
Show HN: Tube – Minimalist YouTube - madamelic
https://tube.quinzel.tech/
======
RodgerTheGreat
For some time I've been tinkering with a script which manages my own fine-
grained youtube subscription preferences, periodically scrapes various pages
for metadata, and then as necessary extracts videos by using the youtube-dl
utility. The end result is a directory on my machine which always has a few
interesting videos to watch, ad-free, tracking-free, network connection free,
using my favorite full-featured video playback tools.

I think others seeking a minimalist youtube experience might enjoy youtube-dl:
[https://rg3.github.io/youtube-dl/](https://rg3.github.io/youtube-dl/)

~~~
ehPReth
Do you have a way to ensure you get the highest quality?

I do similar with cron but often get videos as they're still processing (and
thus only at lower qualities). One issue is the channels I 'subscribe' to
don't always output at the same resolution and frame rate.. so I can't do a
simple 'is video 4k60' test.

~~~
wingerlang
Could you look at the upload date and wait a certain amount until the
processing is more likely to be done?

~~~
rcthompson
That's an excellent idea. You can work out a reasonable amount of time to
allow YouTube to do the video processing, and then use youtube-dl's
"\--datebefore" option to only download videos that are at least that old.
You'll have to manually compute the date and time for X hours in the past, I
suppose.

~~~
ehPReth
Thanks for the hint wrt --datebefore. I'll give it a go :)

------
butz
This could be "code golfed" into even smaller app. Ditch all third party
resources: jquery (use vanilla js), stripe (why?), fontawesome (just use some
inline svg symbols), tachyons (you could probably write few custom CSS rules
yourself and throw in some minimalistic styling too). Not sure about
usefulness of service workers, as youtube app won't work offline.

~~~
madamelic
Heh.

Yeah, you kind of got me there. I re-use the same template for all of my
sites. Those must've missed my trimming. I'll remove them tonight.

Thanks!

------
madamelic
Hey all!

I tossed this together because I had trouble with YouTube and its rabbit hole.
I wanted a way to still watch my favorite people without a lot of noise +
distraction. I also use YouTube for live music while working (which is an
issue if I get distracted by a neat looking video)

So I made Tube. It is just a search box and it shows you the top few results,
you click on one and all you get is the player.

Let me know what you think. This is the first time I'm showing it off so there
is likely still some rough edges! :)

~~~
mariedm
First, I'm probably not the only one but I find ads really annoying. Also, I
always find myself spending so much time on Youtube when I was just coming for
one video, that can be problematic. I think Tube is simple but effective.

~~~
madamelic
Unfortunately, it won't filter out pre-roll ads, but there is always YouTube
Red, if you dislike ads and don't hate Google.

~~~
sakuronto
And there are always ad blockers, if you dislike ads but do hate Google!

~~~
ucaetano
And hate the content producers too!

~~~
ealhad
All the content producers I follow have either a Patreon or a Tipeee page,
which allows me to give them some money (probably much more than what they
would earn if I watched the ads).

------
lucb1e
I started a project to make websites like this for all websites, but didn't
get very far. I feel like pretty much every other website could use a
lightweight and fast version. Creating those versions is a lot of boring work,
though, as you're just parsing DOMs or APIs and there is no challenge to it.
(Never mind when they change the HTML again.) Thanks for creating this one!

~~~
JulienRbrt
One thing I love to do is to block all the garbage of websites with uBlock
Origin by adding my own filters. That does not give a result as good as this
project but it quicker to do.

~~~
lucb1e
Yes. One example where this worked particularly well for me is the Youtube
homepage, where I blocked all the content so only the search bar and sidebar
are still visible. They've since changed the html and I have since made two
workarounds for the homepage, but for years that saved me from getting
distracted by all the crap people watch and forgetting what I was going to
search for.

------
bussierem
If I could make a design suggestion, from a minimalist perspective:

When showing results, the text that you choose to show kinda feels like the
design equivalent of "HEY YO WELCOME TO MY CHANNEL MASH THAT SUBSCRIBE
BUTTON!!!".

When looking at what to display for a video, maybe consider just <Video
Title>, and <Channel Link> below that?

Other thing - Maybe have some kind of simple "searching..." indicator? I hit
enter, and the feedback for it was nil, so I just assumed my keystroke didn't
actually search, then all of a sudden stuff just popped up.

Other than that, this is really cool! Nice and simple, very usable.

~~~
madamelic
>When looking at what to display for a video, maybe consider just <Video
Title>, and <Channel Link> below that?

I can definitely do that. The search term I was using while designing returned
much nicer descriptions. I'll just remove them completely.

>Other thing - Maybe have some kind of simple "searching..." indicator?

I agree. It is definitely an oversight. Thanks! :)

~~~
bussierem
Sounds like a fun project, I'm glad it turned out so well - I wish you luck
with everything!

------
krrrh
Hijacking this thread to share other approaches to YouTube without YouTube.
This site takes a YouTube URL, extracts the audio and adds a link to your
personal podcast feed on huffduffer. It’s great for loading a bunch of
interviews, lectures, and other things that don’t require the video into your
podcast player.

[https://snarfed.org/2015-03-07_huffduff-
video](https://snarfed.org/2015-03-07_huffduff-video)

~~~
epiapp
Another approach for YouTube without YouTube: subscribe to YouTube channels
and playlists by RSS. I set up an app for this. Just head over to
[https://www.epiyoutube.com](https://www.epiyoutube.com). Or whenever you're
on YouTube and viewing a channel, user, or playlist, just add 'epi' to the
url, right in front of 'youtube,' and there's your RSS feed.

Oh, and another approach: watch YouTube videos on Bing Videos. I actually use
that more than I use my RSS app. Just make sure you've got your adblocker on,
and you're all set.

------
gnuvince
I searched for "darkest dungeon" and first hits were for Ed Sheeran and One
Direction. I know searching is a tricky problem, but this is ridiculously bad.

~~~
austenallred
I got the same results for a completely unrelated term. Probably something
hard-coded it's falling back on?

~~~
godot
I just tried "darkest dungeon" and didn't get that, and it's the same as the
ones on
[https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=darkest+dungeon](https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=darkest+dungeon)
.

Actually, I can't see why OP wouldn't just use YT's search API (they have
one). I'm pretty sure that's what OP uses. So yeah, like you said, probably
some hard-coded fall-back.

------
iceprey
I think this is a good idea, but it seems like you've made the .css file more
minimalist than the actual website. I guess there's a distinction to be drawn
between making YouTube less appealing to get distracted by, and making the
YouTube experience nicer by reducing distraction and noise. If you're going
for the latter, here are a few tweaks I would suggest:

* Pick a more aesthetically pleasing than default font, ditch the blue default link colors.

* Normalize the thumbnail size.

* Consider normalizing the video titles to all lowercase. It's still possible to search for something and see all caps everywhere which feels very noisy to my brain.

* Consider leaving the descriptions off altogether

But still, very cool idea!

~~~
madamelic
Thanks for the recommendations. I will definitely work on these. :)

------
jaipilot747
Kind of tangential, but I am enjoying NewPipe[0], which can be installed from
F-droid. Background audio, video on overlay mode so you can watch it while
using some other app, downloading videos/audio. Supports YouTube and
SoundCloud.

[0] [https://newpipe.schabi.org/](https://newpipe.schabi.org/)

------
ealhad
If you want a standalone app, I would recommand youtube-viewer:
[https://github.com/trizen/youtube-viewer](https://github.com/trizen/youtube-
viewer)

CLI _and_ GTK!

------
bagre45
If you are looking for a lightweight, less minimalist youtube interface, there
is tonvid[1], used by smtube.

[1] [http://www.tonvid.com/](http://www.tonvid.com/)

------
jmadsen
Are there any alternatives out there that let me:

1) Oauth2 into my account so I can see _new_ postings in my subscriptions (not
"the one you've been avoiding clicking for 8 weeks")

2) Minimalist dashboard that doesn't have all the "recommended for you"
clutter

3) Simple search results like the one here?

4) A "show me similar" button next to vids that would let me pick out my own
recommendations if I want to expand on what I'm watching, and not get signed
up for all the crap their broken algos throw at me

------
drivers99
I'm seeing a permanent back arrow overlapping the video itself. Don't cover up
the screen.

At the end of the video, it still shows recommendations. Do you have any
control over that? Can you set it to not show recommendations?

It is missing comments. I can see why you would choose that, but I'd rather
have comments (something I also miss when I watch YouTube on a Roku) and still
not have recommendations because they lead to watching too many videos.

~~~
madamelic
>I'm seeing a permanent back arrow overlapping the video itself. Don't cover
up the screen.

Removed that. Originally I wanted it to make it easy to go search more, but
meh, people can use the back button. :)

>At the end of the video, it still shows recommendations. Do you have any
control over that? Can you set it to not show recommendations?

Not as far as I know. And from what I've read from YouTube's ToS, it wouldn't
be ok with them. (Can't disable functionality)

>It is missing comments. I can see why you would choose that, but I'd rather
have comments (something I also miss when I watch YouTube on a Roku) and still
not have recommendations because they lead to watching too many videos.

I'll consider adding them on dropdown. :)

~~~
detaro
The embedding API has an option for related videos at the end:
[https://developers.google.com/youtube/player_parameters#rel](https://developers.google.com/youtube/player_parameters#rel)

------
mysterypie
This does not work for me. No matter what I search for I get the same results,
namely, Marvel Studios' Avengers, Ed Sheeran, One Direction, etc.

~~~
mysterypie
I went back and tried it again a day later, and now it works -- it finds
videos related to the topic I search for. Whatever the problem was, the author
has now fixed it.

------
tejasmanohar
Does this seem down for anyone else? All my requests seem to be "pending" in
Chrome's network tab.

------
textmode
I have a 2-line shell script using only sed and curl (or equivalent) that
obviates any need for youtube-dl, python, third party websites, etc. Unlike
youtube-dl it will not download videos where the uploader is some commercial
media outlet that wants to prohibit downloading.

~~~
ravenstine
Can you post this somewhere? Maybe a Github Gist?

~~~
textmode
As requested, see

[https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=textmode](https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=textmode)

Example usage: argv0 22 file

Where argv0 is the name of the script.

Where 22 is itag no. for HD mp4. 18 is itag no. for a lower quality mp4.

Will save video as file.mp4

If get HTTP 302, then retry.

If get HTTP 403, then retry or give up; video is probably commercial in nature
and has restrictions.

~~~
ravenstine
That links to your user profile. Wrong link?

------
007lva
Looks nice, very similar to [https://invidio.us/](https://invidio.us/)

[https://github.com/omarroth/invidious](https://github.com/omarroth/invidious)
(written in Crystal)

------
kang
Few years ago there were sites like cull.tv and mox.tv that were really
amazing interfaces for youtube. Its sad that now doesn't even exist a demo
somewhere(?)

~~~
bluedino
I thought there were also sites like this that you could make music playlists
on and share them with others

------
blablablerg
Thanks a lot for this! When I need to focus, sometimes I need to look stuff up
on youtube and then I get distracted by all the clickbait meme shite.

Now I can use this site.

------
stockkid
I really like the minimal design.

One thing: when I am in the video view, I'd like <body> margin to be 0 so that
there is no awkward white space around the video.

------
geuis
So minimal it doesn’t do anything on a mobile device?

------
AlphaMike
Yes, but It's really easy thing to do, they should make this greater than this
time. It's not good just based on widget.

------
tobyhinloopen
Why is the aspect ratio of the videos weird? Fixed height, ~100% width? Why
not 16:9 of window-size?

------
pandasun
This is so great! Could you tell us a bit about how it works behind the
scenes?

~~~
madamelic
Yeah, it uses the YouTube API to search for videos. I am using another service
to re-size the images to the right size (it still isn't perfect as you may
notice), because some banners are slightly different sizes.

Then, on the /watch page, I embedded the YouTube player with a responsive
design so you can view on both mobile + desktop (before, the player was HUGE
on mobile)

It is quite simple thankfully.

~~~
jasonkostempski
The responsive design is great. I've been wishing that would become a standard
option on video sites for some time. Full screen is rarely what I want and
Theater Mode doesn't cut it. One suggestion, a black background and, if
possible, vertically centered video might make it feel a bit more polished
when the window ratio doesn't match the video.

------
Douger
I have wanted exactly this for over a year. Thank you for making it.

------
startupflix
Brilliant stuff! followed the development on wip.chat

------
InterestBazinga
I really appreciate this. Thank you.

------
Bulbasaur2015
very cool. i prefer this than then the real one. YT has too much fluff and
rabbit hole material

------
nerdymanchild
IANAL but I think this might be a violation of YouTube ToS

~~~
madamelic
Ah, ok.

Hopefully they don't nuke my account.

No scraping or mean stuff, it's all above board and using Google's APIs.

~~~
nerdymanchild
Check the ToS of their APIs. I'm somewhat certain you aren't allowed to build
alternative interfaces into their content.

~~~
godot
I'm not OP, but that would be strange -- they offer a search API and a video
player API. It would mean that they offer all the tools for you to build an
alternative interface and then not let you do that?

~~~
ashnehete
True all these tools together can be used for building an alternative
interface, but the company actually have APIs so that external services are
able to integrate into their ecosystem. All the APIs are meant to be used
together but each service can choose the API they see fit.

------
baal80spam
This is awesome, thank you!

------
of
This is freaking perfect. Thank you

------
semasad
Minimalist != ugly and unuseful.

