Alternate Web Frontend Sites

stares at error messages

stares at error messages

Readn' Tea Leaves
kiwifarms.net
Joined
Dec 7, 2020
Most web sites that are super popular and have problematic polotics like youtube, reddits ... the list goes on and bad frontends. Now privately created open source projects that allow you to get the same content from the sites that you are tied of being forced to use are available.

So far, I've found a few. Some are probably old news, but it could be a good idea to start listing all the ones found in this thread.
Name of ReplacementSite being replacedLink to replacement source code
https://invidious.io/https://youtube.comhttps://github.com/iv-org/invidious
https://redlib.matthew.science/https://reddit.comhttps://github.com/redlib-org/redlib
https://nitter.nethttps://twitter.comhttps://github.com/zedeus/nitter
https://imgin.voidnet.tech/https://imgur.com/https://git.voidnet.tech/kev/imgin

For the thread, just post other such sites you find.

Fedaverse frontends count too. So if you want post things like Pleroma that's good here too.

Invidious​

Invidious is a little different. There is no official server, instead a bunch of different people run their own mirrors. You can find the mirror that suits you best at https://docs.invidious.io/instances/. If you want to host it yourself got to https://docs.invidious.io/installation/.

Reddit​

It used to be that "Teddit" https://codeberg.org/teddit/teddit was a good alternative. When Reddit change their API in 2023 Teddit could not keep up with the changes. Now Redlib https://github.com/redlib-org/redlib is good option since Teddit no longer works reliably. Not all Redlib instances allow NSFW to be shown through the site and NSFW is disabled by default. If you want to look at NSFW then you need to find an instance which allow it and go into settings (you don't need an account on the instance) and set NSFW to allowed. You also have old.reddit.com which is ran by Reddit corporate and let's you bypass some of Reddit's more annoying modern changes to their user interface.
 
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Account said:
wikiless is an alternative frontend to Wikipedia.
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If you want to get really weird for alternate wikipedia front ends, try out gopher://gopherpedia.com sometime. It's a blast from the past.

Dergint said:
RSS and rss producing scrapers. They don't give you proper interactivity but they are great for pulling the main content if that's all you care about.
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It's too bad RSS is increasingly a pain to use as sites remove it, hide it, and mess with their feeds to attempt to force you to click through to their sites. RSS in my experience doesn't seem very useful for mainstream sites, but I'm open to having my mind changed.
 
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Catler said:
It's too bad RSS is increasingly a pain to use as sites remove it, hide it, and mess with their feeds to attempt to force you to click through to their sites. RSS in my experience doesn't seem very useful for mainstream sites, but I'm open to having my mind changed.
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It doesn't solve everything, but it covers a decent part of the internet.

For obtaining links, the good thing is that generally speaking you only have to get the link once per site unless you're dealing with fucking youtube. And there's often either set rules for finding the link, or if it's a mainstream enough site someone else will have made the solution already.
  • Reddit, slap /.rss to the end of the URL
  • WordPress, /feed to the end of the URL
  • YouTube is a pain in the butt and I use NewPipe to pull the URL for me so I don't have to build it manually
  • Twitter has to get shoved through like RSSHub or RSSBridge to make it work. Both those services actually support a bunch of different sites, just gotta browse the options
  • Some smarter RSS readers will detect the link for you
  • Some social RSS readers will let you search for feeds by name and see what other people have added (this was useful for alerting me to what scrapers exist)
  • Some readers are able to convert emails (like newsletters) into feeds
  • There are websites that let you define your own scrapers but I've never trusted them enough to try them
For click throughs, how big an issue that is really depends on your use case, I guess. With YouTube and Twitter I like that RSS caches the information so I can find the links of hidden streams and text of deleted tweets and avoid the algorithm's recommendations. It's been ages since I used a reddit feed but I think I was able to click through to the original content and skip reddit itself, which yes that is a click through but I avoid reddit and I am happy. If I really had to click through a website I didn't want to visit I guess I'd combine RSS (for discovery/alerts) with a redirector plug-in so when I finally click through I can be put on a dedicated alternative front-end or at least a generic proxy.

I will admit my favorite uses of RSS aren't normal browsing and mainstream sites however, and that skews my opinion of the tool.
  • I paid for a subscription to a reader with translation built into the client so I can follow foreign content without nevigating foreign websites because I'm an illiterate dumbass
  • The archive feed gives a sample of recently archived pages. It's like my alternative KF with no comments section
  • The Library Genesis feed is similar to the archive feed in spirit, but for books, and it requires automated filtering to at least narrow shit down to the English language
WTF I can't inline link the text to the archive feed https://archive.md/rss
 
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rimgo is a pretty decent Imgur alternative. It's supported by LibRedirect (a maintained fork of Privacy Redirect, which is dead now) and their readme has a pretty comprehensive list of all the different types of frontends too. Some not mentioned here, like the Medium alternative, Scribe.
Dergint said:
YouTube is a pain in the butt and I use NewPipe to pull the URL for me so I don't have to build it manually
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https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=<id> is the URL
 
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Flaming Dumpster said:
LibRedirect
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In theory this is a good idea, in practice half the instances are dead at random times of day or malfunctioning in some way, which is especially annoying if you just wanted to search for something and end up having to keep instance hopping. For now I picked one reliable instance for a thing via redirector. Yes that makes me theoretically traceable by that instance but there's always a downside. A good thing would probably be to self-host and connect the instances via tor or a vpn or something. Maybe on a VPS. If only you're using it it's also probably less likely that your given instance gets blocked by whatever thing they draw from. You do lose the advantage of hiding amongst the other people using a particular instance, which probably are never many to begin with though. For the record - I, myself have been too lazy to do this.
 
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Ronnie McNutt said:
Would anyone mind making a frontend for Fandom? The whole site is unusable without adblockers.
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Supposedly you can download the whole wiki through the
Special:Statistics
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Page, which you could in theory restore to a less cancerous host, if you knew you'd use one wiki a lot. I can't see the backup links though, and I don't know if that's because they're are requirements to getting a backup like registering or having a certain access level...

Also Brave is usually good at ad blocking.

E: it seems it's a manual request system, though their documentation annoyingly references automatic backups. I guess the "automatic" process is different from the special page?
 
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Dergint said:
Supposedly you can download the whole wiki through the

Page, which you could in theory restore to a less cancerous host, if you knew you'd use one wiki a lot. I can't see the backup links though, and I don't know if that's because they're are requirements to getting a backup like registering or having a certain access level...

Also Brave is usually good at ad blocking.

E: it seems it's a manual request system, though their documentation annoyingly references automatic backups. I guess the "automatic" process is different from the special page?
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since fandom just runs a very modified version of mediawiki, i can just access the api.php page like this

MediaWiki API help - Risk of Rain 2 Wiki

riskofrain2.fandom.com riskofrain2.fandom.com
i might just write a quick proof of concept just so i can avoid having my gui constantly get cockblocked because of the bajillion ads that appear, i usually don't have problems with adblock but on some devices i cannot use adblock so that's why i wanted to make one
 
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AmpleApricots said:
A good thing would probably be to self-host
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Yeah that's what I'm doing. I self-host on a box that's pretty close by (<10 ms latency) so all these frontends are lighting fast, not rate limited and I know they work as I've setup Uptime Kuma to monitor them.

Really pisses me off that the retards hosting public instances don't even try.
 
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There's a huge list here: https://github.com/mendel5/alternative-front-ends

YouTube​

YouTube Music​

  • ytmdesktop: Cross-platform (Windows, Mac, and Linux) desktop app for YouTube Music. Has a (proprietary?) remote control app for Android
  • Beatbump: An alternative frontend for YouTube Music created using Svelte/SvelteKit, powered by Cloudflare Workers
  • AudioTube: Client for YouTube Music. Plasma-mobile project with an interface designed for Linux phones
  • th-ch/youtube-music: YouTube Music desktop app based on Electron bundled with custom plugins (including built-in ad blocker and downloader)

Twitter​

  • Nitter: Alternative Twitter front-end - Lightweight, no ads, no tracking, no JavaScript required
  • Shitter: Android, alternative front-end for Twitter, built with Java
  • Harpy: Android, alternative front-end for Twitter, built with Flutter/Dart
  • Twidere X: Android, alternative front-end for Twitter, built mostly with Kotlin, in early stage
  • Tweeterr: A tool to use Twitter from the command line on the fly
  • Tweet-app: Desktop Twitter client only for tweeting. Timeline never shows up
  • Tweepy: Twitter for Python
  • Fritter: A free, open-source Twitter client for Android

Reddit​

Instagram​

TikTok​

Imgur​

Spotify​

  • psst: Fast and multi-platform Spotify client with native GUI
  • Spotiqueue: Minimalistic queue-oriented macOS-native client for Spotify, with Guile Scheme scriptability
  • spot: Gtk/Rust native Spotify client for the GNOME desktop. Only works with premium accounts
  • spotube: A lightweight and free Spotify crossplatform-client which handles playback manually, streams music using Youtube & no Spotify premium account is needed
  • SpotX: Modified Spotify Client for Windows (Windows Only) - Blocking ads and updates for the desktop version of Spotify, disabling podcasts and more
  • kotify: Requires Spotify Account - Multiplatform desktop client for Spotify focused on library organization for power users. Relies on official Spotify client for playback
  • librespot: Requires Spotify Premium Account - librespot is an open source client library for Spotify. It enables applications to use Spotify's service to control and play music via various backends, and to act as a Spotify Connect receiver. It is an alternative to the official and now deprecated closed-source libspotify. Additionally, it will provide extra features which are not available in the official library
  • oggify: Download Spotify tracks to Ogg Vorbis (with a Spotify premium account), based on librespot

Apple Music​

  • Cider: Cross-platform Apple Music experience based on Electron and Vue.js written from scratch with performance in mind

Twitch​

  • streamlink-twitch-gui: Multi platform Twitch.tv browser for Streamlink
  • Twire: Alternative and open source Twitch client for Android
  • Xtra: Twitch player and browser for Android
  • ElectronPlayer: Electron Based Web Video Services Player. Supports Netflix, Youtube, Twitch, Floatplane, Hulu and more

Discord​

  • gtkcord4: A lightweight Discord client written in Golang which uses GTK3 for the user interface

Google Search​

  • Whoogle Search: A self-hosted, ad-free, privacy-respecting metasearch engine for Google
  • Searx: Searx is a free privacy-respecting internet metasearch engine which aggregates results from more than 70 search services. Users are neither tracked nor profiled. Additionally, searx can be used over Tor for online anonymity
  • SearXNG: SearXNG is a free internet metasearch engine which aggregates results from various search services and databases. Users are neither tracked nor profiled (SearXNG is a fork of searx)
  • LibreX: Privacy respecting free meta search engine (free as in freedom)
    • Small and simple meta search engine, fetches and anonymizes results from Google only, has API support, allows redirects to Invidious/ Bibliogram/ Nitter/ Libreddit

Google Translate​

Facebook​

  • SlimSocial: Android, alternative front-end for Facebook, built with Java
  • Frost: An extensive and functional third party app for Facebook (Android app)

Facebook Messenger​

  • fb-messenger-cli: Use your Facebook account to chat with your friends sneakily in the command line, it's as easy as logging in, choosing a convo and chatting away
  • Caprine: Unofficial and privacy-focused Facebook Messenger app with many useful features

Mastodon​

  • Pinafore: Alternative web client for Mastodon, focused on speed and simplicity
  • Sengi: cross-platform multi-account Mastodon & Pleroma desktop client
  • TheDesk: cross-platform Mastodon & Misskey desktop client
  • Tootle: simple GTK-based Linux Mastodon client
  • Tusky: lightweight Android Mastodon client
  • Fedilab: multi-account Android Mastodon client
  • Hyperspace: cross-platform Mastodon client for the fediverse written in TypeScript and React

Medium​

Reuters​

  • Neuters: An alternative front-end to Reuters.com. It is intented to be lightweight and fast, and was heavily inspired by Nitter

Apple AirPlay​

  • RPiPlay: An open-source AirPlay mirroring server for the Raspberry Pi. Supports iOS 9 and up.
  • air-pi-play: Turn a Raspberry Pi into an Airplay server using RPiPlay to enable screen mirroring on tvs, monitors and projectors.

Shazam​

  • SongRec: Open-source Shazam client for Linux, written in Rust

Telegram​

  • Telegram-FOSS: Unofficial, FOSS-friendly fork of the original Telegram client for Android

Hacker News​

Other services​

  • MediathekViewWeb: Video content of German public-service television broadcasters (e.g. ARD, ZDF)
  • NoPaste: NoPaste is an open-source website similar to Pastebin where you can store any piece of code, and generate links for easy sharing
  • PrivateBin: Zero knowledge encrypted paste-bin. A minimalist, open source online pastebin where the server has zero knowledge of pasted data. Data is encrypted/decrypted in the browser using 256 bits AES
  • vaultwarden: Password manager. Unofficial Bitwarden compatible server written in Rust, formerly known as bitwarden_rs
  • snapdrop: Similar to Apple's Airdrop but in your browser. A Progressive Web App for local file sharing
  • hedgedoc: Collaborative markdown editor. A platform to write and share markdown
  • etherpad-lite: Collaborative rich text editor. A modern really-real-time collaborative document editor
  • gitea: Lightweight git server. Git with a cup of tea, painless self-hosted git service
  • ArchiveBox: Open source self-hosted web archiving. Takes URLs/browser history/bookmarks/Pocket/Pinboard/etc., saves HTML, JS, PDFs, media, and more
  • Wikiless: A free open source alternative Wikipedia front-end focused on privacy
  • Librarian: Alternative frontend for LBRY / Odysee.com

Redirection​

  • Privacy Redirect: A simple web extension that redirects Twitter, YouTube, Instagram & Google Maps requests to privacy friendly alternatives
  • libredirect: A web extension that redirects popular sites to alternative privacy-friendly frontends and backends. Actively maintained fork of Privacy Redirect that supports Youtube, Youtube Music, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, Imgur, Reddit, Searx, Google Translate, Google Maps, Wikipedia, and Medium
  • Farside: Farside provides links that automatically redirect to working instances of privacy-oriented alternative frontends, such as Nitter, Libreddit, etc. This allows for users to have more reliable access to the available public instances for a particular service, while also helping to distribute traffic more evenly across all instances and avoid performance bottlenecks and rate-limiting.
  • UntrackMe: UntrackMe transforms Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, Reddit and Medium and Wikipedia links to links of open source, privacy friendly front-ends. Converts Google Maps links to OpenStreetMap links. Removes tracking parameters from any url. Then delegates the action to other apps that are capable of handling them. (Android app)

Related projects​

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Self-hosting is addictive, I've been fucking around with Proxmox and Docker and having fun. To be honest I jew out and use the free tier services of big tech for not so critical services like Uptime Kuma or something lol. A couple of guides using Terraform if you don't mind that:

www.reddit.com

r/selfhosted - GCP Free Forever VPS e2-Micro! - Automated Build Via Terraform

198 votes and 56 comments so far on Reddit
www.reddit.com www.reddit.com

Using GCP free tier VM for uptime and health checks

I am James and below are some words on Software Engineering as well as some programming-related projects.
jeeb.uk jeeb.uk
 
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