Piped lets you watch YouTube without Google tracking you. It fetches videos and metadata on its own servers, proxies the streams, and gives you a clean interface with no ads and no recommendation algorithm pulling you down the rabbit hole.

Features

• No ads and no tracking; your browser never contacts Google
• No Google account needed: subscriptions and playlists are stored on your Piped instance
• SponsorBlock built in, skipping sponsor segments automatically
• Return YouTube Dislike counts
• Up to 4K playback
• Installable as a PWA
• A federated network of public instances

Self-hosting

Piped is more involved to run than a typical app. It has a backend, a frontend, a proxy that relays video streams, and a PostgreSQL database, and the project’s Docker setup ties them together behind a reverse proxy on several subdomains.

The proxy is the demanding part: all video traffic passes through it, so bandwidth use equals everything your users watch. For personal or family use on a home connection that is fine; running a public instance is not a small commitment.

The YouTube problem

Every alternative YouTube front end depends on how YouTube behaves, and YouTube periodically changes its internals and blocks data center IP ranges. That means occasional breakage until the developers adapt. Running your instance from a residential connection tends to be more reliable than a VPS for this reason.

Piped or Invidious?

Invidious is the other major option. The two are similar in goal; Piped leans on SponsorBlock integration and its proxying design, while Invidious has a longer history and a broad client ecosystem. On mobile, apps like Clipious (Invidious) and Yattee (both) give a native experience.

License

AGPL-3.0.

Links

• Repository