It also has a local API

I experience little breakage with Librewolf, and when I do, maybe 75-85% of the time it is because the site only works with Chromium. I get extensions directly through the browser, I have not enabled anything as far as I am aware. And of course you can configure the cookie clearing. I quite like it, there are (in my case at least) not many exceptions you need to add before it works quite smoothly, but of course that depends on your usage.

Obligatory post mentioning that Freetube exists on Android as well. With Syncthing, I sync history, playlists and subscriptions. It’s brilliant.

Disconnect it from your network. Hard to serve ads if it can’t contact the servers it is pulling them from.

Are you me? Except I use FreeTube instead of Piped. I am so happy with this solution. Years of discontent of watching services going through the enshittification cycle… everything just becoming so underwhelming. This has given me back freedom over my own media consumption. No ads. No endless scrolling through bullshit content. Just a nicely personally curated selection of movies and TV shows (on Jellyfin) and an ad-free YouTube-experience with sponsorblock and dearrow enabled, and blocking of live chats and shorts.

Yes, I’ve checked this, and it works in regular Firefox.

I have not updated Librewolf since last time it worked (yesterday), but I’ll poke around in the settings to see.

I’m on Fairphone 4 with CalyxOS, and I am happy with that. I would not expect them to release a Fairphone 6 anytime soon, so unless OP has all the time in the world, the Fairphone 5 should be good if they want to go this route.

Freetube exists for Android also.

Syncthing is your friend. Freetube stores playlists, history, settings and subscriptions as .db-files which you can sync between devices. Android version also allows access to these files if enabled in settings.

This is my solution also. I listen to audio books on my way to work, and read on an ebook-reader in the evening. Can be tricky to sync when the chapter structure is non-traditional though (e.g. Discworld).

Playlists, history, subscriptions and settings are all stored as .db-files in ~/.config/FreeTube (or whatever path it is if you are using the Flatpak). Sync those :) On FreeTube Android, you have to turn on custom data storage path in the settings first.

Depends on your budget, I guess. My setup consists of a regular Samsung Smart-TV that I have disconnected from the network, connected to a mini-PC from Minisforum running Linux Mint. The reason I got that was mainly for gaming, could get away with a significantly cheaper option if not. I run my own Jellyfin-server for media content (movies, TV and music) and use FreeTube to watch YouTube (which I sync with my laptop and mobile using SyncThing). I do use a wireless foldable and rechargeable keyboard with built in trackpad, but it’s not working as great as I imagined. Corsair used to have a nice media keyboard, but as far as I know they have discontinued it and I haven’t yet found a new one that fits my criteria, so I keep using the foldable one.

As for gaming, I run emulation through RetroArch and Steam in big picture mode. I have four 8BitDo Ultimate controllers in case I get any friends over who are keen on a round of Mario Kart.

Are there any write-ups on the situation in Europe under GDPR-legislation? Mostly I read about the US-situation which seems like the wild west, but I can’t imagine that it is perfectly fine in the EU either even if you opt-out of using their apps etc.

Reminds me of the movie Her, where all kinds of heartfelt letters were outsourced to professional agencies.

I use CalyxOS on my FP4. I have been happy. Almost 2 years now.

Ah, thanks for the info - I wasn’t aware of that.

Yes it is: https://github.com/MarmadileManteater/FreeTubeAndroid

Works well, and you can sync history, playlists etc with SyncThing.

What do you mean by “just a webview”? As far as I know, FreeTube does not exist as a web client that can then just be displayed in an in-app browser.

I use Obsidian, which is quite powerful with their vast plugin library. You can do a lot of automation, and you can check out some of Nicole van der Hoeven’s videos, who among other things use it to keep track of TTRPG campaigns, both as a player and as a game master. For example this one.

I don’t use their sync service, but have all files locally on my Nextcloud server. I sync them to my phone with Syncthing, which unfortunately means I cannot encrypt them with Cryptomator like I planned, but if you only use it on your computer, that is also something you could do. If you are paranoid about them still phoning home with your data, then you can block its network access with a firewall. I think you can install plugins manually.

I would have preferred it if it was FOSS. I have considered checking out Logseq as an alternative. But the bullet-based workflow doesn’t appeal to me, so I haven’t tried yet. I switched over from Standard Notes, and honestly it was pain to transfer because the text export from Standard Notes was all over the place, as I had used a lot of different note types. I tried to parse some of these smart notes they have, but I couldn’t quickly figure out how they were structured to automate it, so I ended up manually going through and copying over what I wanted to keep. I like the approach of keeping plain text markdown files. It is easier to export to another application in the future, although some of the content will be useless as it is explicitly written for the plugins (e.g. Dataview).