In Operation
On the program’s first run, we need to choose a video source; either PeerTube, Invidious, or Piped.
We spent most of our testing with Invidious as it’s more mature than the other choices. Invidious is intended to be used as a lightweight and “privacy-respecting” alternative to the official YouTube website.
Here’s an image of the UI.
There’s search functionality, subscriptions, playlists, and history. We can choose the resolution of the video stream, play the video full screen, or in a separate window.
By default, when running the software from the desktop, the program hides short-form views which are designed for viewing on a mobile device, but they can be enabled in the Settings section.
Summary
If you want to watch and listen to content without the fear of prying eyes watching everything you are doing, PlasmaTube might be of interest to you.
The UI is respectable although some useful functionality is missing within the video player.
Website: apps.kde.org/plasmatube
Support: Code Repository
Developer: PlasmaTube contributors
License: GNU General Public License v3.0
PlasmaTube is written in C++. Learn C++ with our recommended free books and free tutorials.
Pages in this article:
Page 1 – Introduction and Installation
Page 2 – In Operation and Summary
Related Software
| 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 |
Read our verdict in the software roundup.
 Explore our carefully curated directory of recommended free and open source software, covering every major software category.The directory forms part of our extensive collection of articles for Linux enthusiasts. It includes hundreds of detailed reviews, together with free and open source alternatives to proprietary software from companies such as Google, Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, IBM, Cisco, Oracle, and Autodesk. LinuxLinks also covers interesting projects worth exploring, Linux-compatible hardware, free programming books and tutorials, and much more. Know a useful free and open source Linux application that we haven’t covered? Tell us about it using our submission form. |
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.