Invidious

Invidious is an alternative front-end to YouTube

Invidious instances:

Public Invidious instances are listed here.

Invidious features:

• Copylefted libre software (AGPLv3+ licensed)
• Audio-only mode (and no need to keep window open on mobile)
• Lightweight (the homepage is ~4 KB compressed)
• Tools for managing subscriptions:
  • Only show unseen videos
  • Only show latest (or latest unseen) video from each channel
  • Delivers notifications from all subscribed channels
  • Automatically redirect homepage to feed
  • Import subscriptions from YouTube
• Dark mode
• Embed support
• Set default player options (speed, quality, autoplay, loop)
• Support for Reddit comments in place of YouTube comments
• Import/Export subscriptions, watch history, preferences
• Developer API
• Does not use any of the official YouTube APIs
• Does not require JavaScript to play videos
• No need to create a Google account to save subscriptions
• No ads
• No CoC
• No CLA

Screenshots:

Player	Preferences	Subscriptions

Installation:

To manually compile invidious you need at least 2GB of RAM. If you have less you can setup SWAP to have a combined amount of 2 GB or use Docker instead.

After installation take a look at the Post-install steps.

Automated installation:

Invidious-Updater is a self-contained script that can automatically install and update Invidious.

Docker:

Build and start cluster:

$ docker-compose up

Then visit localhost:3000 in your browser.

Rebuild cluster:

$ docker-compose build

Delete data and rebuild:

$ docker volume rm invidious_postgresdata
$ docker-compose build

Manual installation:

Linux:

Install the dependencies

# Arch Linux
$ sudo pacman -S base-devel shards crystal librsvg postgresql

# Ubuntu or Debian
# First you have to add the repository to your APT configuration. For easy setup just run in your command line:
$ curl -sSL https://dist.crystal-lang.org/apt/setup.sh | sudo bash
# That will add the signing key and the repository configuration. If you prefer to do it manually, execute the following commands:
$ curl -sL "https://keybase.io/crystal/pgp_keys.asc" | sudo apt-key add -
$ echo "deb https://dist.crystal-lang.org/apt crystal main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/crystal.list
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt install crystal libssl-dev libxml2-dev libyaml-dev libgmp-dev libreadline-dev postgresql librsvg2-bin libsqlite3-dev zlib1g-dev

Add an Invidious user and clone the repository

$ useradd -m invidious
$ sudo -i -u invidious
$ git clone https://github.com/iv-org/invidious
$ exit

Set up PostgresSQL

$ sudo systemctl enable postgresql
$ sudo systemctl start postgresql
$ sudo -i -u postgres
$ psql -c "CREATE USER kemal WITH PASSWORD 'kemal';" # Change 'kemal' here to a stronger password, and update `password` in config/config.yml
$ createdb -O kemal invidious
$ psql invidious kemal < /home/invidious/invidious/config/sql/channels.sql
$ psql invidious kemal < /home/invidious/invidious/config/sql/videos.sql
$ psql invidious kemal < /home/invidious/invidious/config/sql/channel_videos.sql
$ psql invidious kemal < /home/invidious/invidious/config/sql/users.sql
$ psql invidious kemal < /home/invidious/invidious/config/sql/session_ids.sql
$ psql invidious kemal < /home/invidious/invidious/config/sql/nonces.sql
$ psql invidious kemal < /home/invidious/invidious/config/sql/annotations.sql
$ psql invidious kemal < /home/invidious/invidious/config/sql/playlists.sql
$ psql invidious kemal < /home/invidious/invidious/config/sql/playlist_videos.sql
$ exit

Set up Invidious

$ sudo -i -u invidious
$ cd invidious
$ shards update && shards install
$ crystal build src/invidious.cr --release
# test compiled binary
$ ./invidious # stop with ctrl c
$ exit

Systemd service:

$ sudo cp /home/invidious/invidious/invidious.service /etc/systemd/system/invidious.service
$ sudo systemctl enable invidious.service
$ sudo systemctl start invidious.service

Logrotate:

$ sudo echo "/home/invidious/invidious/invidious.log {
rotate 4
weekly
notifempty
missingok
compress
minsize 1048576
}" | tee /etc/logrotate.d/invidious.logrotate
$ sudo chmod 0644 /etc/logrotate.d/invidious.logrotate

MacOS:

# Install dependencies
$ brew update
$ brew install shards crystal postgres imagemagick librsvg

# Clone the repository and set up a PostgreSQL database
$ git clone https://github.com/iv-org/invidious
$ cd invidious
$ brew services start postgresql
$ psql -c "CREATE ROLE kemal WITH PASSWORD 'kemal';" # Change 'kemal' here to a stronger password, and update `password` in config/config.yml
$ createdb -O kemal invidious
$ psql invidious kemal < config/sql/channels.sql
$ psql invidious kemal < config/sql/videos.sql
$ psql invidious kemal < config/sql/channel_videos.sql
$ psql invidious kemal < config/sql/users.sql
$ psql invidious kemal < config/sql/session_ids.sql
$ psql invidious kemal < config/sql/nonces.sql
$ psql invidious kemal < config/sql/annotations.sql
$ psql invidious kemal < config/sql/privacy.sql
$ psql invidious kemal < config/sql/playlists.sql
$ psql invidious kemal < config/sql/playlist_videos.sql

# Set up Invidious
$ shards update && shards install
$ crystal build src/invidious.cr --release

Post-install configuration:

Detailed configuration available in the configuration guide.

If you use a reverse proxy, you must configure invidious to properly serve request through it:

https_only: true : if your are serving your instance via https, set it to true

domain: domain.ext: if you are serving your instance via a domain name, set it here

external_port: 443: if your are serving your instance via https, set it to 443

Update Invidious

Instructions are available in the updating guide.

Usage:

$ ./invidious -h
Usage: invidious [arguments]
    -b HOST, --bind HOST             Host to bind (defaults to 0.0.0.0)
    -p PORT, --port PORT             Port to listen for connections (defaults to 3000)
    -s, --ssl                        Enables SSL
    --ssl-key-file FILE              SSL key file
    --ssl-cert-file FILE             SSL certificate file
    -h, --help                       Shows this help
    -c THREADS, --channel-threads=THREADS
                                     Number of threads for refreshing channels (default: 1)
    -f THREADS, --feed-threads=THREADS
                                     Number of threads for refreshing feeds (default: 1)
    -o OUTPUT, --output=OUTPUT       Redirect output (default: STDOUT)
    -v, --version                    Print version

Or for development:

$ curl -fsSLo- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/samueleaton/sentry/master/install.cr | crystal eval
$ ./sentry
🤖  Your SentryBot is vigilant. beep-boop...

Documentation

Documentation can be found in the wiki.

Extensions

Extensions can be found in the wiki, as well as documentation for integrating it into other projects.

Made with Invidious

• FreeTube: A libre software YouTube app for privacy.
• CloudTube: A JavaScript-rich alternate YouTube player
• PeerTubeify: On YouTube, displays a link to the same video on PeerTube, if it exists.
• MusicPiped: A material design music player that streams music from YouTube.
• LapisTube: A fancy and advanced (experimental) YouTube front-end. Combined streams & custom YT features.
• HoloPlay: Funny Android application connecting on Invidious API's with search, playlists and favoris.

Contributing

1. Fork it ( https://github.com/iv-org/invidious/fork )
2. Create your feature branch (git checkout -b my-new-feature)
3. Commit your changes (git commit -am 'Add some feature')
4. Push to the branch (git push origin my-new-feature)
5. Create a new pull request

Translation

• Log in with an account you have elsewhere, or register an account and start translating at Hosted Weblate.

Donate:

Liberapay: https://liberapay.com/iv-org/

Contact

Feel free to join our Matrix room, or #invidious on freenode. Both platforms are bridged together.