this post was submitted on 28 Dec 2024
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Privacy

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What is your private way of watching YouTube videos when Invidious or Piped are not working? (discuss.tchncs.de)
submitted 6 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
104 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Many YT privacy frontends are down it seems. YouTube is cracking down on these servers fast. Both Invidious and Piped services are not working now.

So how are you watching videos now? Just plain youtube[dot]com with unblock and VPN?

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 days ago (1 children)

yt-dlp

Downside is that you'll have to regularly delete all the videos you've downloaded.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Use yt-dlp URL -o - | mpv - This way the video goes directly to mpv without using the disk, avoiding the need to delete. It should work with other viewers as well.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Awesome, works with VLC as well. Thanks.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

Another thing that I do is make an alias: alias pvid="yt-dlp $(xsel -b) -o - | mpv -". Install xsel first, xsel -b pastes what's in the clipboard. So you only have to copy the URL and execute pvid, no need to paste. Or even better make an app that executes that command and put it in the taskbar. You only have to click it after copying.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

I wrote myself a Chrome add-on that adds a context menu entry to play or download links.

background.js

chrome.runtime.onInstalled.addListener(() => {
		
    chrome.contextMenus.create({
        id: "processLink",
        title: "Download as...",
        contexts: ["link"]
    });

    chrome.contextMenus.create({
        id: "720p",
        parentId: "processLink",
        title: "720p",
        contexts: ["link"]
    });

    chrome.contextMenus.create({
        id: "music",
        parentId: "processLink",
        title: "MP3",
        contexts: ["link"]
    });

    chrome.contextMenus.create({
        id: "maxQual",
        parentId: "processLink",
        title: "Maximum quality video",
        contexts: ["link"]
    });
	
    chrome.contextMenus.create({
        id: "separator1",
        parentId: "processLink",
        type: "separator",
        contexts: ["link"]
    });

    chrome.contextMenus.create({
        id: "piQual",
        parentId: "processLink",
        title: "30 fps for RPi",
        contexts: ["link"]
    });
	
    chrome.contextMenus.create({
        id: "separator2",
        parentId: "processLink",
        type: "separator",
        contexts: ["link"]
    });
	
    chrome.contextMenus.create({
        id: "streamLink",
        parentId: "processLink",
        title: "Stream to VLC...",
        contexts: ["link"]
    });
});

chrome.contextMenus.onClicked.addListener((info, tab) => {
    let linkUrl = info.linkUrl;

    if (info.menuItemId === "720p") {
        sendLinkToNativeApp(linkUrl, "video720");
    } else if (info.menuItemId === "music") {
        sendLinkToNativeApp(linkUrl, "music");
    } else if (info.menuItemId === "maxQual") {
        sendLinkToNativeApp(linkUrl, "videomp4");
    } else if (info.menuItemId === "piQual") {
        sendLinkToNativeApp(linkUrl, "video720p30");
    } else if (info.menuItemId === "streamLink") {
        sendLinkToNativeApp(linkUrl, "stream");
    }
});

function sendLinkToNativeApp(link, action) {
    console.log("Sending link to native app with action:", action, link);
    chrome.runtime.sendNativeMessage(
        'com.example.ytlink_processor',
        { link: link, action: action },
        function(response) {
            if (chrome.runtime.lastError) {
                console.error("Error:", chrome.runtime.lastError.message);
            } else {
                console.log("Received response from native app:", response.output);
            }
        }
    );
}

native_host.py (chatGPT wrote this because I can't Python)

import sys
import subprocess
import json
import struct

def log_to_file(message):
    with open("log.txt", "a") as log_file:
        log_file.write(message + "\n")

def get_message():
    raw_length = sys.stdin.read(4)
    if len(raw_length) == 0:
        sys.exit(0)
    message_length = struct.unpack('I', raw_length)[0]
    message = sys.stdin.read(message_length)
    return json.loads(message)

def send_message(message_content):
    message = json.dumps(message_content)
    sys.stdout.write(struct.pack('I', len(message)))
    sys.stdout.write(message)
    sys.stdout.flush()

def process_link(link, action):
    if action == "stream":
        cmd = 'yt-dlp --stream "{}" -o - | "D:/Programme/VLC/vlc.exe" -'.format(link)
    else:
        cmd = 'yt-dlp --{} "{}"'.format(action, link)
    result = subprocess.Popen('start cmd /c "{}"'.format(cmd), shell=True)
    return result.stdout + result.stderr

if __name__ == "__main__":
    message = get_message()
    link = message.get("link")
    action = message.get("action")
    if link and action:
        output = process_link(link, action)
        send_message({"output": output})

The actions are just aliases for different qualities (old pi, so 720p60 stutters at times), audio extraction, etc.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago

Excellent.