Invidious

Last updated
Invidious
Original author(s) Omar Roth
Developer(s) Samantaz Fox, unixfox, Matthew McGarvey [1]
Initial releaseAugust 13, 2018;6 years ago (2018-08-13)
Stable release
2024.08.26-4782a67 / August 26, 2024;5 months ago (2024-08-26)
Repository Mirror from GitHub: gitea.invidious.io/iv-org/invidious , GitHub: github.com/iv-org/invidious
Written in Crystal, HTML, JavaScript
Type Frontend
License AGPLv3
Website invidious.io

Invidious is a free and open-source alternative frontend to YouTube. [2] [3] It is available as a Docker container, [4] or from the GitHub master branch. [5] It is intended to be used as a lightweight and "privacy-respecting" alternative to the official YouTube website. [2] Many privacy preserving redirecting software as well as YouTube clients use Invidious instances. [6] [7] [8] [9]

Contents

Invidious does not use the official YouTube API but scrapes the website for video and metadata such as likes and views. [10] This is done intentionally to decrease the amount of data shared with Google, but YouTube can still see a user's IP address. [11] The web-scraping tool is called the Invidious Developer API. [10] It is also partially used in the free and open-source app, Yattee. [12]

History

In 2020, Omar Roth stated that he would be stepping down from the project and shutting down the main instance at invidio.us. [13] However, the project still continues and unofficial instances of the service still exist. [14]

In June 2023, Invidious received a take-down order from YouTube. [15] [16] The cease and desist notice followed recent "experiments" by YouTube of blocking non-premium users who use an ad-blocking web browser. [17] [18] The Invidious developers decided to ignore the letter as they did not use the YouTube API. [19] Jules Roscoe of Vice.com stated YouTube was not alone in "cracking down", and noted new developer fees at Reddit are causing third-party developers to shut down. [20] According to Der Spiegel , "Invidious is installed on servers, which then act as unlicensed YouTube mirrors" to allow users to watch videos "free of advertising and tracking." Invidious was targeted by Google due to them having struggled for years to block downloading and uncontrolled access to videos and music. [21]

See also

Related Research Articles

A browser extension is a software module for customizing a web browser. Browsers typically allow users to install a variety of extensions, including user interface modifications, cookie management, ad blocking, and the custom scripting and styling of web pages.

Google Developers is Google's site for software development tools and platforms, application programming interfaces (APIs), and technical resources. The site contains documentation on using Google developer tools and APIs—including discussion groups and blogs for developers using Google's developer products.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">DuckDuckGo</span> American software company and Web search engine

DuckDuckGo is an American software company focused on online privacy, whose flagship product is a search engine of the same name. Founded by Gabriel Weinberg in 2008, its later products include browser extensions and a custom DuckDuckGo web browser. Headquartered in Paoli, Pennsylvania, DuckDuckGo is a privately held company with about 200 employees. The company's name is a reference to the children's game duck, duck, goose.

WebRTC is a free and open-source project providing web browsers and mobile applications with real-time communication (RTC) via application programming interfaces (APIs). It allows audio and video communication and streaming to work inside web pages by allowing direct peer-to-peer communication, eliminating the need to install plugins or download native apps.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Friendica</span> Free software for distributed social networks

Friendica is a free and open-source software distributed social network. It forms one part of the Fediverse, an interconnected and decentralized network of independently operated servers.

Kubernetes is an open-source container orchestration system for automating software deployment, scaling, and management. Originally designed by Google, the project is now maintained by a worldwide community of contributors, and the trademark is held by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation.

WebXR Device API is a Web application programming interface (API) that describes support for accessing augmented reality and virtual reality devices, such as the HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, Meta Quest, Google Cardboard, HoloLens, Apple Vision Pro, Android XR-based devices, Magic Leap or Open Source Virtual Reality (OSVR), in a web browser. The WebXR Device API and related APIs are standards defined by W3C groups, the Immersive Web Community Group and Immersive Web Working Group. While the Community Group works on the proposals in the incubation period, the Working Group defines the final web specifications to be implemented by the browsers.

gRPC is a cross-platform high-performance remote procedure call (RPC) framework. gRPC was initially created by Google, but is open source and is used in many organizations. Use cases range from microservices to the "last mile" of computing. gRPC uses HTTP/2 for transport, Protocol Buffers as the interface description language, and provides features such as authentication, bidirectional streaming and flow control, blocking or nonblocking bindings, and cancellation and timeouts. It generates cross-platform client and server bindings for many languages. Most common usage scenarios include connecting services in a microservices style architecture, or connecting mobile device clients to backend services.

Angular is a TypeScript-based free and open-source single-page web application framework. It is developed by Google and by a community of individuals and corporations. Angular is a complete rewrite from the same team that built AngularJS. The Angular ecosystem consists of a diverse group of over 1.7 million developers, library authors, and content creators. According to the Stack Overflow Developer Survey, Angular is one of the most commonly used web frameworks.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Searx</span> Metasearch engine

Searx is a discontinued free and open-source metasearch engine, available under the GNU Affero General Public License version 3, with the aim of protecting the privacy of its users. To this end, Searx does not share users' IP addresses or search history with the search engines from which it gathers results. Tracking cookies served by the search engines are blocked, preventing user-profiling-based results modification. By default, Searx queries are submitted via HTTP POST, to prevent users' query keywords from appearing in webserver logs. Searx was inspired by the Seeks project, though it does not implement Seeks' peer-to-peer user-sourced results ranking.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Huawei Mobile Services</span> Proprietary software service

Huawei Mobile Services (HMS) is a collection of proprietary services and high level application programming interfaces (APIs) developed by Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. Its hub known as HMS Core serves as a toolkit for app development on Huawei devices. HMS is typically installed on Huawei devices on top of running HarmonyOS operating system, and on its earlier devices running the Android operating system with EMUI including devices already distributed with Google Mobile Services. Alongside, HMS Core Wear Engine for Android phones with lightweight based LiteOS wearable middleware app framework integration connectivity like notifications, status etc.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">GDevelop</span> Open-source, cross-platform game engine

GDevelop is a 2D and 3D cross-platform, free and open-source game engine, which mainly focuses on creating PC and mobile games, as well as HTML5 games playable in the browser. Created by Florian Rival, a software engineer at Google, GDevelop is mainly aimed at non-programmers and game developers of all skillsets, employing event based visual programming similar to engines like Construct, Stencyl, and Tynker.

youtube-dl is a free and open source software tool for downloading video and audio from YouTube and over 1,000 other video hosting websites. It is released under the Unlicense software license.

FastAPI is a high-performance web framework for building HTTP-based service APIs in Python 3.8+. It uses Pydantic and type hints to validate, serialize and deserialize data. FastAPI also automatically generates OpenAPI documentation for APIs built with it. It was first released in 2018.

Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC) is a type of web tracking. It groups people into "cohorts" based on their browsing history for the purpose of interest-based advertising. FLoC was being developed as a part of Google's Privacy Sandbox initiative, which includes several other advertising-related technologies with bird-themed names. Despite "federated learning" in the name, FLoC does not utilize any federated learning.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Privacy Sandbox</span> Google initiative

The Privacy Sandbox is an initiative led by Google to create web standards for websites to access user information without compromising privacy. Its core purpose is to facilitate online advertising by sharing a subset of user private information without the use of third-party cookies. The initiative includes a number of proposals, many of these proposals have bird-themed names which are changed once the corresponding feature reaches general availability. The technology include Topics API, Protected Audience, Attribution Reporting, Private Aggregation, Shared Storage and Fenced Frames as well as other proposed technologies. The project was announced in August 2019.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nitter</span> Alternative front end for Twitter

Nitter is a discontinued free and open source alternative viewer for Twitter, focusing on privacy and performance.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">YouTube Vanced</span> Modified third-party YouTube application

YouTube Vanced is a discontinued modified third-party YouTube application for Android with a built-in ad blocker. Other features of the app included SponsorBlock, background play, free picture-in-picture (PiP), an AMOLED black theme, swipe control for brightness and volume, and implementation of the Return YouTube Dislike browser extension. Modified versions of YouTube Music and MicroG were also developed.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">OpenHarmony</span> Family of open-source operating systems based on HarmonyOS

OpenHarmony is a family of open-source distributed operating systems based on HarmonyOS derived from LiteOS, donated the L0-L2 branch source code by Huawei to the OpenAtom Foundation. Similar to HarmonyOS, the open-source distributed operating system is designed with a layered architecture, consisting of four layers from the bottom to the top: the kernel layer, system service layer, framework layer, and application layer. It is also an extensive collection of free software, which can be used as an operating system or in parts with other operating systems via Kernel Abstraction Layer subsystems.

References

  1. ↑ "Team". Invidious.io. Retrieved 2024-01-21.
  2. 1 2 "5 Apps to Protect Your Privacy on YouTube and Stop Google From Tracking You". MUO. 2021-08-28. Retrieved 2021-11-10.
  3. ↑ Betts, Andy (November 14, 2019). "How to Watch Flagged YouTube Videos Without Logging In". MUO.
  4. ↑ "Installation - Invidious Documentation". docs.invidious.io. Retrieved 2022-08-24.
  5. ↑ "Installation - Invidious Documentation". docs.invidious.io. Retrieved 2022-08-24.
  6. ↑ "Improve Your Safari Browsing Experience With These Automatic Redirects". Lifehacker. 2022-11-22. Retrieved 2023-06-03.
  7. ↑ "The 8 Best Media Players for the Steam Deck". MUO. 2023-05-07. Retrieved 2023-06-03.
  8. ↑ "How to Watch YouTube Videos in the Linux Terminal With ytfzf". MUO. 2022-11-23. Retrieved 2023-06-03.
  9. ↑ Kocher, Laveesh (2022-12-01). "FreeTube, An Open Source Private YouTube Client" . Retrieved 2023-06-03.
  10. 1 2 "Release Week 1: Invidious API and Geo-Bypass · iv-org/invidious". GitHub. Retrieved 2022-08-24.
  11. ↑ "Frequently Asked Questions". docs.invidious.io. Retrieved 2024-09-26.
  12. ↑ Yattee, Yattee, 2022-08-24, retrieved 2022-08-24
  13. ↑ "Omar Roth". omar.yt. Retrieved 2022-08-24.
  14. ↑ "Invidious Instances". api.invidious.io. Retrieved 2022-08-24.
  15. ↑ "YouTube legal team asked Invidious developers to take down the service within 7 days". AlternativeTo.net. June 10, 2023. Retrieved June 10, 2023.
  16. ↑ Rossmann, Louis (9 June 2023). "Youtube's war on adblockers continues, sends cease & desist to invidious.io - you know what to do 😉". YouTube. Retrieved 11 June 2023.
  17. ↑ Thomas, Dallas (10 May 2023). "YouTube has started blocking ad blockers". Android Police. Retrieved 11 June 2023.
  18. ↑ Cadenas, Cesar (11 May 2023). "YouTube is attempting to block your ad-blocker in new experiment". TechRadar. Retrieved 11 June 2023.
  19. ↑ "YouTube Orders 'Invidious' Privacy Software to Shut Down in 7 Days * TorrentFreak" . Retrieved 2023-08-06.
  20. ↑ Roscoe, Jules (2023-06-15). "YouTube Tells Open-Source Privacy Software 'Invidious' to Shut Down". Vice. Retrieved 2023-06-16.
  21. ↑ "Google will werbefreie YouTube-Alternative Invidious stoppen" [Google wants to legally stop ad-free YouTube alternative]. Der Spiegel (in German). 2023-06-16. ISSN   2195-1349. Archived from the original on 19 August 2023. Retrieved 2023-06-19.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.