lent9004

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Browse and watch videos in FreshRSS like it's YouTube: "Youlag theme/extension" (v3.0.2) (lemmy.world)
 

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/25939893

"Youlag" is a theme and extension for the feed aggregator FreshRSS. It delivers a video-focused browsing experience for your YouTube RSS feeds, all within FreshRSS, with a sleek theme and extra features.

Supports video feeds from YouTube, Invidious, and Piped.

Why?

The general idea is to subscribe to YouTube channels via RSS, allowing you to follow your favorite creators without an account. With Youlag installed, you can browse and watch videos in a familiar, YouTube-like interface.

More features are planned, including video queuing (with some limitations).

Git repository for more details:

https://github.com/civilblur/youlag

Features:

  • ⭐ Optimized for Video Viewing
    • Browse your YouTube, Invidious, Piped RSS subscriptions with ease.
    • Clean, familiar video platform layout.
    • Fullscreen viewing for videos and feed items.
    • Quickly exit videos with Esc key.
    • Shortcuts for external viewing: "Invidious", "YouTube", or "YouTube embed view" (for less distraction).
    • Dark mode.
  • 🖥️ Desktop & Mobile
    • Reponsive design.
    • Redesigned menus for better one-handed navigation.
    • Improved readability and legibility across devices.

Since v3.0.0, and currently v3.0.2, Youlag has been refactored from a CSS theme to work more like an extension. This has improved stability and allowed me to add more features.

It's still not yet a native FreshRSS extension, but my plan is to convert it to one.

192
Browse and watch videos in FreshRSS like it's YouTube: "Youlag theme/extension" (v3.0.2) (lemmy.world)
submitted 12 hours ago* (last edited 12 hours ago) by lent9004@lemmy.world to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world
9 comments fedilink
 

"Youlag" is a theme and extension for the feed aggregator FreshRSS. It delivers a video-focused browsing experience for your YouTube RSS feeds, all within FreshRSS, with a sleek theme and extra features.

Supports video feeds from YouTube, Invidious, and Piped.

Why?

The general idea is to subscribe to YouTube channels via RSS, allowing you to follow your favorite creators without an account. With Youlag installed, you can browse and watch videos in a familiar, YouTube-like interface.

More features are planned, including video queuing (with some limitations).

Git repository for more details:

https://github.com/civilblur/youlag

Features:

  • ⭐ Optimized for Video Viewing
    • Browse your YouTube, Invidious, Piped RSS subscriptions with ease.
    • Clean, familiar video platform layout.
    • Fullscreen viewing for videos and feed items.
    • Quickly exit videos with Esc key.
    • Shortcuts for external viewing: "Invidious", "YouTube", or "YouTube embed view" (for less distraction).
    • Dark mode.
  • 🖥️ Desktop & Mobile
    • Reponsive design.
    • Redesigned menus for better one-handed navigation.
    • Improved readability and legibility across devices.

Since v3.0.0, and currently v3.0.2, Youlag has been refactored from a CSS theme to work more like an extension. This has improved stability and allowed me to add more features.

It's still not yet a native FreshRSS extension, but my plan is to convert it to one.

What’s the newest way of watching YouTube? in c/selfhosted@lemmy.world
[–] lent9004@lemmy.world 1 points 1 month ago

No worries! This setup ended up working better than I thought, and I've been using it as my primary way of interfacing with youtube.

What’s the newest way of watching YouTube? in c/selfhosted@lemmy.world
[–] lent9004@lemmy.world 7 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

Addressing the subscribing part; I had similar requirements, so I started subscribing via FreshRSS while using a custom theme to give it a YouTube-like experience.

I shared the setup a few month ago here: https://lemmy.world/post/21381606

Edit: One of the benefits of using selfhosted RSS with a web interface is that it is platform agnostic.

Browse FreshRSS like YouTube: "Youlag Theme for FreshRSS" in c/selfhosted@lemmy.world
[–] lent9004@lemmy.world 1 points 3 months ago

Looking forward to it, feel free and share it once it's ready, or if you need any feedback.

Browse FreshRSS like YouTube: "Youlag Theme for FreshRSS" in c/selfhosted@lemmy.world
[–] lent9004@lemmy.world 1 points 3 months ago

Hopefully this will spark some interest in that!

Browse FreshRSS like YouTube: "Youlag Theme for FreshRSS" in c/selfhosted@lemmy.world
[–] lent9004@lemmy.world 3 points 3 months ago (2 children)

I have limited knowledge of what limitations extensions have at the moment, but considering FreshRSS is server side rendered, integrating DeArrow on a deeper level would be ideal (if possible). It would mean that the thumbnail and title you get when you load the page would immediately be the non-clickbait ones, and it would only need to run it once for each video (if cached).

I did however test DeArrow's API and it was very straightforward. However, running it as a client-side script would essentially mean that every video would have to be checked and "DeArrowed" on the fly, and it would do that for every page refresh. That might not be very performant for you, nor DeArrow's free API service.

In short, it should be possible, but not ideal. I'm personally interested in the idea as well, but I'm not sure if I'll have time to tackle this.

Browse FreshRSS like YouTube: "Youlag Theme for FreshRSS" in c/selfhosted@lemmy.world
[–] lent9004@lemmy.world 9 points 3 months ago

It applies the theme across the entire instance!

I believe it could be done however, but it's likely more suitable as an extension, opposed to a "theme" that relies on client-side css/js. I haven't explored the documentations for extensions as I intended this to be a "quick" solution to get a youtube-like experience.

128
Browse FreshRSS like YouTube: "Youlag Theme for FreshRSS" (lemmy.world)
submitted 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) by lent9004@lemmy.world to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world
8 comments fedilink
 

"Youlag Theme for FreshRSS" provides a video-focused browsing experience for your RSS subscriptions. It tries to provide a similar experience to YouTube, primarily through its layout using CSS, but also a little bit of Javascript.

Git repo for more details: https://github.com/civilblur/youlag

In case you're not aware, "FreshRSS is a self-hosted RSS feed aggregator".

The idea is that you subscribe to content creators through YouTube's RSS feed https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id={id_goes_here}, then browse, watch, save to playlist ("label"), right within FreshRSS.

There's also third-party extension for FreshRSS that provides the ability to use Invidious, but as we all know, the public instances are unfortunately struggling quite a bit as of writing.