YouTube is a video-sharing website, created in February 2005, and purchased by Google in November 2006. The web service lets billions of people find, watch, and share originally-created videos. It displays a wide variety of user-generated and corporate media video. It also offers a forum for people to communicate with others around the world, and acts as a distribution platform.
A common complaint about YouTube is that to watch the material you need to use a web browser. Fortunately, some funky developers have created applications that allow you to bypass the web-only barrier of YouTube. The software allows users to access YouTube in a different way, creating a TV-like experience.
This article focuses on the finest graphical tools. All of the tools are free and open source software.
Here’s our verdict captured in a legendary LinuxLinks-ratings chart.
| YouTube Tools | |
|---|---|
| FreeTube | Privacy-based YouTube app |
| Media Downloader | Frontend for youtube-dl, gallery-dl, Lux, you-get, ... |
| OmniGet | Download media and files from a broad range of online sources |
| pipe-viewer | Lightweight YouTube client without requiring an API key |
| Piped | Uses NewPipe Extractor, a library for extracting |
| Open Video Downloader | Easy-to-use graphical frontend for downloading online videos |
| Tartube | Video downloader and browser built around yt-dlp |
| AudioTube | Qt-based music streamer |
| Videomass | Download, convert and processing media |
| ClipGrab | Downloader for YouTube and other sites |
| Minitube | Application for watching YouTube without using Flash |
| Materialious | Fontend for YouTube and Invidious |
| youtube-local | Browser-based YouTube client |
| SMTube | Search, play and download YouTube videos |
| Pipeline | Watch YouTube and PeerTube videos |
| MellowPlayer | Multi-platform cloud music integration |
| ytdl-gui | Graphical interface for yt-dlp |
| Youwee | Built with Tauri and React |
| PlasmaTube | Designed to be integrated with KDE Plasma |
| PsTube | Flutter-based video client |
| Video Downloader | Download videos from YouTube and other websites |
| VacuumTube | Unofficial wrapper of YouTube Leanback |
| NeoDLP | Feature-rich video/audio downloader based on yt-dlp |
| Mixtapes | Modern, Linux-first YouTube Music player |
| GDownloader | GUI for downloading videos, audio and galleries |
| Sunder | Built with Tauri v2 and Rust |
| SpMp | YouTube music client with a focus on customization |
| Pulsar | yt-dlp GUI |
| NouTube | YouTube and YouTube Music in a single app |
This article has been updated to reflect the changes outlined in our recent announcement.
 LinuxLinks helps you discover the best free and open source software for Linux. Explore our extensive collection of recommended applications, including alternatives to popular proprietary software.We also publish software reviews, Linux tutorials, hardware reviews, free programming books and articles covering the wider open source community. Browse our Linux resources to discover more. Know a useful free and open source Linux application we haven't covered? Suggest a program for inclusion. Has your software been featured on LinuxLinks? Display one of our Featured on LinuxLinks badges on your website or GitHub README. |
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.
FreeTube is really hot. I love it.
I agree, I would give it a 9.5 score. It’s a great way of feeding my YouTube habit while maintaining my privacy.
I’m impressed by the thoroughness and quality of your work.
Personally, I use Harmony Music, one of those little-known gems
that lets you listen to music and audio from YouTube without having to use
the web. Apart from being open-source, it lets you download tracks and
customize it, so it’s worth checking out.
Unfortunately V1.12.0 is the last maintained release of Harmony Music as an online streaming app