Features ⬥ Setup ⬥ Usage ⬥ Issues ⬥ Shortcuts

A self-hosted alternative YouTube front-end.

• Responsive sane interface
• Light and dark themes
• Clean compact search results: see 30 results at once instead of 3, no "People also watched" or massive shorts carousel
• Custom suggestions algorithm based on user-generated playlists, delivers content related to the current video rather than what was watched before and irrelevant popular junk
• Pulls data through a combination of yt-dlp and any working Invidious or Piped instances
• Loads video data directly from Google servers at full speed, HLS and DASH supported
• No ads, no tracking, no YouTube scripts and cookies
• Precise dates
• Directly accessible player controls, always visible outside of the video when not playing in full screen
• Minimal seek bar always visible in full screen
• 2.5x and 3x playback speeds available
• Cast to other devices
• Picture in Picture
• Loop and screenshot frames (via video right click menu)
• Double current speed by holding left click on video (up to 6x total, no need for Premium!)
• Chapter markers
• Seek bar hover preview
• Audio and subtitle track selection
• No AI dubs
• Comments
• All channel pages (except posts), home carousels and channel search
• Embedded playlists navigation
• Autoplay only for background tab playlists
• RSS feeds
• Classic preview slideshow on thumbnail hover
• Statistics auto-reload for recent videos
• Shorts as normal watch pages
• Livestreams (no chat, use the "pop out" feature of the original YT page)
• Copy original YouTube URL for any page quick button
• Return YouTube Dislike integrated

Supported YouTube pages:

• Videos: /watch, /ID, /v/ID, /live/ID, /embed/ID, (start/t/list parameters OK)
• Shorts: /shorts/ID (uses standard interface)
• Clips: /clip/ID
• Searches: /results (including filtering/sorting)
• Hashtags: /hashtag/TAG
• Users: /user/ID, /user/ID/TAB, /user/ID/search
• Playlists: /playlist, /watch_videos?video_ids=eXaMPLE1,examPLE2,...
• Channels:
  • /NAME, /NAME/TAB, /NAME/search
  • /channel/ID, /channel/ID/TAB, /channel/ID/search
  • /c/ID, /c/ID/TAB, /c/ID/search
• RSS feeds:
  • For channels: /feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=ID
  • For playlists: /feeds/videos.xml?playlist_id=ID

Missing/planned:

• SponsorBlock integration
• DeArrow integration
• Live chats
• "Most replayed" heatmap
• Auto-generated captions

From your system's package manager, or by following the instructions from the following links, install uv and deno. Then:

git clone https://github.com/xrun1/insidious
cd insidious

Start with uv run insidious. Check uv run insidious --help for supported options. To update the program later, do git pull in the cloned repository folder before running.

On Windows, the program can also be started with .venv\Scripts\insidious.exe. Creating a shortcut to that executable in %appdata%\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Startup will start Insidious on login automatically.

An up-to-date browser (released after December 2023) is required.

• Go to the address shown when you start the server, http://localhost:3030 by default
• The https://youtube.com or https://youtu.be part of any URL can be replaced by the given address
• Use an extension like LibRedirect to automatically transform YouTube links (in the preferences, enable YouTube redirects, set the frontend to "Invidious", then set Insidious's address as your favorite instance).

• Videos don't load, "sign in to confirm you’re not a bot" message in the terminal: rotate your IP and restart Insidious. Some VPN servers may be completely blocked, prefer ones with lower user counts.

These shortcuts are always active without needing player focus.