AFAIK, Peertube is your only option.
this post was submitted on 26 May 2026
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Video softwares are a tad scarce, the main ones being Peertube (based on Youtube) and Loops (based on TikTok).
Peertube channels appear as communities on Lemmy from my experience. Loops I don't think I've seen being federated to Lemmy before, so I imagine posts from instances using it get treated as pure microblogging, meaning barely anything gets fetched by Lemmy.
Also tangential idea so hidden as spoiler, but...
If a video platform has RSS feeds for their creators/channels, you could generate bots that send links to updates (new videos) as fediverse posts. Might be a good idea if you can't find who to follow within the network here.
I have yet to explore options on the "threadiverse" (Reddit & billboard-inspired forums), but on platforms such as Mastodon & Misskey (microblogging) and Friendica & Mbin (threadiverse / microblogging hybrids), you can generate new bots with @birb@rss-parrot.net.
And lastly on this point of RSS, aside from Youtube (for obvious reasons) and Peertube (since you can follow natively), sadly not many have RSS feeds natively, the major ones I know being Odysee, NicoNico and Newgrounds. Others you may be able to generate RSS bridges, but they could not work (those aren't official means after all), and RSS bots might not take these links (e.g. RSS Parrot avoiding certain types of links to avoid spam).
that's actually the best answer I got here , thank you
Peertube or Odysee
Odysee being more active than Peertube
Odysee is not federated. Its decentralisation is based on LBRY blockchain.
Odysee has native RSS so setting up fediverse bots should help at least have some form of integrated feed.
Just like YouTube
...right, sorry. I just figured that out. there's some serious bad omen on me at this platform i keep embarrassing myself. i need to be more careful
Don't worry, this series of tubes is indeed complex
Odysee has a lotta nice to haves, like filehosting, but I'll be damned if most comments sections I see aren't full of the craziest of people.
really? i didnt see any of such comments- probably i got lucky...
is the app good and lightweight ? my phone only has 1GB of ram and and a CPU with erectile dysfunction
Uh sorry, is there a good way to tell RAM usage on a different phone with more RAM? I didn't find any usage number in the settings. It's a ~50MB app. So at leat they didn't include as much bloat as other apps do... You can try it. It allows you do watch videos right away, without signing up.
Sadly I think not , Android is quite an awful OS almost in every regard to performance I think the only way to see RAM Usage is threw the Developer tools and logging
The Official App requires about 170MB RAM while watching a Video. Not sure about CPU usage but it seems light enough. NewPipe, the YouTube client, also allows you to browse PeerTube and is very light in my experience (RAM usage is about the same though)
I don't understand the question; the Fediverse has nothing to do with apps. Apps are just frontends that access services. But you asked for a YouTube alternative, and for that, your phone's hardware is completely irrelevant.
Or are you planning on installing a PeerTube instance on your phone?
I think they want to know if there is a PeerTube client (ideally an "official" one) that runs on such a weak phone.
They might be talking about the Peertube app.
yes I understand , I asked about the app after I asked about the replacement basically I want the that front end to access a YT replacement no , I'm not planning to run a PeerTube instance on my phone
Check out NewPipe. or PipePipe for automatic ad skipping. Does YouTube and PeerTube. "Share" video links from a PeerTube site with it to open it in the app.
You only need a Peertube account – and the app, if required – if you’re a content creator and want to upload your own videos. You can watch videos without needing any account at all, either in your browser or on your mobile using an app, such as the Peertube app or NewPipe. SepiaSearch offers a comprehensive video search (covering a large number of selected instances).
If you want to subscribe to channels, watch, share or comment on videos in the Fediverse, you can do so from your Fediverse account, i.e. from Friendica, Mastodon, Sharkey, etc. You can also subscribe to Peertube channels and watch videos using your Lemmy account. I’m not sure, though, if all the features are available with Lemmy.
Depending on the service, you don't even need an app. The instances' sites can usually run fine on browsers, and when they don't, Lemmy, Mastodon and the sort can usually play the videos embedded.
I’m not sure, though, if all the features are available with Lemmy.
They are on PieFed.
I tried to subscribe to a PeerTube channel on Lemmy, but it looks that it stuck on "Subscribe pending". However, copy-paste of a video URL works, and I was able to watch and comment the vid using Lemmy.