Release 0.3.0 Beta
Pre-release
When I mentioned trying to slow down on releases, I didn't expect it to slow down this much! A lot has happened over the past couple of months but I'm here with a new release for everyone. This is a pretty big release with some highly requested features so I hope that you enjoy! :)
New Logo
To start off (and a lot of you have probably seen it already), FreeTube now has a new logo! The design was created by jbeguna04 so be sure to tell them thanks. :)
New Features
Basic Tor Support
FreeTube now allows you to use the Tor network for making API calls. As of right now, this is for API CALLS ONLY. Streaming videos and grabbing images DO NOT work under Tor. Enable this in the settings page and check out the instructions if you need help.
Browser Extension
FreeTube now has a browser extension for Chrome / Firefox! FreeTube-Redirect allows you to click on YouTube links in your browser and have them open up in FreeTube. The download links for these will hopefully be available soon. I needed to release 0.3.0 before I could submit the extension to the app stores in case they needed to be tested. I will update this post when the extension is available.
Local youtube-dl
Up until this point, I have been running a server on Heroku that took care of the youtube-dl calls. The reason is because I couldn't get it to run locally on Windows at the time. This changes with v0.3.0 as now FreeTube will not use my Heroku server and all youtube-dl calls will be ran locally.
This also means that video restrictions will now be based on your IP Address instead of the IP of the Heroku server. A solid VPN is recommended for bypassing geo-restrictions. USING TOR DOES NOT BYPASS THIS.
Because of this feature, there won't be a need for the Heroku server to keep running. I haven't decided exactly when, but the plan is to shut down the Heroku server. This will cause all releases of FreeTube before v0.3.0 to be deprecated. It is highly recommended that you update to the latest version.
New Player Window
With the new extension, I had to make it harder to load multiple instances of FreeTube. To counter this, I have added a player window feature. When you click on the 3 dots next to a video, you have the option to open up a video in an external window. This external window is different from the mini player as you can still subscribe, play recommended videos, and do video searches. This should allow you to watch videos without losing your place in your subscriptions or search results as well.
Update Notifications
Upon starting up FreeTube, you should get a notification when the next release is out. This will direct you to this release page so that you can download the latest version.
AppImage Support
There is now one more option for Linux users. An AppImage of FreeTube is now available and included with this release!
Other Changes
- Copy and Paste should now work across the entire application
- The YouTube embeded player now uses the
no-cookieversion which should prevent cookies from being saved to your machine. - Cache is now cleared when exiting FreeTube
- Some error messages now include more details
Translations
One thing planned in the future is support for multiple languages. That means that I am currently accepting translations for FreeTube. If you are able to help with translating FreeTube to your language, please read the instructions and I would love to have your help!
Feedback / Contact
So what do you think? I liked the idea of having a discussion here on Github and I'd like to do that again with this release. I will setup a feedback issue here in the repository shortly and feel free to come over to that and chat. I'd love to here your feedback and suggestions. There are several questions that I have for the community that I will put over there so I hope to hear from you!
EDIT: Come join the discussion over at #100 :)
For those of you not on Github, feel free to send me an email. I've done a poor job up to this point at making everyone aware of an email so I'd like to mention it here. Feel free to send whatever is on your mind to me here.
Email: [email protected]
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