Invidious — Alternative Privacy-First Frontend for YouTube

What it is

Invidious is an open-source alternative frontend for YouTube that proxies video content and strips all Google tracking. It runs as a self-hosted web application written in Crystal, serving YouTube videos without ads, without JavaScript requirements, and without Google account dependencies.

Privacy-conscious users, self-hosters, and organizations that want to provide YouTube access without exposing users to Google telemetry use Invidious. Public instances are also available for users who do not want to self-host.

How it saves time or tokens

Invidious eliminates ad watching time and reduces page load times by stripping heavy JavaScript bundles from YouTube. For developers and researchers who scrape or process YouTube content, Invidious provides a cleaner API for accessing video metadata, captions, and comments without dealing with YouTube's obfuscated frontend code.

How to use

1. Use a public instance or self-host:

# Self-host with Docker
git clone https://github.com/iv-org/invidious.git
cd invidious
cp docker-compose.yml docker-compose.override.yml
docker compose up -d

1. Open http://localhost:3000 in your browser.
2. Search for videos, subscribe to channels (stored locally), and watch without Google tracking.

Example

# Access Invidious API for video metadata
curl 'http://localhost:3000/api/v1/videos/dQw4w9WgXcQ' | python3 -m json.tool

# Get video captions
curl 'http://localhost:3000/api/v1/captions/dQw4w9WgXcQ'

# Search videos via API
curl 'http://localhost:3000/api/v1/search?q=linux+terminal+tools'

Related on TokRepo

• AI tools for web scraping — Tools for extracting and processing web content
• Self-hosted tools — Applications you can run on your own infrastructure

Common pitfalls

• Public instances frequently go down or get rate-limited by YouTube. For reliable access, self-host your own instance.
• Invidious depends on reverse-engineering YouTube's internal API, which YouTube changes regularly. Keep your instance updated to avoid breakage.
• Some YouTube features (live chat, community posts, premieres) are not supported or have limited functionality in Invidious.