Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Show HN: Firefox add-on to open YouTube videos in alternative front ends

github.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 135 posts

Re: Show HN: Firefox add-on to open YouTube videos in alternative front ends

#41

Post by ww520 »

Cilvic wrote: post #27
d3vr wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've also just updated the README to make it more obvious what the extension does. The default alternative frontend I have configured is https://piped.video , but you can use any different instance / service if it supports the same YouTube url scheme ({domain}/watch?v=...). This is configurable in the add-on's options page, you can also access it by clicking on the add-on's icon

Thanks, I've looked at the docs of newpipe and invidious and neither make it straight forward to understand how they work. Both focus on "this is more private than watching on youtube" It sounds like there is some kind of instance/server which my client/with a cleaner frontend will talk to. But how does that work and why can youtube not detect it and block it?

If you open up the browser's Web Developer Tools on the Youtube page and go to the Network tab, you can see all the requests and responses going between the webpage (client) and the servers. The Youtube video segments are downloaded from the googlevideo.com host. These alternative clients basically go directly to the googlevideo.com to download the video segments to play them back.

Google uses DASH as the manifest file for streaming video. Each video has a corresponding DASH file. You can download the DASH manifest XML file from the Youtube page for the video. Then extract video segment URLs from the file. Those typically go to the googlevideo.com host. Google uses WebM as video container and VP9 for video encoding for the video segment, which most browsers support.

Most streaming players (alternative players) use the MSE API (Media Source Extensions) to feed the downloaded video segment data to the tag to play the video. Most browsers support MSE these days.

Re: Show HN: Firefox add-on to open YouTube videos in alternative front ends

#42

Post by saxonww »

jraph wrote: post #7

I've been using Privacy Redirect and some of the other generalist redirector extension with quite some success. Privacy redirect also redirects twitter to nitter, reddit to libreddit or old.reddit, Google Maps to openstreetmap and other stuff. Redirects can be enabled/disabled to ones taste. That's quite neat. Combined with my private invidious instance so I can subscribe to channels without this data leaving compute…

Yeah it's a shame these aren't available for Firefox Mobile. At least one of the redirect plugins would be nice.

Re: Show HN: Firefox add-on to open YouTube videos in alternative front ends

#43

Post by user234683 »

jszymborski wrote: post #10
politelemon wrote: post #9

On Android you can try NewPipe which serves as an alternate front end.

Can anyone recommend a NewPipe style desktop app?

My project here is similar: https://github.com/user234683/youtube-local

It keeps everything in the browser while still being local to the machine

Re: Show HN: Firefox add-on to open YouTube videos in alternative front ends

#44

Post by gear54rus »

jraph wrote: post #7

I've been using Privacy Redirect and some of the other generalist redirector extension with quite some success. Privacy redirect also redirects twitter to nitter, reddit to libreddit or old.reddit, Google Maps to openstreetmap and other stuff. Redirects can be enabled/disabled to ones taste. That's quite neat. Combined with my private invidious instance so I can subscribe to channels without this data leaving compute…

While we're on the topic of unfucking youtube, do you know how I can turn shorts crappy player without controls into something that I can rewind? Sound volume controls would be nice too.

Re: Show HN: Firefox add-on to open YouTube videos in alternative front ends

#45

Post by [deleted] »

jraph wrote: post #7

I've been using Privacy Redirect and some of the other generalist redirector extension with quite some success. Privacy redirect also redirects twitter to nitter, reddit to libreddit or old.reddit, Google Maps to openstreetmap and other stuff. Redirects can be enabled/disabled to ones taste. That's quite neat. Combined with my private invidious instance so I can subscribe to channels without this data leaving compute…

[deleted]

Re: Show HN: Firefox add-on to open YouTube videos in alternative front ends

#47

Post by drdaeman »

ryandrake wrote: post #40

It would be nice if browsers were able to get around all these kinds of shenanigans directly, instead of having to always reach for extensions and addons and endlessly participate in this cat and mouse game. After all, the browser is supposed to be the user's agent. Its job is to do what the user wants and fetch the content that the user asks for. Somewhere along the path, we've made a terrible turn and allowed the b…

> Somewhere along the path, we've made a terrible turn

It was a variation of Eternal September that caused it. ;)

The majority of users became non-technical, so the focus had shifted as browser vendors needed to cater to different audiences.

Re: Show HN: Firefox add-on to open YouTube videos in alternative front ends

#48

Post by loveparade »

I don't care as much about the privacy as I care about not messing up my Youtube recommendations. Any time I accidentally click on or hover over some BS video my front page is full of clickbait spam and I need to manually clean up my watch history.

I guess (?) it works for monetization, but the UX of YouTube and their pushing of clickbait content has become horrible over the past few years. I just wish they stopped trying to be "smart" about what I want to watch. I'm already paying for Premium, just give me an option to make Youtube stupid.

Re: Show HN: Firefox add-on to open YouTube videos in alternative front ends

#49

Post by paulryanrogers »

ryandrake wrote: post #40

It would be nice if browsers were able to get around all these kinds of shenanigans directly, instead of having to always reach for extensions and addons and endlessly participate in this cat and mouse game. After all, the browser is supposed to be the user's agent. Its job is to do what the user wants and fetch the content that the user asks for. Somewhere along the path, we've made a terrible turn and allowed the b…

My ideal getaway car would include an automated drone which flies into the store to exfiltrate the codes from the prepaid cards, and present them as credits in my phone, ignoring the mess of walking inside, paying, and typing into my phone that the retailer futilely demands.

Re: Show HN: Firefox add-on to open YouTube videos in alternative front ends

#50

Post by langsoul-com »

d3vr wrote: post #36
Krasnol wrote: post #33

I'm using ublock Origin and have never seen any of those. For those with ubO who still see them, cleaning the cache and updating the filters within ubO seems to help. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ublock-origin...

I am using ubO too, I just purged the cache and updated the filters, still experiencing the same issue. Maybe YT is still testing this and haven't rolled out the blocking on everyone just yet?

Go on the unlock origin reddit, they have clear instructions for getting it working.

Basically disable all current ad blockers, including YouTube enhancer ad blocker, reset filters to default, make sure there's no cosmetic filters either. And it should work L.

Post reply on HN