I am starting to detangle myself from Google and one of the services I use is YouTube.

I learned that piped exists the other day but that is just a front end for Google.

Is there a tool that I can host on my server that will let me give it YouTube links, that will then download/stream to my server and then server to my phone or computer?

I guess I am looking for a tool that will cache my YouTube videos locally and even download my subscriptions when they upload new stuff.

I’m not sure what this buys me that Piped does not, except that I am backing up videos in case they are removed.

        • Xirup@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
          61·
          10 months ago

          That’s right, but from a user data perspective, Google does not know that you are the one watching the video, so it cannot sell your data.

          • Atemu@lemmy.mlEnglish
            1·
            10 months ago

            Depends on how many other users are using the same proxy. If you host piped for yourself using your home internet connection, Google will absolutely know who is watching the video.

        • unknowing8343@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
          2·
          10 months ago

          Your plan sounds like exactly what Piped or Invidious are doing, just that you do want to do it yourself, on your server, so it’s worse in terms of privacy.

        • shrugal@lemm.eeEnglish
          2·
          10 months ago

          Piped consists of a frontend, a backend and a proxy. The frontend is the site you see, the backend stores all the data like video information, user accounts and subscriptions, and the proxy loads the videos you watch from YT. The only thing it doesn’t do is download and store the videos, it’ll always stream them on demand.

  • nutbutter@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
    5·
    10 months ago

    AFAIK, Piped always proxies the videos through a server.

    I am more familiar with Invidious. Find an Invidious server that lets you enable proxying. Some examples are yewtu.be, invidious.protokolla.fi and inv.nadeko.net. Then find an RSS app that lets you download the content, as well as supports cookies. Use the invidious server’s cookies in your RSS app to proxy the content you download. Invidious servers can provide RSS feeds for individual channels, as well as your complete subscription feed.

    And if possible donate a dollar or two, regularly, to the invidious server that you use, since it takes up a lot of bandwidth and motivates the hoster to keep up what they are doing.

    • thejevans@lemmy.mlEnglish
      1·
      10 months ago

      This is really cool. I’m still struggling to find a good replacement for my use case. I almost exclusively watch youtube on my Nvidia Shield on SmartTube with sponsorblock.

      I do use Jellyfin already and I see there is a Jellyfin plugin. Do you know if Jellyfin gets sponsorblock information as chapters? That would probably be an okay solution, even if it doesn’t automatically skip them.