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youtube-local

screenshot youtube-local is a browser-based client written in Python for watching Youtube anonymously and without the lag of the javascript-heavy page used by Youtube. One of the primary features is that all requests are routed through Tor, except for the video file at googlevideo.com. This is analogous to what HookTube does, except that you do not have to trust a third-party to respect your privacy. The assumption here is that Google won't put the effort in to incorporate the video file requests into their survelliance systems, as it's not worth pursuing the incredibly small number of users who care about privacy. Using Tor is optional; when not routing through Tor, video pages load faster than they do with Youtube's laggy javascript page (for me atleast).

The Youtube API is not used, so no keys or anything are needed. It uses the same requests as the Youtube webpage. No javascript is used either.

Additionally, playlists can be created, and these are stored locally on your computer. The problem with creating playlists on Youtube's servers is (1) they're datamined and (2) videos frequently get deleted by Youtube and lost from the playlist (making it very difficult to find a reupload as the title of the deleted video is not displayed).

Installing

Windows

Download the zip file under the Releases page. Unzip it anywhere you choose.

Linux/MacOS

Ensure you have python 3.5 or later installed. Then, install gevent, brotli, and PySocks by running

pip3 install gevent brotli pysocks

Note: If pip isn't installed, install it according to this answer, but make sure you run python3 get-pip.py instead of python get-pip.py

Download the tarball under the Releases page and extract it.

Usage

Firstly, if you wish to run this in portable mode, create the empty file "settings.txt" in the program's main directory. If the file is there, settings and data will be stored in the same directory as the program. Otherwise, settings and data will be stored in C:\Users\[your username]\.youtube-local on Windows and ~/.youtube-local on Linux/MacOS. The settings file will be filled with the default settings when the program is first run (provided the file is empty).

To run the program on windows, open run.bat. On Linux/MacOS, run python3 server.py.

Access youtube URLs by prefixing them with localhost:8080/, For instance, http://localhost:8080/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBgulDeV2RU You can use an addon such as Redirector to automatically redirect Youtube URLs to youtube-local. I use the include pattern ^(https?://(?:[a-zA-Z0-9_-]*\.)?(?:youtube\.com|youtu\.be)/.*) and the redirect pattern http://localhost:8080/$1. I also exclude ^https?://(?:[a-zA-Z0-9_-]*\.)?youtube\.com/feed/subscriptions for subscriptions.

youtube-local can be added as a search engine in firefox to make searching more convenient. See here for information on firefox search plugins.

Using Tor

Change route_tor = False to route_tor = True in settings.txt to enable Tor routing. If settings.txt doesn't exist yet, run the program and it will be created with the default settings.

Ensure tor is listening for Socks5 connections on port 9150 (a simple way to accomplish this is by opening the Tor Browser Bundle and leaving it open). Your connections should now be routed through Tor.

Planned Features

  • Options for saving playlists
  • Settings
  • Subscriptions
  • Posting comments done
  • And others I couldn't think of when making this list

Pull requests and issues are welcome

Screenshots

Channel

Video/Audio Downloading

License

This project is licensed under the GNU Affero General Public License v3 (GNU AGPLv3) or any later version.

Permission is hereby granted to the youtube-dl project at https://github.com/rg3/youtube-dl to relicense any portion of this software under the Unlicense, public domain, or whichever license is in use by youtube-dl at the time of relicensing, for the purpose of inclusion of said portion into youtube-dl. Relicensing permission is not granted for any purpose outside of direct inclusion into the official repository of youtube-dl. If inclusion happens during the process of a pull-request, relicensing happens at the moment the pull request is merged into youtube-dl; until that moment, any cloned repositories of youtube-dl which make use of this software are subject to the terms of the GNU AGPLv3.

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