It seems like the main benefit of such frontends is the lack of trackers and fingerprinting, but what if the browser, like Firefox, already did that with UBlock Origin and fingerprinting protection?
For me I can’t go back to the normal YouTube client. I use freetube on pc and tubular on mobile (EDIT 2: both tubular and newpipe work on mobile now). My biggest thing I love is not getting recommendations from YouTube. I have it set to only pull people I am subscribed to. This has saved me so much time from just scrolling and being like “I could watch that”. Not exactly privacy related but it has saved me countless hours watching something.
tubular on mobile (broken right now so is newpipe).
NewPipe is updated and working again, but not yet Tubular
EDIT: I just got a Tubular update that fixes it
Oh great thanks for letting me know. I checked about two days ago.
The update was yesterday iirc, so that’s why you missed it.
Yup just got it it works now :) thanks again.
Additional features, custom formatting etc.
NewPipe for example can download video or audio from YT, has fine-tuned speed and pitch control (like 137% speed and 83% pitch or something ridiculous like that), plays audio in background and subscribes to various sources (Soundcloud, Bandcamp, YouTube (a bit of Peertube)) in one feed without an account.
TLDR Ease of Use
Running your traffic through a 3rd party shared proxy is infinitely more effective than accessing it directly with browser tracking protection.
Also generally the UI is significantly better and provided more options for things like downloading and filtering. You can actually see what you are looking for rather than having “suggestions” incessantly crammed down your throat.
Shifting trust.
Ublock doesn’t stop (all/most) fingerprinting. A hosted frontend or instance can help protect against this vector of attack.
ublock doesn’t affect fingerprinting at all, that’s done in the browser.
Specific blocklists are designed to block fingerprinting scripts. This can help, but it is better when done by the browser.
The reddit webpage asks me download their app every time I have to open it, libreddit doesn’t. It’s also full of “sponsored posts” which aren’t from external advertisers so don’t seem to get blocked.
Youtube’s actual website usually doesn’t even work for me anymore. The page takes a really long time to load and often gets stuck and doesn’t load at all.
uBlock on Firefox stopped working to block YouTube ads for me. I could probably keep messing with filters but FreeTube is easier. Also I was unfamiliar with SponsorBlock and it’s built in automatically to FreeTube, which has been great. The downside is it seems to be limited to 1080p content and I have a 4K monitor.
Stopped working on Chrome
It quit for me on Firefox on Windows 10 at some point. I’ve never been a chrome user. Maybe it’s fixed now, but I haven’t gone back since switching to FreeTube.
