YouTube is a video-sharing website, created in February 2005, and purchased by Google in November 2006. The web service lets billions of people find, watch, and share originally-created videos. It displays a wide variety of user-generated and corporate media video. It also offers a forum for people to communicate with others around the world, and acts as a distribution platform.
A common complaint about YouTube is that to watch the material you need to use a web browser. Fortunately, some funky developers have created applications that allow you to bypass the web-only barrier of YouTube. The software allows users to access YouTube in a different way, creating a TV-like experience.
This article focuses on the finest graphical tools. All of the tools are free and open source software.
Here’s our verdict captured in a legendary LinuxLinks-ratings chart.
| YouTube Tools | |
|---|---|
| FreeTube | Privacy-based YouTube app |
| Media Downloader | Frontend for youtube-dl, gallery-dl, Lux, you-get, svtplay-dl, aria2c, ... |
| pipe-viewer | Lightweight YouTube client without requiring an API key |
| Piped | Uses NewPipe Extractor, a library for extracting |
| OmniGet | Download media and other files from a broad range of online sources |
| AudioTube | Qt-based music streamer |
| ClipGrab | Downloader for YouTube and other sites |
| Minitube | Application for watching YouTube without using Flash |
| Materialious | Fontend for YouTube and Invidious |
| youtube-local | Browser-based YouTube client |
| SMTube | Search, play and download YouTube videos |
| Pipeline | Watch YouTube and PeerTube videos |
| MellowPlayer | Multi-platform cloud music integration |
| ytdl-gui | Graphical interface for yt-dlp |
| Youwee | Built with Tauri and React |
| PlasmaTube | Designed to be integrated with KDE Plasma |
| PsTube | Flutter-based video client |
| Video Downloader | Tool which lets you download videos from YouTube and other websites |
| VacuumTube | Unofficial wrapper of YouTube Leanback |
| NeoDLP | Feature-rich video/audio downloader based on yt-dlp |
| Mixtapes | Modern, Linux-first YouTube Music player |
| Sunder | Built with Tauri v2 and Rust |
| SpMp | YouTube music client with a focus on customization |
| NouTube | YouTube and YouTube Music in a single app |
This article has been updated to reflect the changes outlined in our recent announcement.
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FreeTube is really hot. I love it.
I agree, I would give it a 9.5 score. It’s a great way of feeding my YouTube habit while maintaining my privacy.
I’m impressed by the thoroughness and quality of your work.
Personally, I use Harmony Music, one of those little-known gems
that lets you listen to music and audio from YouTube without having to use
the web. Apart from being open-source, it lets you download tracks and
customize it, so it’s worth checking out.
Unfortunately V1.12.0 is the last maintained release of Harmony Music as an online streaming app