New pipe, invidious, freetube , brave, ublock none of them are working for me. How can I access YouTube privately.
I don't know if it's the right place to ask.
I don't want a Google account. I don't use yt that much but I still need it.
I even tried yt revanced. None of them works
Grayjay still works and is being actively maintained. They also support other platforms like PeerTube and Odysee, which you can easily enable.
Hasn't worked for me for several months. Not with a VPN anyway.
I've noticed that Google is getting more and more aggressive with VPNs. It won't let me load anything on VPN without logging in. This applies to third-party tools like yt-dlp too.
This probably depends on your VPN provider. Perhaps I can make a throwaway google account just to get it to stfu? I don't know how hard it is to make a semi-anonymous Google account nowadays.
Grayjay is great and I look forward to some bug fixes in the next updates. Unfortunately, I also get YT blocking errors mostly when using a VPN (Proton). A side note, for some reason I can't paste links into the search bar, this kind of throws my game off when switching from Freetube or other YT links.
Please report your issues
Still get blocked if on a VPN, have to switch servers, often countries. I usually give up and have it download it (by adding to a playlist that I set to download for auto retries). Then watch it when it's available offline
FreeTube v0.22.1-nightly-5404 Beta with the Local API is working fine for me. Try the latest nightly build.
Thank you, this fixed FreeTube for me. Guess official releases are too slow now or maybe YouTube is attacking the official release specifically
One trick is going to ghostarchive.org and sticking the link in there.
Another is using yt-dlp
Both of these are future-proof because you will end up with the data hoarded off of their server.
even if you find a method.. whats your exit strategy? its inevitable that you will be unable to use it in the near future without an account, just like facebook.
Yes. I've come to peace with that. I would like new pipe to allow me to sign in with a Google account. And I would just rotate Google accounts every month
Nebula is decent
Noticed errors in newpipe recently too. Did you try Firefox with ublock? In mobile u can enable background something too.
Yeah I tried it with fennac
I'm not 100% certain if it's fully private, but I've been using a VPN and LibreWolf + uBlock Origin. I watch what I want to and reset my browsing session when I'm done.
From what I've gathered recently, the Mullvad browser left unmodified and combined with a VPN is one of the most private browsers you can use, short of using Tor.
yeah that's probably easily fingerprintable
So far JShelter has been the best single solution I have found, it even prevents creepjs from working at all. Nothing is going to stop casual users from getting TLS fingerprinted though.
I've been having issues with NewPipe as of late. I have to keep changing my VPN server until one works
I've been having huge problems with Revanced too, anyone else?
PipePipe is on F-Droid
Shouldn't you be able to access YT without a Google account? So uBO correctly configured (at least on Firefox) should do a lot already. Maybe sharing with us what specific issues you're facing or what you want to be able to do may help you getting more specific solutions?
They are currently A/B testing blocking access to videos without an account. That's why some people are getting errors. It's likely that it will be rolled out to everyone in the future.
Oh, thx for the clarification. That certainly would not help.
It looks to me like Google has that idea they own their viewership and can treat them like trash if they fancy doing so. The not too distant future will tell us if they were right or not.
What I can say is that they don't own me. I was a Premium subscriber fir years (I can afford it and I want to support creators) but I cancelled the day they became serious against ad-blockers. For me, it was not about them forcing people to pay a sub. It never was. It was about destroying the free Web and making it a privately-owned something a few corporations would then be able to do what the fuck they wanted with. I certainly did not want to give them a cent more of my money to achieve that.
Invidious still works very well, however it is an ongoing battle with YouTube. They ban an instance and the instance's ban evasion routine tries again, or in the case of IP range bans migrates to another provider and the game goes on. Despite this, it is the only way I know of to access YouTube relatively pain free using a public VPN provider. By now YouTube has blocked a lot of public VPN IPs. To me, this advantage makes it worth it.
The best way to keep up with which instances are currently functional is via the Invidious Matrix room, https://matrix.to/#/#invidious:matrix.org. You can also check the instances list https://instances.invidious.io/ but it may get out of date sometimes.
Finally, I've found the best way to use Invidious is via FreeTube (Linux) or Clipious (Android).
Libretube with HLS experimental on. You need to refresh VPN location constantly if you use one.
Got constant invalid iOS player response lately. Guess this doesn't work anymore.
They have a working fix underway ! Check their github repo :)
Using Freetube via a personal VPS - never had a problem, maybe because the provider is smaller. Newpipe, however, did have trouble - page had to be reloaded several times before the video showed up. Now trying Pipepipe instead and not seen it repeat yet.
I use Fennec (aka: Firefox minus the Google Play shenanigans) + uBlock Origin, over a VPN
Works 99% of the time (gotta keep the uBlock Origin filters up to date)
If you get a "Sign in to prove you're not a bot", just keep switching servers until it works. Use paid VPNs, because Free VPN IPs are more likely to be flagged.
Use the similar setup, RSS+Fennec+uBO with the hard mode ( I block sign-in related domains with it)
Newpipe has a critical bug in its recent version as reported here https://github.com/TeamNewPipe/NewPipe/issues/11934.
Last time I checked, there is no official acknowledgment from the devs yet.
You can try tubular or previous version of the newpipe.
Freetube + socks5 mullvad : works 100% of the time
Newpipe on mullvad, sometimes I have to cycle VPN endpoints if the bot detection gets triggered.
You could go to your local Library. That's always an option.
If you have "throwaway" phone, you could use that too. Make fake accounts and let them gather all they want from those, just keep in mind to maintain the separation.
Personally I have always had multiple accounts and names on internet so even having google account feels like they get only part of me. Though even then its like chain on my neck, as I have to dread them banning me for some crazy or not crazy reason. You are correct in not wanting to have one.
Ain't google needs phone number to get an account?
yeah, but dont prepaids have number too?