I generate my YouTube feeds through RSSHub which also uses the API, so its a bit more durable than the officially provided feeds
It also has options for filtering out shorts which is nice
this post was submitted on 06 May 2026
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I use Freetube. Its a app, you don't sign in, you can subscribe to stuff but those are stored locally (as I understand it?), adblock, sponsorblock, hide shorts etc are built in. Of course since you don't use it with a account, you can't comment, but that's just a nice bonus feature. You can still read the comments if you so choose. Because it doesn't load all the trackers and bullshit, its also about a billion times lighter than the youtube page, which is nice since my laptop is 700 years old and struggles to run anything, really.
It does have "popular" and "trending" pages but those rarely work, another nice bonus.
The only downside is that there is no "sort by popular" option when browsing a channels videos. But all in all, highly recommend it. Apparently there are other such apps available but thats the only one I've used.
This article is about RSS feeds. Im pretty sure your client relies on RSS feeds to show you your locally subscribed feed of videos.
Yes, that's why I thought I'd mention the thing. Sorry for not being clear, English is not my native language.
Could have fooled me! Your English is immaculate! 👍👍
Hehe. Funnily enough, English is the 3rd non-native language I learned but the only one I actually know these days. I've forgotten pretty much everything of the others.
Doing better than me. I barely even speak one language and you speak multiple!
Oh i see, i thought you meant this as sort of a "i use freetube so im not affected by this"...
Also use LibreTube on Android with the same benefits. I just wish all those alternatives Frontends would have a sync service of some sorts. Started of by using Invidious but it its almost unusable nowadays similar to Piped but it also has an independent Subscriptions/Playlists with a simple API it would be cool for those local first apps would integrate into that or maybe something even more independent like a RSS Service to manage subscriptions (feeds do really have to work for that)
The sync thing would require a account of some sort. And some other tracking stuff. I'm fine with not having any. I don't watch so much youtube that I forget what I watched and what I didn't watch. But I get the desire to have some way of syncing.
Freetube has a thing where it attempts through Invidious first, if thats down, it gets the stuff straight from youtube.
YouTube has made all these apps completely useless by blocking users that aren't logged in.
Not sure if logging in would "solve" it, but I've been unable to watch YouTube videos while on a VPN on desktop with FreeTube and on mobile with LibreTube for a month or so now.
Also, on FreeTube the recommended videos on the sidebar usually include a ton of unrelated news channels. I've got so many of them blocked now but they keep showing up.
Works fine for me. Literally never had a issue.
I'm not logged into youtube with any device because google demands to know my phone number in order to "verify" its me, logging into my youtube account. So as a solution I just don't log in anymore. I still watch stuff though.
Well they must have created a blocking. Mechanism just for me then.
I know age restricted videos don't work if you're not singed in (and as such don't work on any alternate frontend like Freetube that I know of), if that's your problem.
That's not the problem. These are not age-restricted.
closed wontfix
this is intended behaviour. rss feeds don't drive up engagement.
I browse the internet through RSS. You won't convince me to go back to opening 100 different browser tabs just to keep track of all your walled gardens.
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get content creators.
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hide their feeds so they don't make money. Use the algorithm to feed up creators the viewer didn't subscribe to, so that they watch randos.
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...
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Profit.
or recently start recommending you videos/mixes in your feed of stuff you used to watch years/decades ago. I don't know why there doing that but I've just been getting hammered recently with crap I watched like 10+ years ago.
It's daily 3-5h outage at this point on all youtube channel feeds. About 3:00-7:00 AM Greenwich time.
Oh thank fuck it isn't just me. That's about the afternoon/evening in the U.S.