Well, you still need a client if you’re on mobile. I’m not going to watch my video essays through a browser if I can do it through an app. I use libretube which ends up being Piped under the hood, it’s just smoother.
I also used to use revanced because it allowed me to keep a few public playlists up to date (something you can only do by interfacing with Youtube). People have their reasons for things.
Every time I click on a Piped link that has been posted here by the bot after someone posts a YouTube link, I just wait and wait for it to start playing. Eventually I run out of patience and click the YouTube link, which starts to play immediately.
Piped also has support for accounts and LibreTube supports that too. Really nice to have your subscriptions and playlists synchronized between your devices.
I also want to drop Grayjay in here. It supports YouTube and can also be used to view other platforms like Twitch, Odysee, PeerTube, etc. It uses plugins, so you can develop a plugin for the video platform you want to be able to use in Grayjay. Grayjay also has this Polycentric “decentralized” database so that you can comment and like the videos in those aforementioned platforms.
It’s good and everything (although it was a bit rough around the edges here and there), but is a no-go for me personally, unless they’ve changed their license. When I last checked it wad not open source, but merely source available since the license basically said you’re not allowed to modify the source code period. AGPL would’ve been a far better choice
Totally understandable. I mean, it’s still in alpha and yes I do encounter bugs sometimes. I honestly just use it because I can have my feed in grayjay as well.
I’ve been using pipe-viewer (formerly/alternatively youtube-viewer) for years. It’s an extremely minimal yet feature-rich and customizable perl youtube client, designed to be used without a google api key (If you want to use an account, use youtube-viewer instead). No other client I’ve tried comes close in my experience (I’ve tried Freetube (bloated), Minitube (buggy, feature incomplete, uses embedded player), Newpipe (restricted to android)).
Also works great on mobile, and can be used with a Gtk-perl client for people who want a graphical client. It can also be used with any native video player, like mpv or mplayer (and adding an unsupported player is trivial in the config).
There’s also invidtui, which uses the Invidious API. You can simply use it with your favorite video player (e.g. mpv or VLC). Invidious is also very light on resources, so you could host your own instance. Even locally on your machine using Docker. Or go with youtube-local.
The borderless UI is so good, honestly. Do you know if there’s a way to alter the player control UI? Am wanting to get into ricing and that looks like it provides a great solution for some minimalist ideas I’m having.
Yeah, just OSS. Which is fine by me, frankly. In a capitalist system there are very few ways to make FOSS soft compete with closed source/proprietary. One way is to convince people to buy the soft. Another is to get industry funding. Blender is one of the best examples of this. But Grayjay can’t use the Blender model because the biggest player in the industry (Youtube) has a vested interest in keeping the app from being developed.
Grayjay and other Futo apps are not really paid software, it’s more like a donation. No reason not to use a FOSS license.
But Grayjay can’t use the Blender model because the biggest player in the industry (Youtube) has a vested interest in keeping the app from being developed.
What does that have to do with the licensing? The restrictive definitely won’t stop Google from trying to shut the app down. Selling the app actually makes it harder to prevent it from being shut down. Google can now argue in court that Futo tries to make money from selling this app, that uses the YouTube API without authorization.
There’s a very easy solution to this problem: Just make it FOSS like every other god damn alternative YouTube client, put the GPL on it and treat donations like donations, instead of “selling” the app and generating revenue (which can and likely will be used against them).
Rossmann and Futo have explicitly stated that purchasing their soft is a purchase, not a donation.
Exactly. That’s the issue. Selling software means generating revenue, this Grayjay is a commercial product. That’s exactly what YouTube Vanced was shut down for. Generating revenue from accessing YouTube in an unauthorized manner. Grayjay does use the YouTube API, but not the official one. YouTube has 2 sets of APIs. The official one with clear terms and conditions, which is only accessible with an API token, and the unofficial one, which is for example used in the YouTube mobile app. There is no official documentation on this API, and it was only discovered through reverse engineering. YouTube doesn’t allow using this API from an unofficial client (they’re not that strict about it, but nonetheless, it’s technically forbidden, as the APi is not meant for public usage).
Unless they were to stick a TOS, usage agreement, or API key requirement on Innertube then anyone’s free to use it however they like. Legally, Grayjay is in the clear here. And practically they’re fine as well since altering Innertube to block Grayjay would mean that Google would have to alter their in house processes and that costs money.
And the difference there is that Vanced didn’t have capital behind it while Grayjay does. Futo can fight Google in court, Vanced couldn’t. Even if a company has no legal ground to stand on, they can still fuck you financially with legal fees and a drawn out case.
Web Video Caster can cast to a large number of devices, Chromecast included. It has a lot of companion apps too on several smart TV platforms, all for the sake of getting your media played back on another device.
SkyTube Extra has Google Cast support, but make sure to download it from GitHub (e.g. through Obtainium). The F-Droid version doesn’t have the cast feature, because it depends on a proprietary Google library, which is not allowed on F-Droid.
I’ve used Sleep as Android for several years. It does a great job of determining when I’m asleep and awake and even offers recommendations based on the data it collects.
It is very hard to do that accurately. Fitness watches use accelerometers to detect body movement, pulse measurement etc. and still aren’t great. Real monitoring uses a lot more instruments including EEG. If you think you might need that, ask your Dr about a sleep study.
Why do you need a program that tries to predict things about your sleep, or that checks the clock for you at the push of a button? It’s overcomplicated crap that doesn’t actually add value to your life. Just write it down.
I work on an irregular schedule, so I want to keep track to make sure I get enough sleep. It doesn’t have to be super accurate, just a number of hours elapsed, to decide if I go back to sleep.
I guess you have a pretty regular sleep schedule… I don’t. I have issues sleeping, so sometimes I would go to bed at 2am and fall asleep at 4am, other days I would go to bed at midnight and fall asleep immediately. I sometimes wake up at 7am when I have to go to the office, sometimes at 9am, right before the morning meeting when I work from home. During the weekend I wake up between 10am and 2pm… I also frequently wake up during the night, I don’t have a very deep sleep. So being in bed for 6 hours might only mean 5h of sleep. I am a zombie when I wake up, so I would most likely forget to write/mark down the times. It’s just not feasible for everyone to do that manually.
To answer OP, I use my Fitbit to track my sleep. Before I got my watch, I used Sleep for Android.
I have a cheap smartwatch (amazfit bip) that tracks sleep and I have found it to be very accurate for me. I assume it tracks when I fall asleep based on heart rate and movement?
Anyways it plays nicely with my android phone and only cost about $50 and honestly I’m pretty happy with it! I was pretty skeptical at first but it’s really handy as a fitness tracker too and I feel like it encourages me to stand up and exercise more.
I also have a somewhat erratic sleep schedule and it’s nice to know when I’m starting to get into a sleep deficit and need to get caught up.
I have a Bip as well, and aside from the silly name I love it. Even after 5 years a single charge lasts more than a month.
It tracks my sleep and steps, and is always on (other smartwatches turn the display off to save the battery).
It doesn’t do all the fanciest things. I can’t answer phone calls or send text messages (it will display received messages), but the advantages far away the drawbacks.
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