Invidious

What it's good for#

Every time you open YouTube, Google learns a little more about you. Invidious sits in between: you search and watch on your own server, and it's your server that talks to YouTube. There are no adverts, no autoplaying rabbit hole, and no sign-in needed. With an Invidious account you can subscribe to channels and keep playlists, all stored on your server rather than with Google.

It suits anyone who wants YouTube's videos without its habits, and households where you'd rather the children's viewing didn't feed an advertising profile.

LibrePortal has two more apps that do the same for other sites: Redlib for Reddit and Soundcloak for SoundCloud.

Signing in#

You don't need an account to watch. Open Invidious with the Web Interface button and search.

Accounts are for keeping subscriptions, playlists and your watch history. Invidious doesn't create one at install, and it doesn't have an administrator in the usual sense: nobody can take over the server by signing up first. What anyone who can reach it can do is create their own account, because Invidious leaves sign-ups open (behind a simple captcha). That's one of the reasons to keep it private; see below.

Adding accounts#

Use the Tools tab to make accounts for the people in your house, rather than asking them to sign up.

Reset User Password, List Users and Delete User Account do what they say. Deleting an account removes its subscriptions and playlists with it.

Everyday use#

Search works as you'd expect. Subscribing to a channel adds it to your Subscriptions feed, which shows new videos in date order with no recommendations mixed in. If you're moving from YouTube, Invidious can import your subscriptions, so you don't have to find every channel again by hand; look in its settings for importing and exporting data.

Most of Invidious's choices are in its Preferences: the default video quality, dark mode, whether to play audio only, whether videos autoplay. When you're signed in, they follow you from device to device.

Private or public#

Invidious is marked Public in the catalogue. For most households, private is the better choice. It stops strangers creating accounts on your server. It also stops your server becoming a free YouTube proxy for anyone who finds it: heavy traffic from strangers is a good way to get your server's address throttled by YouTube. From outside the house, the LibrePortal VPN gets you in. With a domain, it gets its own address at invidious.<your domain>.

Good to know#

• It's left out of the nightly backups to start with. That's fine if nobody uses an account, since the videos themselves always come from YouTube. If you rely on your subscriptions and playlists, switch on Enable Backups on its Config tab; see App pages and settings.
• Its database password is generated. From 0.4.7 the password Invidious uses for its own database comes from LibrePortal's generator. Installs made before 0.4.7 used the same example password as every other Invidious install. The database only answers inside Docker's own network, so nobody outside can reach it, but you can move an older install to a generated password by pressing Update Configuration on its Config tab. Your accounts, subscriptions and playlists stay as they are.
• Updates are automatic, following Invidious's latest release, with a backup taken first. Invidious changes often to keep up with YouTube, so staying current matters more than usual.
• You can run several copies, each with its own accounts; see More than one copy of an app.