So far I am really liking FreeTune as an alternative to UBO. However, my family really hates it. One of the reasons for this is because it doesn’t have a recommended vidoes section. Is it possible to download an addon for that, or is there an alternative to FreeTube that works more like YouTune?
Another thing that I can’t seem to find a solution for is that when you use an external player from FreeTube, some age restricted videos won’t play on the external player. Is there a solution for this?
Any help is appreciated, thanks for reading.
Unfortunately that’s the point of FreeTube precisely, that’s why it uses libre instances like Piped or Invidious, I think what you mention is impossible.
The closest thing you can use is ReVanced, which is Youtube but without ads, keeping the analytics and recommendations.
They have to turn on the brain, gather a list of their favorite creators, subscribe in freetube, then it can have an home page with “recommended” videos
The lack of the algorithm is exactly why I like freetube
I really don’t get why some people always want something recommended to them. Whatever happened to finding out things that you like?
I find stuff I like via the algorithm very often. Subscriptions cover channels that I want to see every upload of, but that doesn’t cover channels I don’t yet know about or channels only have a percentage of videos interesting to me. I use the algorithm mainly for finding content that I wouldn’t have discovered otherwise, and I can tell the algorithm knows to suggest me videos like that (low view/sub count videos show up for me way more than normal).
I feel you (or your family). Call me whatever you want but I really like the algorithm, I get exposed to so much stuff I wouldn’t otherwise. 90% of my subs are channels I found through YouTube suggestions.
The missing recommendations for me is the main reason why I’m still using youtube instead of freetube, that and watched videos being synchronised across devices.
In the time before ubo fixed the popup I would browse yt on the browser, get recommendations and copypaste urls into ft.
You could set up a redirect (using the redirector extension) that redirects a YouTune video to freetube/invidious/whatever but still allows you to browse the YouTune homepage.
(Use the pattern https://youtube.com/watch?v=*)
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
The only thing I hate about the youtube algorithm is that it acts like my mom.
“I see you watched a single video about x. Now I’ll make sure to send you hundreds of videos about x, an x themed birthday cake, x socks, and the official x encyclopedia!”
Maybe your family would accept ads to get YouTube the way they like?
There is an app created by Louis Rossman which is called “Grayjay” you can give it a try. It has adblock on videos and show recommended if you signed in, and many more features
