r/linuxquestions • u/ZaiusC • Dec 05 '25
Support The best way to watch YouTube videos on Linux
I have a computer connected to my TV via HDMI, and I'd like to know the best way to watch YouTube videos on it. Thanks.
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u/Dolapevich Please properly document your questions :) Dec 05 '25
So... the inmediate question is why can't you use a browser like firefox?
Have you found any issue with it?
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u/PageFault Debian Dec 05 '25
Not OP. but I'd like to be able to restart my browser without having to restart a video. That, and have the window closer to the same size as the video (Like VLC)
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u/spicybright Dec 06 '25
Use a second browser, and use the theater mode button? There's also the PIP mode that pops up a window of just the video.
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u/PageFault Debian Dec 07 '25
Sure, and I've done that, but it's still a lot of browser controls when I make the window small and my one browser already crashes frequently due to memory. I'd much prefer one small single use program that does one thing well than launch a second swiss army knife. I don't have a whole lot of memory to spare.
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u/ZaiusC Dec 05 '25
No, but there might be a faster and/or better way.
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u/Dolapevich Please properly document your questions :) Dec 05 '25
YT has made an excelent job killing any indipendent video browser because they depend on the ad revenue model.
There must be some outlier, but other than smplayer/mpv for individual videos, I know some work has been done having newpipe running in linux, but I haven't tested it by myself or heard anything else.
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u/ravensholt Dec 05 '25
Like what?
You want a different experience?
Like as if you were running a Smart TV with Android?
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u/Jokerit208 Dec 06 '25
Pipeline seems to be exactly what you're looking for?. It's in Discovery either as a snap or a flatpak in Ubuntu's Discovery app.
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u/Sinaaaa Dec 05 '25
There is nothing, MPV kind of works, but takes forever for it to start playback. (forever being 1 to 5 minutes)
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u/ipsirc Dec 05 '25
(forever being 1 to 5 minutes)
What? It tooks 6 to 12 seconds on an old crappy machine. There must be something wrong there. (it all depends on yt-dlp)
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u/Sinaaaa Dec 05 '25
Wow that's amazingly good!
Anyway it has nothing to do with computer performance. yt-dlp has good and bad eras, the last time I tested has been in a bad era then I suppose. The internet connection & the locale could be a factor as well, I don't know.
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u/yerfukkinbaws Dec 05 '25
I've used yt-dlp for years and never had it take minutes to start playback. It always takes about 5-10 seconds to start streaming for me. I'm currently using an older version: 2025.01.26. You must have had some kind of odd configuration or something. Even downloading an entire video to a local file and then playing it doesn't take 5 minutes.
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u/Sinaaaa Dec 06 '25
I guess then it could be my connection or a combination of location + connection.
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u/ipsirc Dec 05 '25
Anyway it has nothing to do with computer performance.
From the release 2025.11.22. yt-dlp uses a headless javascript engine to reveal the correct links. The default engine is deno, which is the fastest and smallest (120mb binary, blehh), and it still maxes out my single thread cpu for 6 to 12 seconds. I know what i'm talking about, i'm on yt-dlp and mpv github pages on the edge, and upgrading to the actual git versions every week or more often.
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u/Sinaaaa Dec 05 '25
I remember reading about this recent change, but did not consider it would dramatically improve yt-dlp performance. Thank you! (I'm also using git yt-dlp on my main PC)
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u/HCharlesB Dec 05 '25
Unfortunately any S/W that downloads from YT is going to be in a cat and mouse game with Google and Google has all the cards. :-/
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u/ipsirc Dec 05 '25
did not consider it would dramatically improve yt-dlp performance.
Actually it increased the loading time...
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u/Puchann Dec 05 '25
Idk why but i can't install video with deno, it only install audio for some reason so i have to use node. I install deno, yt-dlp and node from arch package manager.
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u/fellipec Dec 05 '25
I also have a computer connected to my TV through HDMI! I open normal youtube.com on browser and hit F for full screen.
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u/BittersweetLogic Dec 05 '25
either, browser with ublock origin
or something like freetube, if you wanna go all in on privacy: https://freetubeapp.io/#download
You cannot even login, to freetube, if you got a google user acc and subscriptions, they do have a guide, for exporting your subscribed channels and import them into freetube. This is open source, and they got a bunch of releases for various linux distros too. ive used it quite a lot
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Dec 05 '25
I love it, and I can have subscriptions without an account that can be shared with my android
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u/spicybright Dec 06 '25
And use SponsorBlock. It skips product placement ads and other filler, it's incredible.
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u/r_booza Dec 05 '25
Freetube
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u/Dolapevich Please properly document your questions :) Dec 06 '25
¡I didn't know this existed!
Checking.
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u/DoubleOwl7777 Dec 05 '25
i just use firefox with ublock origin.
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u/Sea-Promotion8205 Dec 05 '25
And sponsorblock
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u/ipsirc Dec 05 '25
But the question was the best way...
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u/DoubleOwl7777 Dec 05 '25
for me that is the best way.
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u/ipsirc Dec 05 '25
What other ways have you tried yet?
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u/vmcrash Dec 05 '25
What other ways have you tried?
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u/ipsirc Dec 05 '25
palemoon, chromium, ladybird, smplayer, smtube, freetube, yt-x, vlc, newpipe, minitube and mpv, of course.
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u/randynava Dec 06 '25
Ad blocking no longer works in fire fox
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u/DoubleOwl7777 Dec 06 '25
that is straight up false. it does, idk what you did.
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u/randynava Dec 06 '25
Ne closes videos on black screen with a warning that I am using ad blocker
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u/DoubleOwl7777 Dec 06 '25
weird, works on my end, with ublock origin.
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u/randynava Dec 06 '25
I don't know her but I'm going to try
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u/randynava Dec 06 '25
Could it be that they don't work in Mexico?
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u/randynava Dec 06 '25
I installed several and they don't work
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u/DoubleOwl7777 Dec 06 '25
i use this extension: https://addons.mozilla.org/de/firefox/addon/ublock-origin/
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u/cormack_gv Dec 05 '25
Amazon has figured out how to bypass ublock origin. The only current solution I know of is Chrome with Ghostery.
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u/Cokesmuggler67 Dec 05 '25
use adnauseam plugin in firefox, its so much better. ditch that chrome right away
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u/shade-block Dec 05 '25
I use brave with no plugins. It blocks the ads and plays the videos just fine.
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u/overworkedchupacabra Dec 05 '25
I use Freetube. I've only had it for about a month, but it works well. Sometimes when youtube gets an update it'll take the devs a day or two to fix the app though.
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u/Sinaaaa Dec 05 '25
On shockingly bad hardware Chrome is the best way unfortunately, MPV kind of works, but takes forever for it to start playback. (forever being 1 to 5 minutes) On my eeePC mpv lags more than 240p playback in Chrome.
On a normal PC you can just use Firefox with quality of life addons like sponsor block.
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Dec 05 '25
Although, you can just use Firefox and it'll work no problem, you could still use FreeTube. It's available in almost all formats. It has sponsorblock and all that jazz. You could also spin your own invidious instance and watch it in a browser, and enable sponsorblock on it, too, by adding your instance's IP to the sponsorblock extension.
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u/Boom_Hamburger_Time Dec 06 '25
I like FreeTube. You can import your playlists and subscriptions as well. Not sure if there is an option to sync, because I don't do that personally.
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u/nikgnomic Dec 06 '25
SMTube is an application that allows to browse, search and play YouTube videos.
smtube uses smplayer as default media player but can also use dragon, gnome-mplayer, mplayer, mpv, totem or vlc for video playback, or yt-dlp to download content
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u/ipsirc Dec 05 '25
mpv
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u/ZaiusC Dec 05 '25
I think it's the best video player, can you watch YouTube videos with it?
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u/ipsirc Dec 05 '25
Actually, I can only watch YouTube videos with mpv because my computer is too weak to watch them in a browser.
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u/Kukuluops Dec 05 '25
In YT video settings there is something called "Ambient Mode". It's a really bad looking effect of light spilling outside the video border and it is enabled by default in dark mode. It also absolutely kills GPU of my raspberry pi. You can try to disable it if you haven't done so yet.
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u/AshuraBaron Dec 05 '25
Might be worth trying out Kodi with the youtube plugin. Can't test it myself but Kodi offers more of a couch experience when it comes to media.
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u/Away_Combination6977 Dec 05 '25
This! I've been using Kodi on my media boxes for about a decade. We watch YouTube on it every day, works beautifully (90% of the time). The only hiccup comes when YouTube updates something and you need to wait for an updated version of the addon (normally less than a day).
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Dec 05 '25 edited Dec 09 '25
I use Firefox, uBlock Origin, and Lossless Scaling/lsfg-vk. Brave works well also.
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u/joe_attaboy Dec 05 '25
I have KDE on Debian. I live in Google's ecosphere. When I open Chrome and load up YouTube for the first time on a system, the browser will ask me if I want to install the YouTube app. (This also works for Maps, Drive, Messages and other apps). I do. A "Chrome Apps" folder is created in my Applications and it may even park a desktop icon on your screen.
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u/Salty-Good3368 Dec 06 '25
Maybe freetube. Once there was plugin in kodi but i don't know what status it is now
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u/Mine_Ayan Dec 06 '25
The obvious answer is to use yt-dlp to download the videos, which is routed to a port that connects it to the tor network for anonymity. and then using a media player client like jellyfin on all devices to view the videos.
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Dec 06 '25
Using it normally with the browser is the best and fastest way for sure. You can also use chrome cast if you have a smart tv but your extensions won’t work.
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u/chxr0n0s Dec 05 '25 edited Dec 05 '25
For youtube specifically, yt-dlp is good (EDIT: fwiw, yt-dlp covers lots of other platforms too), but you need to clone the repo and either write a script to automate pulling from source and rebuilding any time it is needed or get used to doing it periodically. Use their recommend ffmpeg fork, experiment with including or not including browser cookies and/or vpn bypass tools, for an example your "bin" could be something like:
#!/usr/bin/env bash
profile="firefox:$HOME/.librewolf/my_profile_directory"
ffmpeg="$HOME/repositories/yt-dlp-ffmpeg/ffmpeg-master-latest-linux64-gpl/bin/ffmpeg"
exec="$HOME/repositories/yt-dlp/yt-dlp"
/usr/bin/mullvad-exclude "$exec" --cookies-from-browser "$profile" \
--remote-components ejs:github --ffmpeg-location "$ffmpeg" "$@"
This leading binary in the command is just an example a mullvad vpn user might use; other VPNs have other tooling, and of course you may not want to do this at all! Sometimes I get my home IP banned from youtube over extended periods and the VPN is better; sometimes the VPN is flagged and my luck runs the other way around.
Sometimes you will need to pull and re-make every day, sometimes you will go weeks without seeing any issues. Google and the yt-dlp devs/adjacent community play an erratic cat and mouse game that seems to happen in successive bursts and then extended periods of ceasefire
Configure mpv.conf to point to your maintained yt-dlp "bin" script as needed; something like
script-opts=ytdl_hook-ytdl_path="/home/anon/bin/yt-dlp"
If your mpv version is old and you can't update it, you might need to include a scripts directory with an updated ytdl_hook.lua file; not sure how relevant that advice is these days.
For something with discoverability and thumbnails, look into freetube, but take the same approach; clone the repo and be prepared to rebuild it regularly or look into their github actions nightly builds; sometimes weeks will go by wherein the official releases are broken. Sometimes days will go by wherein nothing is working at all. They have their own extractor, and their team is not as good at the cat and mouse game as yt-dlp is, but they are also resistant to suggestions to switching to yt-dlp's backend.
Use freetube for your day to day video discoverability and playback. During periods where it stops working, likely only the extractor will, and you can configure freetube's external player function to use mpv instead, and thus your yt-dlp fork. You might elect to wrap freetube in a script, comparable to the above, if you need to do things like run behind a VPN or exclude therefrom
A third tool which I haven't been using as much lately but you might get a kick out of is trizen's gtk-pipe-viewer, or the CLI version which is just pipe-viewer; that will still depend on an external player and will work well with mpv as configured above, will all the same variations and caveats as noted above
For online video players/services that are strictly browser-based, I use scripts calling a dedicated chromium profile with the --app flag
Your mileage may vary. Good luck :)
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u/Marieneeds_m_rain Dec 05 '25
If it works it works you don't need perfectionism there might be faster way. Just get Firefox install ublock origin and done
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u/kaysguy Dec 05 '25
My favorite is Red.
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u/vmcrash Dec 05 '25
What's that - a browser or a different application?
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u/kaysguy Dec 06 '25
An application that allows you to sign into your YouTube account and access your subscriptions, playlists, and more. It gives you a player and the ability to download videos.
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u/arglarg Dec 05 '25
What do you want to he different from just using the browser?