Peertube

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/45562299

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Hey everyone, I've been working on a native tvOS Peertube client, PeerTV. Here's the App Store link: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/peertv/id6761736523

Sometimes I like to watch videos from my Peertube instance or a friend's instance on my apple tv, but I noticed a while ago that there weren't any tvOS Peertube clients available on the App Store. That is until now!

This application is open source on GitHub , so by all means, check it out and add requests for new features or bug fixes if you'd like.

Also, I recommend using it with my plug-in to add a randomized video tab to your Peertube instance. The PeerTV app has a setting that unlocks a special random video tab if you're using that plugin on the instance.

Disclaimer: I used a Claude model with cursor to help build out this project. If that is something important to you, then feel free to not use it or insult me in the comments. I mainly built this tool because | want it to exist. I have over 6+ years as a developer so I know what I'm doing for the most part. I did not just mindlessly tell the ai to build an application. There was a great effort on my part to ensure the app is secure, efficient, and functional.

Thanks!

I've tried a few peertube instances, peertubenz tilvids, makertube and a few others. I always run into a problem that I dont experience on mastodon or lemmy. I will follow a link and I will try and subscribe to that person from my peertube account and I wont be able to because whatever peertube instance im on doesnt federate.

I get not wanting to federate with every random server but I would have expected a decent network to have formed.

Maybe I have just been signing up to the wrong instances or am doing something wrong.

I was curious about something and wanted to get the community’s thoughts.

Bluesky has Custom Feeds (more info here: Complete Guide to Bluesky Custom Feeds), which basically let users subscribe to curated feeds built around certain topics or interests.

Since PeerTube doesn’t have a central recommendation algorithm (or any algorithims, for that matter) —outside of what third-party tools may offer—do you think a system like this could potentially be valuable?

For example, users (or communities) could create custom feeds for things like:

Cooking videos

Horror content

Comedy videos

Cute/wholesome clips

Certain Peertubers or Channels

etc.

…and people could subscribe to them as “living playlists” that update automatically.

Do you think this would improve discovery and make PeerTube more user-friendly, or would it risk centralizing content too much?

EDIT: Link to GitHub Feature Suggestion Issue: https://github.com/Chocobozzz/PeerTube/issues/7196

I had this idea, because I was wondering if means.tv or nebula.tv could be made part of the peertube network. These two streaming platforms are paywalled, so it seems like it would not be possible. I don't use peertube, and I don't really know anything about it, so excuse my ignorance if the answer seems painfully obvious to you.

Often, I try to find 10-20 minute videos about interesting scientific topics, ttrpg design or board game design. In the past I used YouTube to scratch that itch, but I love PeerTube's vision so I thought I change to PeerTube for that.

However, I find it much harder to quickly find a good video. Good doesn't mean professional, but clear title, good mic and mostly fluent presentation of the given topic. I use the PeerTube search; not on a specific instance.

Is there a trick to improve results? Are my topics too niche? What are your experiences?

For YouTube, there’s a separate (super terrible, barely functioning) YouTube Kids app that filters out non-kid-friendly content and only shows videos suitable for children.

Do you think PeerTube should have something similar — either officially made by Framasoft, or created by a third-party — that’s PURELY for kids’ content?

It could help parents and educators safely guide kids toward age-appropriate videos, while still being part of the Fediverse.

But it might also fragment the user base or require a lot of moderation work.

What do you think — would this be a good, or bad, idea for PeerTube?

I know Framasoft is a much smaller team compared to something like Google, so developing an official TV app might be outside their current resources.

But what about potential third-party developers?

A while back, there used to be (if I remember correctly) at least two third-party PeerTube apps available for ROKU, but I can’t seem to find them anymore.

Does anyone know what happened to them, and if there’s any chance we’ll see something like that again (Official or Third-Party) for ROKU, Fire TV, Apple TV, or other smart TV platforms?

Also — if anyone here is already working on a TV app for PeerTube, please share!

I know that channel creators on PeerTube can add links to Buy Me a Coffee, Ko‑fi, Patreon, etc., but there’s no native, in‑house way for a casual viewer to directly support a creator from within PeerTube itself.

Do you think PeerTube should implement a built‑in “Join” button that would handle payments/subscriptions internally, without sending the user to a third‑party site?

Potential Pros:

Easier for casual viewers to support creators without leaving the platform.

Could help smaller creators earn more from one‑time donations or memberships.

Might make PeerTube feel more polished and competitive with YouTube.

Potential Cons:

Could add complexity to moderation and hosting for instance admins.

Might raise legal or tax issues for different countries.

Could centralize financial control, which goes against PeerTube’s decentralized ethos.

What do you think — worth adding, or better to leave this to third‑party services?

This could also be an optional feature that instance admins can enable or disable, so it still fits within the federation model.

One thing that always frustrated me about YouTube is that if you ever make a new account, there's no real way to transfer your subscriptions, playlists, liked videos, etc. — you're basically stuck manually resubscribing to every channel one by one.

Does PeerTube have any kind of functionality for this?

Like, if a user decides to switch instances, is there a way to migrate things like subscriptions, playlists, follows, etc., to the new account?

And if not, has anyone ever proposed or built something like this?

Maybe a bot that scrapes your current account’s follows and playlists and recreates them on your new one?

Would love to hear thoughts or if anyone's already working on a solution like this.

I was curious—does there exist any kind of list, website, database, or even a federated/shared thread that keeps track of YouTubers who have either switched over to PeerTube, mirror their content here, or have simply made an account/channel?

I'm thinking of creators like:

DarkViperAU,

Markiplier,

Jacksepticeye,

BoneMuseum,

Dan Povenmire,

Ethan Nestor (CrankGameplays),

Brandon Rogers,

Meme Asylum,

JSchlatt,

PrismBlock,

Internet Historian,

hbomberguy,

YUGOPNIK

Second Thought

Hakim

FilmSelect

brightmc

Nobey One

How It Should Have Ended

Your_Kryptonite7

IGN

EmpLemon,

videogamedunkey,

etc.

(None of these YouTube Creators have joined / Mirrored their content to Peertube [at least, not that I know of], I am just using them as YouTuber examples.)

It doesn’t need to be exhaustive—just wondering if anyone’s keeping tabs on this sort of migration or crossover, even if it’s rare.

And if it doesn’t exist… would it be worth creating one?

Is it just me, or does PeerTube seem like it's missing a general-purpose, beginner-friendly instance — similar to how Mastodon has Mastodon.Social, and Lemmy has Lemmy.World?

What I'm thinking of is omething like PeerTube.Video (or a similarly neutral and approachable name).

It could be geared toward:

New users who aren’t sure which instance to pick

Ideal for general folks migrating from YouTube who just want to upload and watch videos without needing to understand federation or instance quirks right away

Older or less tech-savvy users who find federation a bit overwhelming

General-purpose content creators and viewers

etc.

Yes, instances like PeerTube.wtf exist and are well-federated — but, IMO, no offence meant, I feel the name might not be the most inviting choice for a "mainstream" or flagship instance.

It feels similar to if sh.itjust.works had become the go-to Lemmy instance instead of Lemmy.World.

This wouldn’t mean centralizing PeerTube — it would still be volunteer-run like the other flagship instances on the Fediverse.

But it could act as a soft landing pad, for general users who are used to centralized social media: a welcoming, YouTube-like entry point that’s still fully federated.

What do you think?

Would this help adoption and accessibility, or is it better for PeerTube to stay entirely decentralized without a "main" instance?

!furbland_channel@cuddly.tube and !furblandalt@cuddly.tube are the two main channels I have. home to all the “content” I make. the main account is @groupnebula563@cuddly.tube though I don’t think you can follow accounts from Lemmy. just a warning: I know that older versions of Lemmy (aka not the absolute latest, basically) have trouble with PeerTube, though I’m not sure exactly what version the cutoff is. feel free to subscribe to the communities regardless in case it does work for you or your instance upgrades at some point. Mbin should work fine, as does PieFed and NodeBB. Not sure about Kbin, again worth a shot. enjoy!

Today I was thinking about how great it would be if I could post a video to my blog and use the Peertube video player to display the video, and also get the benefit of having visitors share the video among themselves if two people were viewing the video at the same time.

I know that I could do that by running a Peertube instance and then using the embed feature to put the video on a web page. But is there any prior art for just using the client-side Peertube video player by itself? And is that even possible, or does it need a backend server for discovering other video players? I'm looking for documentation right now about how the P2P functionality works, and can't really find anything.

Is there a way to add an arbitrary instance to the peertube ios app? I know of an instance I want to add but it doesn't show up in the app menus...

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/31187683

This is the first part in a series of blog posts explaining the technical decisions we made while developing the PeerTube mobile app.

The next part will be released within a few days.

Folks, we've started a crowdfunding campaign to help to improve our PeerTube mobile app and bring PeerTube to everyone's pocket!
You can learn more about the campaign on the dedicated website!

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/30794282

New design for video management and publication pages, rework of the display and filter system for sensitive content… this new version is ready for the summer!

PeerTube is a decentralized and federated alternative to YouTube. The goal of PeerTube is not to replace YouTube but to offer a viable alternative using the strength of ActivityPub and P2P protocols.

Being built on ActivityPub means PeerTube is able to be part of a bigger social network, the Fediverse (the Federated Universe). On the other hand, P2P technologies help PeerTube to solve the issue of money, inbound with all streaming platform : With PeerTube, you don't need to have a lot of bandwidth available on your server to host a PeerTube platform because all users (which didn't disable the feature) watching a video on PeerTube will be able to share this same video to other viewers.

If you are curious about PeerTube, we can't recommend you enough to check the official website to learn more about the project. If after that you want to try to use PeerTube as a content creator, you can try to find a platform available there to register or host yourself your own PeerTube platform on your own server.

The development of PeerTube is actually sponsored by Framasoft, a french non-for-profit popular educational organization, a group of friends convinced that an emancipating digital world is possible, convinced that it will arise through actual actions on real world and online with and for you!

If you want to contribute to PeerTube, feel free to:

• Report bugs and give your feedback on Github or on our forums
• Submit your brillant ideas on our Feedback platform
• Help to translate the software, following the contributing guide
• Make a donation to help to pay bills inbound in the development of PeerTube.

If you want to follow the PeerTube project:

• Follow us on Mastodon/BlueSky/Reddit (or here, on Lemmy).
• Subscribe to our newsletter

Folks, we've started a crowdfunding campaign to help to improve our PeerTube mobile app and bring PeerTube to everyone's pocket!
You can learn more about the campaign on the dedicated website!

cross-posted from: https://piefed.social/post/810651

We have set up a moderated auto-follow index for Peertube at ptindex.btfree.org. This is just a list of Peertube instances we found to be good quality PT instances. > > If you know anyone that could/should be added, please message and we'll look at the PT instance to add. > > Everyone can feel free to use our PT Index if they'd prefer, instead of the public one or manually adding each instance.

PeerTube Picks is now available on the official Firefox Add-ons page! Firefox users no longer have to worry about losing their data when the browser closes:

FireFox add-on link

The name PeerTube Picks was chosen through collaboration with the PeerTube Lemmy community. This add-on provides video recommendations using a cosine similarity algorithm based on videos you've watched and liked. It aims to predict which videos you're likely to engage with—either by watching for longer periods or hitting the like button.

Updates: The PeerTube Picks icon now appears next to the search bar on any PeerTube page. Clicking it opens a list of recommended videos, ranked by engagement and relevance.

A new Options page allows you to:

-Download or upload your video watch history

-Delete your watch history (recommended occasionally to refresh your recommendations)

I’m open to suggestions and contributions—feel free to share ideas or improvements!

Peertube has a lot of great potential, however it can be hard to find content on it. Sepia Search works, but it doesn't always show videos from all local servers. My suggested feature is, some sort of Lemmy communities like feature for Peertube where local servers can create communities for specific types of videos. The communities ideally would be managed at the server level made on any Peertube server. users on and off the server could have an ability to upload to the community a video related to that topic.

I feel if Peertube does this, this is the missing features it needs, and then give it about 2-4 years and it might have more activity, and content because now people can more easily find specific content.

Hot take: Most PeerTube instances shouldn’t just hand out accounts to anyone—and here’s the reality check. Running a PeerTube server isn’t like YouTube. There’s no trillion-dollar corporation footing the bill. Instead, small community admins juggle:

The major points are:

• Storage costs (video files add up fast!)
• Moderation work (spam, trolls, and legal risks)
• Bandwidth limits
• Abuse handling (because yes, people will test boundaries) Yet, a lot of sign-up requests sound like (at least from what I see on my instance):

"I wanna upload videos." "I’m starting a Roblox channel."

Sorry, but that’s not enough. Admins aren’t obligated to give free hosting to strangers. A good admin looks for people who:

• Fit the community’s vibe (e.g., a coding-focused instance won’t host gaming streams).
• Show effort—like sharing a portfolio or explaining why their content adds value.

Example: If you applied with a sample of your work or a clear plan? Hell yes, I’d consider you. But if your pitch is just "I want free hosting," why should the community foot the bill?

TL;DR: PeerTube isn’t a free-for-all. "I just wanna upload stuff" isn’t a good reason. Bring something to the table.

You can also search the Fediverse directly

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/29207242

PeerTube is a decentralized and federated alternative to YouTube. The goal of PeerTube is not to replace YouTube but to offer a viable alternative using the strength of ActivityPub and P2P protocols.

Being built on ActivityPub means PeerTube is able to be part of a bigger social network, the Fediverse (the Federated Universe). On the other hand, P2P technologies help PeerTube to solve the issue of money, inbound with all streaming platform : With PeerTube, you don't need to have a lot of bandwidth available on your server to host a PeerTube platform because all users (which didn't disable the feature) watching a video on PeerTube will be able to share this same video to other viewers.

If you are curious about PeerTube, we can't recommend you enough to check the official website to learn more about the project. If after that you want to try to use PeerTube as a content creator, you can try to find a platform available there to register or host yourself your own PeerTube platform on your own server.

The development of PeerTube is actually sponsored by Framasoft, a french non-for-profit popular educational organization, a group of friends convinced that an emancipating digital world is possible, convinced that it will arise through actual actions on real world and online with and for you!

If you want to contribute to PeerTube, feel free to:

• Report bugs and give your feedback on Github or on our forums
• Submit your brillant ideas on our Feedback platform
• Help to translate the software, following the contributing guide
• Make a donation to help to pay bills inbound in the development of PeerTube.

If you want to follow the PeerTube project:

• Follow us on Mastodon/BlueSky/Reddit (or here, on Lemmy).
• Subscribe to our newsletter

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/28964031

VOD – https://video.firesidefedi.live/w/poYgA3RUpyXSAMqViDUgeX

Fedicast – https://audio.firesidefedi.live/@firesidefedi/episodes/chris-were-peertuber-freebooters-and-space-virgins

Welcome Fedi Friends to LUCKY episode 13 of Fireside Fedi! I'm your host ozoned. Fireside Fedi is a show about folks within the Fediverse. If you're seeing this, you are a part of the Fediverse.

With me today is Chris Were “man of the Fediverse”! Chris and I have known each other for idk 10 years, but I'm still very excited to have him on, because I don't know a lot about him! Chris was “born at a very young age and now loves linux and foss”. He's a former successful Youtuber, that give it up because of Google's stances and he's an EXCLUSIVE Peertuber now. On his Peertube he has the show Freebooters, a show about tech with him and a friend Drew, as well as his old YouTube videos. He's also one of three that has a show about The Expanse called “Space Virgins: First Contact”.