Summary
FreeTube lets you enjoy watch videos, manage subscriptions, make favorites, and this history is stored local-only, and not sent to Google. The added benefit is that you also don’t need a Google account.
If you are looking to move away from Google and embark on a new world of online freedom, where you are not constantly tracked, monetised and attached to Google’s ecosystem, FreeTube might be what you need. We’ve written a series of articles which explores how you can migrate from Google without missing out on anything. We recommend open source solutions only.
FreeTube doesn’t really let you access YouTube material without a web browser as it uses Electron, a framework designed to create desktop applications using web technologies that are rendered using the Chromium browser engine and the Node.js runtime environment.
Website: freetubeapp.io
Support: GitHub Code Repository
Developer: PrestonN, GilgusMaximus, Svallinn, absidue, ChunkyProgrammer, Hiers, Jason, PikachuEXE, John Rune
License: GNU Affero General Public License v3.0
FreeTube is written in JavaScript. Learn JavaScript with our recommended free books and free tutorials.
Pages in this article:
Page 1 – Introduction and Installation
Page 2 – In Operation
Page 3 – Summary
Related Software
| YouTube Tools | |
|---|---|
| FreeTube | Privacy-based YouTube app |
| Media Downloader | Frontend for youtube-dl, gallery-dl, Lux, you-get, svtplay-dl, aria2c, ... |
| pipe-viewer | Lightweight YouTube client without requiring an API key |
| Piped | Uses NewPipe Extractor, a library for extracting |
| OmniGet | Download media and other files from a broad range of online sources |
| AudioTube | Qt-based music streamer |
| 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 | Tool which lets you 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 |
| 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 |
Read our verdict in the software roundup.
 Explore our comprehensive directory of recommended free and open source software. Our carefully curated collection spans every major software category.This directory is part of our ongoing series of informative articles for Linux enthusiasts. It features hundreds of detailed reviews, along with open source alternatives to proprietary solutions from major corporations such as Google, Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, IBM, Cisco, Oracle, and Autodesk. You’ll also find interesting projects to try, hardware coverage, free programming books and tutorials, and much more. Discovered a useful open source Linux program that we haven’t covered yet? Let us know by completing this form. |
You guys just keep on turning up the best apps. I love this! I’m using the appImage for testing and it worked without a hitch. This feels like many steps up.
For the first time in what feels like hundreds of years (it seems), I even started adding subscriptions without the tracking, emailing normally tied to them. FreeTube makes YouTube fun again.