I can use some instances of Invidious in the browser but I seem not to be able to do it in Freetube.
I tried the following settings:
- Preffered API Backend: Invidious API
- Current Invidious Instance: https://inv.nadeko.net
- Proxy Videos Through Invidious: ON
Freetube can get my subscriptions but I cannot play any videos:
The Invidious link for the video in the browser works.
There are two likely issues.
One is that the very few remaining invidious instances are extremely unreliable(Since they are constantly getting blocked by Youtube).
The other is that I don’t think many, if any, remaining instances work with the “Proxy Videos Through Invidious” setting.
I gave up on it. I started having Freetube proxy my videos through Tor instead. It has it’s own challenges but, for me, it is less frustrating then going through Invidious.
Do you have tor.service running and then configure Freetube with its proxy host and port?
Won’t you get blocked connecting to YT servers often?
Also, if Invidious is useless in combination with Freetube, what advantages doyou see with using it over, for example, a “torifed” Firefox/Librewolf profile with uBlock, Sponsorblock and Feedbro for the subscriptions?
I can see that Freetube has perhaps a more convenient UI for arranging the subscriptions etc but I mean technically speaking.
Yes.
Sometimes, I added a hotkey for restarting the service. It is an inconvenience for sure but such is the nature of privacy.
All that being said, there is no perfect answer here. Google wants your data and has made it difficult to watch videos anonymously.
It used to be much easier and more fun.
Thanks! Those are some good points worth considering.
Also, just another question: is restarting the service the only way to get another exit node?
That’s for sure! Most everything used to be much more fun!
No idea to be honest.
I never looked into it. It takes less than a second for the service to restart so I never even looked for a different method. 
For assigning a hotkey to the command restarting the service, do you need to run systemctl “sudo-less” (or password lesss)?
A few options:
Even though I have it on a hotkey, I actually usually do the last one because it is faster than entering my password.
I guess this is what I’ll be doing as well.
I think I am going to stick with Freetube a while longer with the method you described.
Thank you so much @dalto for your time and sharing your insight!
I see the suggestions cross over and it disturbs me they know who I am even on Freetube. TMI, as you said, gets broadcast in any non-Tor setup.
Digression; do not mean to hijack.
They can make a digital fingerprint from your browser, why not from another app ?
I use Freetube as a standalone app. youtube I have to screen stuff in a chromium knockoff. makes sense
Since Freetube is built upon Electron, so it is in a sense a “Chromium browser”. I am not sure if Electron has some counter fingerprinting measure implemented.
Please correct me as my understanding of these technologies is rather shallow at best.
Freetube, when used normally, is just a straight youtube client so they would have your IP.
When you proxy through invidious or TOR, they won’t know who you are as easily.
Here’s what Freetube say about privacy :
When you make a request to YouTube (regardless of your API choice), it is unknown what YouTube may do behind the scenes with that request. YouTube could possibly have some tracking measures done within the requests we make, but there is no way to know for sure. Even if it does, it would be much more difficult for YouTube to track you individually since you are not logged in and because there is much less information to use to identify you.
I think it’s not because Youtube/Google can’t track you easily that they can’t track you at all, and they can make a fingerprint even if you’re not logged in.
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