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Basically Most videos don't load on first try for me on Freetube. so I have to go back and forth to reload the video hoping this time it will load? they have removed the reload button, and the team are just closing issues on GitHub that demand reinstating the reload button. Plus comments have stopping loading as well.

Invidious doesn't work half of the times. and piped is dead.

What do you recommend using on desktop. or is paying for youtube Red the only option left?

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[-] kplaceholder@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Are you the author of the recent issue about bringing back the reload button from earlier this week? I share your sentiment entirely.

In my case, I often invoke Freetube from scripts or from the browser extension, which cause the back button to obviously not work. Because videos randomly don't load, I find myself having to close Freetube and running the script again, or navigating Firefox's context menu to try again. And even if I don't need to leave Freetube, some video lists reset their scroll position when you go back to them, causing you to need to look for the video again. Their workaround of going back and then forward just to reload is completely unreasonable.

I also get plenty of frustation out of Freetube, although most of it is because YouTube keeps breaking compatibility, but there are some problems such as the lack of reload button that are entirely Freetube's fault.

I'm sorry I don't have any alternative for you. YouTube's web client is so bad, even on incognito with ublock, that struggling with random compatibility errors on Freetube is preferrable to me, even if unexplainably bad decisions by the Freetube team make that struggle unnecessarily worse.

While we're at it, I have also been completely unable to find a single Invidious or Piped instance that works at all? I've only ever managed to watch a single video at most on any given instance before having it break, and most of the time not even that. How is it possible for them to have near zero reliability when even Freetube and Newpipe are at least somewhat usable?

Edit: Typos and minor rewording

[-] anticurrent@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 month ago

No not the author. When I checked I found an issues was already submitted but the project maintainers already restricted it.

this post was submitted on 05 Aug 2026
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