I’m a very avid YouTube user, I’ve payed for Premium for the last couple of years but am becoming less and less comfortable with it.

YouTube is actually the last Google-service (besides Android, but there are plans to ditch Google there using something like /e/OS) I’m left using after switching to Proton Mail (instead of GMail), Here WeGo (instead Maps), TransIP Stack (instead of Drive) and a self-hosted Memos (instead of Keep).

I tend to watch YouTube on my TV by setting up a queue of videos on my phone and then casting them to my TV. This is all ad-free because of my Premium subscription, but of course everything is tracked.

Is there a way for me to watch YouTube, preferrable on my TV with my phone as remote control, without having a Google-account? I found NewPipe on FDroid, but that sadly does not provide casting (I managed to get it partially working by using VLC, but no queue and no sound whatever I tried)

There are also things like Inoreader that people use, but I believe that does not have queueing and casting as well, so it would not really work in my situation.

Sidenote: I like the idea of creators receiving at least a bit of the payments I make as a reward for the content they post, but I reckon that with something like NewPipe/Piped an ad-blocker in place those would be lost.

Anyone got some ingenious solutions working?

Edit: my TV currently is an Android TV, but that may be up for change sometime later this year, so any external solution like a stick or RPi or something would also be up for consideration.

  • cobysev@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    13 hours ago

    Personally, I hooked up a micro PC to my TV to use it as a giant monitor. I use a small wireless keyboard and mouse to control it from the couch.

    Then I use Firefox with uBlock Origin (and Proton VPN) to block ads while I access YouTube from a browser on my TV.

    I’m very anti-advertisement, so I don’t even watch TV anymore. My TV is a glorified streaming PC; I stream all my shows and movies online and block ads that way. No commercial breaks!

    I also built my own Plex media server and ripped all my DVD and Blu-ray discs to it (and even some old VHS tapes!), so I can stream my own media from anywhere; through my phone, tablet, laptop, etc. I primarily use it to watch my movies and TV shows on my living room TV.

    I also ripped all my old music CDs to mp3 and added them to Plex, so I now have my own ad-free music I can listen to on the go. I stream it through the Plexamp app on my phone, which I connect to my car’s Bluetooth. It’s like ad-free radio, except I can play whatever I want to listen to in the moment.