Seems like a pretty damn easy lifestyle business that many early startups would find valuable because it saves them money and the headache of doing it themselves.
But.. reducing mindless scrolling while still giving me a way to follow content I care about seems good.
Does anyone have experience with using these? Are there alternate tools which are better than the ones listed here?
My solution [1] to this was to create a static site that is built by a Github Actions workflow that runs every hour. The script just pulls RSS feeds I have listed in a .js file, and uses that to build the site [2]. The result is I'm more deliberate in what videos I watch, and I discover new creators organically (a friend recommends one, or I find them while doing a search).
For "favoriting" videos, I just add them to a folder in Firefox bookmarks manager.
My newest "feature" is a "Picks from your subscriptions" thing that uses an external Deno service [3] to grab a random video from one of my random subscriptions. This helps me discover old videos from my subscriptions I may have never seen.
[1] https://github.com/kevinfiol/youtube
Of course that deprives you from interaction with the actual youtube content. But for support, $1/month on the creator's patreon goes further, and for engagement you can join the creator's discord. The only thing you are really missing out on is feeding the youtube algorithm.
It doesn't help them very much, or at all. If you want to support them, you can pay them.
https://github.com/yusing/go-proxy?tab=readme-ov-file#idlesl...
https://docs.github.com/en/repositories/viewing-activity-and...
For the majority of them, there's a docker container, often with example configs. It's not that far removed from installing a mobile app and then having a wizard ask you how you want stuff configured.
I only configure the startup in a YAML file and I am done. Works great.
I’ve had enough success with using docker images (lots of projects provide them) that I don’t feel the pain acutely, but there certainly is some bespoke fiddling with every one. To me that’s part of the self-hosting experience, but I know plenty of people that don’t self host because of it, can’t blame them.
Some examples are
Cosmos (https://github.com/azukaar/Cosmos-Server)
Younohost (https://yunohost.org/)
Runtipi (https://github.com/runtipi/runtipi)
But if you do want mobile phone app level of simplicity, there are options like Cosmos that handle everything for you and just give a pretty UI.
