your sentiment entirely.
In my case, I often invoke Freetube from scripts or from the browser extension, which cause the back button to obviously not work. Because videos randomly don’t load, I find myself having to close Freetube and running the script again, or navigating Firefox’s context menu to try again. And even if I don’t need to leave Freetube, some video lists reset their scroll position when you go back to them, causing you to need to look for the video again. Their workaround of going back and then forward just to reload is completely unreasonable.
I also get plenty of frustation out of Freetube, although most of it is because YouTube keeps breaking compatibility, but there are some problems such as the lack of reload button that are entirely Freetube’s fault.
I’m sorry I don’t have any alternative for you. YouTube’s web client is so bad, even on incognito with ublock, that struggling with random compatibility errors on Freetube is preferrable to me, even if unexplainably bad decisions by the Freetube team make that struggle unnecessarily worse.
While we’re at it, I have also been completely unable to find a single Invidious or Piped instance that works at all? I’ve only ever managed to watch a single video at most on any given instance before having it break, and most of the time not even that. How is it possible for them to have near zero reliability when even Freetube and Newpipe are at least somewhat usable?
Edit: Typos and minor rewording
The alternatives constantly hitting issues (not their fault I know) led me back to using the website. So I’m running it in Firefox with ublock origin and unhook go get rid of most what I dislike about the website. I’ve got my subs through an RSS feed which I treat as the feed. Open what I want in new tabs, close when I finish. No algorithm pushing me around and I’m watching way less.
Its not the most private solution but it works well for me.
“Open URL” in smplayer works consistently. AFAIK it exposes your IP to YouTube, so (I might add) smplayer behind a VPN.
At least in the mobile the SABR problems others mention can be solved by a setting: Choose legacy instead of DASH formats in Player.
Behind a VPN? How are you managing that? Everytime I go through VPN, YT says “please login” :-(
I’m probably being too lenient but if I can still watch videos on Freetube I’m not gonna abandon it, especially not for the official client, I’m pretty sure most issues are caused by Youtube shenanigans that affect all the alternative clients, FOSS Devs have always worked around those shenanigans before, and if Youtube does succeed in breaking all alternative clients & viewing methods forever then I won’t watch Youtube videos anymore, yeah it’ll suck but I’d much rather do that than go back to using an official Google product.
Yeah same. For me, the alternate is to just not use YouTube so I usually give it a few tries with freetube before giving up
I know they are doing their best to keep up with yt shenanigans. but they sometimes make decisions that hurt the user experience. like removing the reload option from the video page. its incomprehensible why the removed a feature that probably didn’t interfere with the rest of the software performance
Anything that integrates yt-dlp, honestly. I used to use Freetube exclusively on my PC, but now I find myself downloading every video I want to watch because of Youtube’s stupid SABR requests. Basically, Youtube forces a 5 second pause on the video you’re watching for no good reason, seemingly at random, too, and this seems to affect NewPipe and its forks and yes, Freetube as well. It’s super annoying.
What even is SABR, I, at first thought it was something the Freetube devs added to make playback more stable, but I sure I was very wrong now.
Nope, it’s very much a YouTube/Google/Alphabet thing. Here’s a short explanation (taken from this page):
In 2025, YouTube started rolling out a new streaming protocol, known as SABR, which breaks down the video into smaller chunks whose internal URLs dynamically change rather than provide one whole static URL. This is problematic because it prevents downloaders (such as yt-dlp) from being able to download YouTube videos at resolutions higher than 360p due to only detecting format code 18 (which is the only format code available that doesn’t use SABR).[11] So far, this issue has only affected the web client, so one workaround would be to use a different client, such as tv_embedded (where SABR has not yet been rolled out to), so for instance in yt-dlp you could add --extractor-args “youtube:player_client=tv_embedded” to use that client. It is not known how long this workaround will work as intended, as YouTube rolls out SABR to more and more clients.
So it’s basically just another instance of Youtube/Google going to extreme lengths and trying way to hard to stop alternative clients rather than just tackling the reasons why people use alternative clients, like ads & privacy?
Ding, ding. That’s it exactly.
Any recs that use yt-dlp?
Not off the top of my head, sorry. In fact, I could use some recs myself.
If a video doesn’t open in Freetube, I watch it in VLC.
Self hosted ytzero
Ctrl⁺r reloads in FreeTube. Doesn’t solve all your problems, but it fixes one.
They removed Ctrl*r from video pages since around April
That’s a bummer. I’m still running an older version, so I wasn’t aware. Sorry about that!
Vacuumtube, it’s basically the tv app with most of the crap removed. It ain’t perfect but it works well.
Will try that, thanks!
How do you find Greyjay? Its on Desktop too i believe
didn’t know they made a desktop version. will try out thanks!
How about an android emulator running NewPipe?
I wouldn’t have thought of that but it is too cumbersome of a workaround, and running and android vm makes my laptop run hot
Does NewPipe have working HD? My Tubular fork only loads 360p and doesn’t show channel details
NewPipe only has that issue when you arent up to date as of a couple of months ago. I think it has to do with YouTubes most recent bs
The video I’m watching now says it’s playing at 1080p. Whether it, I can’t tell.
I have never seen a reload button, they used to have one? why won’t they add it back, is it a technical hurdle?
Yes. by clicking ‘r’ you were able to reload the video page. but it was remove around April, and it only works on the search page.
They cited something unconvincing I don’t remember why exactly but they are blocking all discussions about it since.
Why do people complicate their lives so much?
Firefox+ublock origin+ privacy badger does it for me.
ublock origin only blocks ads.
But if you want a bit of privacy it can’t stop youtube from collecting your data and keeping you in a feedloop bubble.
With these types of clients yt can’t track you. and everytime i reload the app it’s like I am new user to them they don’t have all my browsing history. plus you can subscribe to channel without logging into yoututbe
With apps, you can subscribe to channels, keep history, create playlist etc. Not possible with website.
Not possible? That’s precisely what I do.
without an account?
No, I use an account, created with a tempmail address.
this discussion is aimed at people who don’t want to give google their data
How are you giving google your data if it’s from a tempmail?
Also, can you please point out to me where in OPs post does it mention anything about privacy? It specifically mentions not paying, not privacy concerns.
you give your watch history, how long you have hovered over a thumbnail, search history, and they use ai to determine your personality to recommend you more videos. you give everything except for your email, your email is largely irrelevant as they tie your account to your other stuff via trackers anyway
OP doesn’t have to mention privacy. privacy is to be expected when looking for an alternative to freetube (privacy friendly software that doesn’t require logging in and has offline subscriptions)
YouTube algorithm.
This. I’ve never had an issue with YouTube just running ublock.
