FreeTube

FreeTube is a complete tool that allows viewing YouTube content without being tracked, eliminates ads, and enables channel subscription without prior login or sign up.

YouTube is getting more and more aggressive with its ads. What used to be a normal ad a couple of years back has now turned into obsessive and uncontrolled advertisements. For example, YouTube currently displays up to three or four commercials during a 30-minute video.

With FreeTube, you get access to YouTube's content without ads, annoying side banners, or unwanted commercials. Moreover, you don't need to log in or to sign up (if you don't have a YouTube account). Now, all your preferences are going to be saved on your physical machine, and all subscriptions, your search history, and saved videos are going to be kept safe, locally. And the best thing is that you will no longer be tracked.

One of the biggest issues you eliminate by avoiding tracking is the fact that you keep your mind and decision power balanced. Google, YouTube, and other social media channels tend to 'keep you in the loop.' They track your activity, understand your patterns, and deliver you more similar content. As a result, you enjoy the validation of being right, get biased, and lower your level of critical thinking.

FreeTube is an incredibly performant tool. Firstly, it enables YouTube access via their current API or via Invidious's API; as a result, you can always open a piece of content in Insidious with a direct command, from FreeTube.

Moreover, you can download video thumbnails by right-clicking them (using the 'Save Image As' option); also, you can download YouTube videos (at a chosen video quality and frame rate), and, optionally, you can download a video's subtitles.

When it comes to its interface, FreeTube is impressively versatile. It allows for visual and functioning adaptations. There are plenty of visual tweaks that you can apply and many color customizations — for the base theme, the main color theme, and the secondary color theme.

All things considered, FreeTube is a super-promising program. Although still in Beta, the tool offers a crazy amount of features and has an impressive roadmap. A small minus would be the search function that might throw an error from time to time. Other than that, FreeTube is an excellent alternative to traditional YouTube watching and, overall, it is an exciting initiative.