invidious/CHANGELOG.md

0.13.0 (2019-01-06)

Version 0.13.0: Translations, Annotations, and Tor

I hope everyone had a happy New Year! There's been a couple new additions since last release, with 44 commits from 9 contributors. It's been quite a year for the project, and I hope to continue improving the project into 2019! Starting off the new year:

Translations

I'm happy to announce support for translations has been added with a160c64. Currently, there is support for:

• Arabic (ar)
• Dutch (nl)
• English (en-US)
• German (de)
• Norwegian Bokmål (nb_NO)
• Polish (pl)
• Russian (ru)

Which you can change in your preferences under Language. You can also add &hl=LANGUAGE to the end of any request to translate it to your preferred language, for example https://invidio.us/?hl=ru. I'd like to say thank you again to everyone who has helped translate the site! I've mentioned this before, but I'm delighted that so many people find the project useful.

Annotations

Recently, YouTube announced that all annotations will be deleted on January 15th, 2019. I believe that annotations have a very important place in YouTube's history, and announced a project to archive them.

I expect annotations to be supported in the Invidious player once archiving is complete (see #110 for details), and would also like to host them for other developers to use in their projects.

The code is available here, and contains instructions for running a worker if you would like to contribute. There's much more information available in the announcement as well for anyone who is interested.

Tor

I unfortunately missed the chance to mention this in the previous release, but I'm now happy to announce that you can now view Invidious through Tor at the following links:

kgg2m7yk5aybusll.onion
axqzx4s6s54s32yentfqojs3x5i7faxza6xo3ehd4bzzsg2ii4fv2iid.onion

Invidious is well suited to use through Tor, as it does not require any JS and is fairly lightweight. I'd recommend looking here and here for more details on how to use the onion links, and would like to say thank you to /u/whonix-os for suggesting it and providing support setting setting them up.

Popular and Trending

You can now easily view videos trending on YouTube with a16f967. It also provides support for viewing YouTube's various categories categories, such as News, Gaming, and Music. You can also change the region parameter to view trending in different countries, which should be made easier to use in the coming weeks.

A link to /feed/popular has also been added, which provides a list of videos sorted using the algorithm described here. I think it better reflects what users watch on the site, but I'd like to hear peoples' thoughts on this and on how it could be improved.

Finances

Donations

• Patreon: $64.63
• Liberapay : $30.05
• Crypto : ~$28.74 (converted from BCH, BTC)
• Total : $123.42

Expenses

• invidious-load1 (nyc1) : $10.00 (load balancer)
• invidious-update1 (s-1vcpu-1gb) : $5.00 (updates feeds)
• invidious-node1 (s-1vcpu-1gb) : $5.00 (web server)
• invidious-node2 (s-1vcpu-1gb) : $5.00 (web server)
• invidious-node3 (s-1vcpu-1gb) : $5.00 (web server)
• invidious-node4 (s-1vcpu-1gb) : $5.00 (web server)
• invidious-db1 (s-4vcpu-8gb) : $40.00 (database)
• Total : $75.00

What will happen with what's left over?

I believe this is the first month that all expenses have been fully paid for by donations. Thank you! I expect to allocate the current amount for hardware to improve performance and for hosting annotation data, as mentioned above.

Anything that is left over is kept to continue hosting the project for as long as possible. Thank you again everyone!

I think that's everything for 2018. There's lots still planned, and I'm very excited for the future of this project!

0.12.0 (2018-12-06)

Version 0.12.0: Accessibility, Privacy, Transparency

Hello again, it's been a while! A lot has happened since the last release. Invidious has seen 134 commits from 3 contributors, and I'm quite happy with the progress that has been made. I enjoyed this past month, and I believe having a monthly release schedule allows me to focus on more long-term improvements, and I hope people enjoy these more substantial updates as well.

Accessability and Privacy

There have been quite a few improvements for user privacy, and improvements that improve accessibility for both people and software.

You can now view comments without JS with 19516ea. Currently, this functionality is limited to the first 20 comments, but expect this functionality to be improved to come as close to the JS version as possible. Folks can track progress in #204.

Invidious is now compatible with LibreJS, and provides license information here with 7f868ec. As expected, all libraries are compatible under the AGPLv3, and I'm happy to mention that no other changes were required to make Invidious compatible with LibreJS.

A DNT policy has also been added with 9194f47 for compatibility with Privacy Badger. I'm pleased to mention that here too no other changes had to be made in order for Invidious to be compatible with this extension. I expect a privacy policy to be added soon as well, so users can better understand how Invidious uses their data.

For users that are visually impaired, there is now a text CAPTCHA available so it's easier to register and login. Because of the simple front-end of the project, I expect screen readers and other software to be able to easily understand the site's interface. In combination with the ability to listen-only, I believe Invidious is much more accessible than YouTube. Folks can read #244 for more details, and I would very much appreciate any feedback on how this can be improved.

User Preferences

There have been a lot of improvements to preferences. Options for enabling audio-only by default and continuous playback (autoplay) have been added with e39dec9, with 4b76b93, respectively. Users can also now mark videos as watched from their subscription feed and view watch history by going to https://invidio.us/feed/history. I expect to add more information to history so that it's easier to use. Folks can track progress with #182. As with all data Invidious keeps, watch history can be exported here.

Users can now delete their account with b9c29bf. This will remove all user data from Invidious, including session IDs, watch history, and subscriptions. As mentioned above, it's easy to export that data and import it to a local instance, or export subscriptions for use with other applications such as FreeTube or NewPipe.

Translation and Internationalis(z)ation

Invidious has been approved for hosting by Weblate, available here. At the time of writing, translations for Arabic, Dutch, German, Polish, and Russian are currently underway. I would like to say a very big thank you to everyone working on them, and I hope to fully support them within around 2 weeks. Folks can track progress with #251.

Transperency and Finances

For the sake of transparency, I plan on publishing each month's finances. This is currently already done on Liberapay and Patreon, but there is not a total amount currently provided anywhere, and I would also like to include expenses to provide a better explanation of how patrons' money is being spent.

Donations

• Patreon: $43.60 (Patreon takes roughly 9%)
• Liberapay : $22.10
• Crypto : ~$1.25 (converted from BCH, BTC)
• Total : $66.95

Expenses

• invidious-load1 (nyc1) : $10.00 (load balancer)
• invidious-update1 (s-1vcpu-1gb) : $5.00 (updates feeds)
• invidious-node1 (s-1vcpu-1gb) : $5.00 (web server)
• invidious-node2 (s-1vcpu-1gb) : $5.00 (web server)
• invidious-node3 (s-1vcpu-1gb) : $5.00 (web server)
• invidious-node4 (s-1vcpu-1gb) : $5.00 (web server)
• invidious-db1 (s-4vcpu-8gb) : $40.00 (database)
• Total : $75.00

I'd be happy to provide any explanation where needed. I would also like to thank everyone who donates, it really helps and I can't say how happy I am to see that so many people find it valuable.

That's all for this month. I wish everyone the best for the holidays, and I'll see you all again in January!

0.11.0 (2018-10-23)

Week 11: FreeTube and Styling

This past Friday I'm been very excited to see that FreeTube version 0.4.0 has been released! I'd recommend taking a look at the official patch notes, but to spoil a little bit here: FreeTube now uses the Invidious API for all requests previously sent to YouTube, and has also seen support for playlists, keyboard shortcuts, and more default settings (speed, autoplay, and subtitles). I'm happy to see that FreeTube has reached 500 stars on Github, and I think it's very much deserved. I'd recommend keeping an eye on the newly-launched FreeTube blog for updates on the project.

Quite a few styling changes have been added this past week, including channel subscriber count to the subscribe and unsubscribe buttons. The changes sound small, but they've been a very big improvement and I'm quite satisfied with how they look. Also to note is that partial support for duration in thumbnails have been added with #202. Overall, I think the site is becoming much more pleasing visually, and I hope to continue to improve it.

I've been very pleased to see Invidious in its current state, and I believe it's many times more mature compared to even a month ago. Changes have also started slowing down a bit as it's become more mature, and therefore I'd like to transition to a monthly update schedule in order to provide more comprehensive updates for everyone. I want to thank you all for helping me reach this point. I can't say how happy I am for Invidious to be where it is now.

Enjoy the rest of your week everyone, I'll see you in November!

0.10.0 (2018-10-16)

Week 10: Subscriptions

This week I'm happy to announce that subscriptions have been drastically sped up with 35e63fa. As I mentioned last week, this essentially "caches" a user's feed, meaning that operations that previously took 20 seconds or timed out, now can load in under a second. I'd take a look at #173 for a sample benchmark. Previously features that made Invidious's feed so useful, such as filtering by unseen and by author would take too long to load, and so instead would timeout. I'm very happy that this has been fixed, and folks can get back to using these features.

Among some smaller features that have been added this week include #118, which adds, in my opinion, some very attractive subscribe and unsubscribe buttons. I think it's also a bit of a functional improvement as well, since it doesn't require a user to reload the page in order to subscribe or unsubscribe to a channel, and also gives the opportunity to put the channel's sub count on display.

An option to swap between Reddit and YouTube comments without a page reload has been added with 5eefab6, bringing it somewhat closer in functionality to the popular AlienTube extension, on which it is based (although the extension unfortunately appears now to be fragmented).

As always, there are a couple smaller improvements this week, including some minor fixes for geo-bypass with e46e618 and 245d0b5, playlist preferences with 81b4477, and YouTube comments with 02335f3.

This coming week I'd also recommend keeping an eye on the excellent FreeTube, which is looking forward to a new release. I've been very lucky to work with @PrestonN for the past few weeks to improve the Invidious API, and I'm quite looking forward to the new release.

That's all for this week folks, thank you all again for your continued interest and support.

0.9.0 (2018-10-08)

Week 9: Playlists

Not as much to announce this week, but I'm still quite happy to announce a couple things, namely:

Playback support for playlists has finally been added with 88430a6. You can now view playlists with the &list= query param, as you would on YouTube. You can also view mixes with the mentioned &list=, although they require some extra handling that I would like to add in the coming week, as well as adding playlist looping and shuffle. I think playback support has been a roadblock for more exciting features such as #114, and I look forward to improving the experience.

Comments have had a bit of a cosmetic upgrade with #132, which I think helps better distinguish between Reddit and YouTube comments, as it makes them appear similarly to their respective sites. You can also now switch between YouTube and Reddit comments with a push of a button, which I think is quite an improvement, especially for newer or less popular videos with fewer comments.

I've had a small breakthrough in speeding up users' subscription feeds with PostgreSQL's materialized views. Without going into too much detail, materialized views essentially cache the result of a query, making it possible to run resource-intensive queries once, rather than every time a user visits their feed. In the coming week I hope to push this out to users, and hopefully close #173.

I haven't had as much time to work on the project this week, but I'm quite happy to have added some new features. Have a great week everyone.

0.8.0 (2018-10-02)

Week 8: Mixes

Hello again!

Mixes have been added with 20130db, which makes it easy to create a playlist of related content. See #188 for more info on how they work. Currently, they return the first 50 videos rather than a continuous feed to avoid tracking by Google/YouTube, which I think is a good trade-off between usability and privacy, and I hope other folks agree. You can create mixes by adding RD to the beginning of a video ID, an example is provided here based on Big Buck Bunny. I've been quite happy with the results returned for the mixes I've tried, and it is not limited to music, which I think is a big plus. To emulate a continuous feed provided many are used to, using the last video of each mix as a new 'seed' has worked well for me. In the coming week I'd like to to add playback support in the player to listen to these easily.

A very big thanks to @flourgaz for Docker support with #186. This is an enormous improvement in portability for the project, and opens the door for Heroku support (see #162), and seamless support on Windows. For most users, it should be as easy as running docker-compose up.

I've spent quite a bit of time this past week improving support for geo-bypass (see #92), and am happy to note that Invidious has been able to proxy ~50% of the geo-restricted videos I've tried. In addition, you can now watch geo-restricted videos if you have dash enabled as your preferred quality, for more details see #34 and #185, or last week's update. For folks interested in replicating these results for themselves, I'd take a look here for the script used, and here for a list of videos restricted in the US.

1080p has seen a fairly smooth roll-out, although there have been a couple issues reported, mainly #193, which is likely an issue in the player. I've also encountered a couple other issues myself that I would like to investigate. Although none are major, I'd like to keep 1080p opt-in for registered users another week to better address these issues.

Have an excellent week everyone.

0.7.0 (2018-09-25)

Week 7: 1080p and Search Types

Hello again everyone! I've got quite a couple announcements this week:

Experimental 1080p support has been added with b3ca392, and can be enabled by going to preferences and changing preferred video quality to dash. You can find more details here. Currently quality and speed controls have not yet been integrated into the player, but I'd still appreciate feedback, mainly on any issues with buffering or DASH playback. I hope to integrate 1080p support into the player and push support site-wide in the coming weeks.

You can now filter content types in search with the type:TYPE filter. Supported content types are playlist, channel, and video. More info is available here. I think this is quite an improvement in usability and I hope others find the same.

A CHANGELOG has been added to the repository, so folks will now receive a copy of all these updates when cloning. I think this is an improvement in hosting the project, as it is no longer tied to the /releases tab on Github or the posts on Patreon.

Recently, users have been reporting 504s when attempting to access their subscriptions, which is tracked in #173. This is most likely caused by an uptick in usage, which I am absolutely grateful for, but unfortunately has resulted in an increase in costs for hosting the site, which is why I will be bumping my goal on Patreon from $60 to $80. I would appreciate any feedback on how subscriptions could be improved.

Other minor improvements include:

• Additional regions added to bypass geo-block with 9a78523
• Fix for playlists containing less than 100 videos (previously shown as empty) with 35ac887
• Fix for published date for Reddit comments (previously showing negative seconds) with 6e09202

Thank you everyone for your support!

0.6.0 (2018-09-18)

Week 6: Filters and Thumbnails

Hello again! This week I'm happy to mention a couple new features to search as well as some miscellaneous usability improvements.

You can now constrain your search query to a specific channel with the channel:CHANNEL filter (see #165 for more details). Unfortunately, other search filters combined with channel search are not yet supported. I hope to add support for them in the coming weeks.

You can also now search only your subscriptions by adding subscriptions:true to your query (see #30 for more details). It's not quite ready for widespread use but I would appreciate feedback as the site updates to fully support it. Other search filters are not yet supported with subscriptions:true, but I hope to add more functionality to this as well.

With #153 and #168 all images on the site are now proxied through Invidious. In addition to offering the user more protection from Google's eyes, it also allows the site to automatically pick out the highest resolution thumbnail for videos. I think this is quite a large aesthetic improvement and I hope others will find the same.

As a smaller improvement to the site, you can also now view RSS feeds for playlists with #113.

These updates are also now listed under Github's releases. I'm also planning on adding them as a CHANGELOG.md in the repository itself so people can receive a copy with the project's source.

That's all for this week. Thank you everyone for your support!

0.5.0 (2018-09-11)

Week 5: Privacy and Security

I hope everyone had a good weekend! This past week I've been fixing some issues that have been brought to my attention to help better protect users and help them keep their anonymity.

An issue with open referers has been fixed with 29a2186, which prevents potential redirects to external sites on actions such as login or modifying preferences.

Additionally, X-XSS-Protection, X-Content-Type-Options, and X-Frame-Options headers have been added with 96234e5, which should keep users safer while using the site.

A potential XSS vector has also been fixed in YouTube comments with 8c45694.

All the above vulnerabilities were brought to my attention by someone who wishes to remain anonymous, but I would like to say again here how thankful I am. If anyone else would like to get in touch please feel free to email me at omarroth@hotmail.com or omarroth@protonmail.com.

This week a couple changes have been made to better protect user's privacy as well. All CSS and JS assets are now served locally with 3ec684a, which means users no longer need to whitelist unpkg.com. Although I personally have encountered few issues, I understand that many folks would like to keep their browsing activity contained to as few parties as possible. In the coming week I also hope to proxy YouTube images, so that no user data is sent to Google.

YouTube links in comments now should redirect properly to the Invidious alternate with 1c8bd67 and cf63c82, so users can more easily evade Google tracking.

I'm also happy to mention a couple quality of life features this week:

Invidious now shows a video's "license" if provided, see #159 for more details. You can also search for videos licensed under the creative commons with "QUERY features:creative_commons".

Videos with only one source will always display the cog for changing quality, so that users can see what quality is currently playing. See #158 for more details.

Folks have also probably noticed that the gutters on either side of the screen have been shrunk down quite significantly, so that more of the screen is filled with content. Hopefully this can be improved even more in the coming weeks.

"Music", "Sports", and "Popular on YouTube" channels now properly display their videos. You can subscribe to these channels just as you would normally.

This coming week I'm planning on spending time with my family, so I unfortunately may not be as responsive. I do still hope to add some smaller features for next week however, and I hope to continue development soon. Thank you everyone again for your support.

0.4.0 (2018-09-06)

Week 4: Genre Channels

Hello! I hope everyone enjoyed their weekend. Without further ado: Just today genre channels have been added with #119. More information on genre channels is available here. You can subscribe to them as normally, and view them as RSS. I think they offer an interesting alternative way to find new content and I hope people find them useful.

This past week folks have started reporting 504s on their subscription page (see #144 for more details). Upgrading the database server appeared to fix the issue, as well as providing a smoother experience across the site. Unfortunately, that means I will be increasing the goal from $50 to $60 in order to meet the increased hosting costs.

With #134, comments are now formatted correctly, providing support for bold, italics, and links in comments. I think this improvement makes them much easier to read, and I hope others find the same. Also to note is that links in both comments and the video description now no longer contain any of Google's tracking with #115.

One of the major use cases for Invidious is as a stripped-down version of YouTube. In line with that, I'm happy to announce that you can now hide related videos if you're logged in, for users that prefer an even more lightweight experience.

Finally, I'm pleased to announce that Invidious has hit 100 stars on GitHub. I am very happy that Invidious has proven to be useful to so many people, and I can't say how grateful I am to everyone for their continued support.

Enjoy the rest of your week everyone!

0.3.0 (2018-09-06)

Week 3: Quality of Life

Hello everyone! This week I've been working on some smaller features that will hopefully make the site more functional. Search filters have been added with #126. You can now specify 'sort', 'date', 'duration', and 'features' within your query using the 'operator:value' syntax. I'd recommend taking a look here for a list of supported options and at #126 for some examples. This also opens the door for features such as #30 which can be implemented as filters. I think advanced search is a major point in which Invidious can improve on YouTube and hope to add more features soon!

This week a more advanced system for viewing fallback comments has been added (see #84 for more details). You can now specify a comment fallback in your preferences, which Invidious will use. If, for example, no Reddit comments are available for a given video, it can choose to fallback on YouTube comments. This also makes it possible to turn comments off completely for users that prefer a more streamlined experience.

With #98, it is now possible for users to specify preferences without creating an account. You can now change speed, volume, subtitles, autoplay, loop, and quality using query parameters. See the issue above for more details and several examples.

I'd also like to announce that I've set up an account on Liberapay, for patrons that prefer a privacy-friendly alternative to Patreon. Liberapay also does not take any percentage of donations, so I'd recommend donating some to the Liberapay for their hard work. Go check it out!

Two weeks ago I mentioned adding 1080p support into the player. Currently, the only thing blocking is #207 in the excellent http-streaming library. I hope to work with the videojs team to merge it soon and finally implement 1080p support!

That's all for this week, thank you again everyone for your support!

0.2.0 (2018-09-06)

Week 2: Toward Playlists

Sorry for the late update! Not as much to announce this week, but still a couple things of note: I'm happy to announce that a playlists page and API endpoint has been added so you can now view playlists. Currently, you cannot watch playlists through the player, but I hope to add that in the coming week as well as adding functionality to add and modify playlists. There is a good conversation on #114 about giving playlists even more functionality, which I think is interesting and would appreciate feedback on.

As an update to the Invidious API announcement last week, I've been working with @PrestonN, the developer of FreeTube, to help migrate his project to the Invidious API. Because of it's increasing popularity, he has had trouble keeping under the quota set by YouTube's API. I hope to improve the API to meet his and others needs and I'd recommend folks to keep an eye on his excellent project! There is a good discussion with his thoughts here.

A couple of miscellaneous features and bugfixes:

• You can now login to Invidious simultaneously from multiple devices - #109

• Added a note for scheduled livestreams - #124

• Changed YouTube comment header to "View x comments" - #120

Enjoy your week everyone!

0.1.0 (2018-09-06)

Week 1: Invidious API and Geo-Bypass

Hello everyone! This past week there have been quite a few things worthy of mention:

I'm happy to announce the Invidious Developer API. The Invidious API does not use any of the official YouTube APIs, and instead crawls the site to provide a JSON interface for other developers to use. It's still under development but is already powering CloudTube. The API currently does not have a quota (compared to YouTube) which I hope to continue thanks to continued support from my Patrons. Hopefully other developers find it useful, and I hope to continue to improve it so it can better serve the community.

Just today partial support for bypassing geo-restrictions has been added with fada57a. If a video is unblocked in one of: United States, Canada, Germany, France, Japan, Russia, or United Kingdom, then Invidious will be able to serve video info. Currently you will not yet be able to access the video files themselves, but in the coming week I hope to proxy videos so that users can enjoy content across borders.

Support for generating DASH manifests has been fixed, in the coming week I hope to integrate this functionality into the watch page, so users can view videos in 1080p and above.

Thank you everyone for your continued interest and support!