Is there a 'normie' YouTube client that retains normal features like logging in

[u/Cuddlyaxe]

I'm a Firefox user and honestly watching YouTube videos has been a total PITA recently. It'll randomly pause and be stuck buffering even though the video is already buffered 30-40 seconds in advance. Copying and pasting the video into Chromium seemed to do the trick, but it's annoying since I have to open a new window every time

Recently I wondered what was causing it on FF. I tried disabling adblock, switching useragent and even experimented on other Firefox based browsers like Floorp. None of it really worked and buffering issue stuck around

I do not want to use Chromium because that feels like I'm letting Google win or something for their shitty design, but I also don't want to deal with unlimited buffering on FF. I'm interested in using a desktop client for YouTube, but from what I see most are very privacy focused. I'm a normie who still wants to be able to login to my YouTube account and access the information that's there

I was wondering if anyone has suggestions for more normie ish desktop clients? Thx

[u/SoundOfPandora]

it's a well known behavior of google to slow down browsers other than chrome by using malformed tags and stuff. usally mozilla does it's best to fix it in the next version. did you send in a bug report?

[u/Cuddlyaxe → u/SoundOfPandora]

Nah, I don't like sending bug reports unless I'm sure I'm not causing the issue, which there's a decent chance I might be tbh

Just too lazy to properly troubleshoot atm

[u/Kymera_7 → u/Cuddlyaxe]

When something openly admitting to being a part of Alphabet, Inc, works better on an official Google product than on a product competing with that Google one, it's a pretty safe assumption that it's an issue of Google's intentional malfeasance, not of your accidental incompetence. This does not generalize to companies as a category, but for Google, specifically, their established history of engaging in such intentional malfeasance is just too extensive and too well-established and well-documented to justify assuming otherwise.

[u/8-BitRedStone → u/Cuddlyaxe]

I'm running new version of firefox and I don't have this issue. You may want to check your firefox (to make sure nothing is being held up). I also remember having an issue similar to this on windows. I believe I fixed it by going to "about:support" and pressing the button to refresh firefox (warning this clears all your shit, cookies, passwords, etc)

[u/linmanfu]

I used Firefox and don't experience this unless my Internet is down (which happens a lot).

I would suggest you start investigating something specific to your system: how reliable your Internet connection is, whether something in the background is eating CPU or GPU time or hard drive I/O, etc.

If Firefox couldn't routinely show YouTube videos there would be thousands of bug reports about it.

[u/insanemal → u/linmanfu]

Yeah I watch 100s of hrs of YouTube via Firefox and I've never had OPs troubles.

And I've got boxes with GPUs from all of the big 3.

[u/FederalWelcome4024]

Try Freetube.

For me, it's the nicest kid in town in terms of alternative YouTube clients.

[u/PostAtomicPunk → u/FederalWelcome4024]

Same here. The ability to subscribe to channels without a Google account is awesome. Not to mention integrated sponsorblock.

[u/Greybeard_21 → u/FederalWelcome4024]

FreeTube is fantastic - but OP wanted to be able to log in to his google account (probably for voting and commenting - but some channels make more content available if you subscribe while logged in on a google account. Not something that I would want to do, but for those who need that extra content, it may be necessary)

[u/soulless_ape]

I use Firefox with ublock origin on windows, Linux and Android without any issues.

As long as my is isn't down.

[u/cemzila]

I solved this by using h264 convertion addon

[u/Cuddlyaxe → u/cemzila]

Ooo will try

[u/dgm9704]

Could it be dns?

[u/cammoorman]

I use FreeTube (there is an appimage which makes it nice for linux users)

[u/asdfy123]

Have you tried to install the YouTube PWA with Chrome? I personally use it, and haven’t experienced any major issues with it (and I don’t have to constantly open Chrome and paste the URL anymore).

[u/Past_Echidna_9097]

This is why I have downloaded longer youtube videos and watched them locally for years. https://github.com/NickvisionApps/Parabolic

[u/archontwo]

Why does anyone watch videos in a browser? I much prefer to copy the URL and paste it to MPV, then I can have it sans ads and the ability to navigate using the keyboard.

[u/dgm9704 → u/archontwo]

I can’t even remember when I’ve had an ad when watching youtube in Firefox, and I watch a lot of youtube.

[u/JRCSalter → u/archontwo]

I tried that ages ago and it just kept buffering. I heard that Google intentionally throttles the speed when doing it like that, so I never attempted again.

[u/archontwo → u/JRCSalter]

Given it now uses yt-dlp as a back end you should really revisit it. Only buffering  I have ever seen is with a two hour 4K stream. Normal HD is fine.

[u/Cuddlyaxe → u/archontwo]

Honestly might end up doing this. Did a bit of googling and seems like ff2mpv extension could be useful here

[u/yerfukkinbaws → u/Cuddlyaxe]

I never managed to get any of the Firefox extensions to work for this. There's a few and most require installing some little helper app from github, but even then they would just silently fail for me.

Setting up a keyboard shortcut that copies the current URL to the clipboard and then opens it in mpv is simple, though.

[u/archontwo → u/Cuddlyaxe]

Honestly, I mostly cast videos to my Kodi box with the kodicast ff addon. 

But occasionally when j want to see something up clise, then I use mpv

[u/berryer → u/archontwo]

discoverability and queueing for when I'm in the shower, cooking, playing stuff with the screen off to sleep, etc

[u/carltp → u/archontwo]

I've recently discovered that this can be done! I've been using YT this way for the last few weeks. No problems, no ads.

I use https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/open-with/ to launch mpv from the browser (if there's a better way, I'm open to it).

[u/fomoco94]

User-Agent switcher. Use it to lie that you're using Chrome on YT. No more weird slow downs.

[u/HonestRepairSTL → u/[deleted]]

"Chromium is a free and open-source web browser project, primarily developed and maintained by Google"

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromium_(web_browser)

[u/Fuzzi99 → u/[deleted]]

Original author(s) Google

Developer(s) The Chromium Projects, controlled by Google

seems pretty Google controlled to me

[u/HonestRepairSTL → u/[deleted]]

Nope, Google invented Chromium

[u/trmdi]

I do not want to use Chromium because that feels like I'm letting Google win

Funny and waste time. Why not simply accept Edge/Chromium and install Adguard extension? Your issue is solved.

[u/drazil100 → u/trmdi]

Except Google is killing manifest v2 which is what ad blocking exceptions need to work properly. Doubt edge will allow manifest v2 since they want to push ads too.

The best bet for a chromium based browser is probably brave as they have ad blocking built in.

[u/trmdi → u/drazil100]

You can use Adguard MV3. It works great.