Looks interesting, does it allow for offline caching or archiving of media?
It mentions using the Harbor identity service, that's new to me. https://harbor.social/
Linux version seems to work good. Was able to sync with my phone with no issues. My only complaint with either of them is YT Shorts support. I'll have to stick with Freetube for that I guess since there is a couple of creators that I follow that only release shorts
We always been missing good 3rd party search/trending for online videos.
I've been using a youtube frontend called pockettube, where I could make lists(channels) for content I like, without youtube forcing me what to watch.
Example. I have an Art and Food channels with my favorite content creators, I get to see the list in order of newest videos first, totally bypassing youtubes forced interface.
In fact, if people started creating front ends to youtube with real search/suggestion engines, you could find new content and help the less viewed but good content that gets bypassed.
Grayjay is great, since it uses multiple video providers, but you still have to "Know" who to follow. The search "Knowing" part is still word of mouth, random change of seeing a creators video, or the platforms showing it to you. Combine the 2, and it would be unstoppable.
I think if someone came up with a external database of content providers on multiple platforms that allows apps like grayjay/pockettube/etc to find new content, that is the missing piece.
Finding content is so hard.
All YouTube wants me to watch are "OMG YOU WOULDN'T BELIEVE WHAT THIS COP DID" content. I have no idea why they want me to watch those videos, I never do and I block the videos and the channels from recommendations but they keep coming ...
All I get are ads for weird suspect drugs and products, just going on these platforms is such a bad vibe.
My experience is that YouTube recommendations are heavily weighted based on my watch history. If I watch a single video on, say, videogames, all of a sudden my recommendations are all gamer stuff.
Fortunately, you can easily edit your watch history. I just go through mine periodically and remove any kind of video that I don't want recommendations related to. Doing that has given me a very dialed in recommendation feed. If anything, it's too dialed in, and I rarely get serendipitous recommendations.
YouTube has become especially horrific. It seems a couple years ago they gave up on video search- after 5 videos it will suddenly start recommending random videos under āyou may likeā. If I watch one UFC video I am flooded with recommendations of Joe Rogan, despite my subscriptions all being unrelated.
Best thing is, if I search for something it'll give me hundreds of search results. But if I then decide to filter by upload date, whooopsie! there are no search results, sorry!
This looks really interesting. Specifically I would love to be able to set up something like this for my kids so that I have control over what they are able to watch on YouTube. I want to offer my kids whitelisted shows and creator accounts. I know theres a lot of interesting and high quality stuff out there but I do NOT want YT recommending things to my kids without going through me first.
Grayjay looks like it may be a solution!
This is the most maddening thing about all content now. It's all platform based and every platform wants to constantly push/"recommend" things to you and your kids. Right now I use Roku and Plex but even both of those are constantly trying to break down the wall.
I have NewPipe on my kid's tablets which is pretty good too, but it breaks more often. But it's great to have no ads + sponsorblock.
Between that and pirated shows/movies my kids are absolutely puzzled by commercials when we stay at a hotel or with family.
This feels like a central hub for media you like?
I would assume these privacy claims would also include a ToS violation for the given platform?
And then of course the user has given Grayjay a lot of info so privacy?
Are they scraping the actual content too or just accessing it in some different way?
It doesn't use any API (at least the YouTube plugin). So they are (according to their lawyers) not bound to any TOS. All it does is open the page (like a browser) and grab it and only show stuff to the user that's "relevant".
You can check it yourself, while it is not "open-source" or "free" in the usual sense its source is available.
More details from Rossmann himself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqTYg6vnQvw
edit: TOS not API
Thread last year https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37924776
The site CSS is a little broken on iPhone, causing elements to hang off the screen or overlap. FAQ link gives a 404.
Technically, I think this is against YouTube (for example) TOS, though I donāt expect that would be enforced against end users.
It's broken on Android/Firefox, too.
Bug report (macOS): the app does not allow copy/paste, text selection, or even quitting thru Cmd-* shortcuts - it has no entries in the top menu bar whatsoever. There are also no context menus.
Get a daily email with the the top stories from Hacker News. No spam, unsubscribe at any time.