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I'd like somebody could tell what is currently the best solution to play youtube videos with a desktop app?

I like minitube app but since 2015 Google updates its policy so often so the app seems to be redundant or left to constant updates. I tried lots of ppas all of them reached up to 2.3.1 version max.

And as of today SMtube browser in SMPlayer stopped working at all, Google reconstructed their API completely, so as its developer said regardly SMtube needs to be completely rebuild and not sure if that's gonna happen soon.

Other suggestions I heard is to use the new engine fork of mplayer mpv+youtube-dl. Does anybody managed to do so? I would appreciate if somebody explain any tutorial on that. Thanks.

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5 Answers 5

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So, by far the best solution I could find for Ubuntu 14.04LTS and later is the software called GTK Youtube Viewer it has rich set of features and the ability to login to Youtube account.

To install GTK Youtube Viewer:

sudo apt-add-repository ppa:nilarimogard/webupd8
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install youtube-viewer

It reproduces all videos despite of new Google restrictions on Vevo etc. Also I did a few tweaks to it, by default it uses mplayer engine so you can substitute any front-end player that uses mplayer engine just to get a nice GUI. This is how you can do it: in Youtube Viewer navigate to "Menu" --> "Preferences", you'll get a script opened, find these lines:

video_player_selected      => "mplayer",
video_players              => {
                            mplayer => {
                              arg   => "-prefer-ipv4 -really-quiet-cache %d -cache-min %d",
                              audio => "-audiofile *AUDIO*",
                              cmd   => "/usr/bin/mplayer",
                              fs    => "-fs",
                              srt   => "-sub *SUB*",
                            },
                            mpv => {
                              arg   => "--really-quiet",

then simply change the line:

cmd   => "/usr/bin/mplayer",

to e.g.:

cmd   => "/usr/bin/smplayer",

Next open SMPlayer and navigate to "SMPlayer Preferences" --> "Network" tab and put the marks at Enable Youtube internal support and Enable MPV's support for streaming sites that's it. Now go back to Youtube Viewer and click on any video it will launch it with SMPlayer.

Edit

A small fix/improvement when using SMPlayer if you want to avoid breaking a link into threads when clicking on the video to play remove this argument line from mplayer section:

arg   => "-prefer-ipv4 -really-quiet -cache %d -cache-min %d",
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I found 3 Options:

1 Install Kodi app and use the YouTube addon works very smooth

2 Install smplayer and smtube

3 Install chrome browser and use an extension call user agent swticher this addon forces chrome and firefox to use ur browser as a mobile browser and youtube loads pretty fast! Once enabled..click and change settings to android tablet and save the settings.

Good Luck

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Now an 2018 answer:
I have an old laptop (6-7 years, and it was already a low budget laptop then whith just good battery life, I now installed Lubuntu 64bit 18.04 and enhanced optical design, it looks beautiful and runs smooth), and I wanted smooth youtube playback:

I checked the options with two criteria:

  • Easy to install (no compile here, get dependencies here and here, ...., ...)
  • Smooth playback

I found three options:

  • User-Agent Switcher in Firefox and setting just for youtube user-agent to "ipad". 720p runs quite smooth then. (normally even 480p doesn't run real smooth). Nice: Fully integrated in Firefox.
  • YouTube Browser for SMPlayer: Runs 720p completeley smooth and switching timeline is absolutley smooth as well. (SMPlayer can be made more beautiful with just selecting another icon set)
  • QMPlay2 this is hot: It runs 1080p quite smooth on my laptop (!!! wouah). I just have an 1366x768 display, so 720p youtube is quite good, but 1080p is noticeley better (also because youtube doesn't provide top bitrate for each resolution, so e.g. if you have a full hd monitor, your 1440p youtube will look significant better than 1080p and even 4k has a small improvement to 1440p on an 1080p display, esspecially on fast scenes). I'm really happy with running 1080p youtube on my 1366x768 laptop display. QMPlay2 is great (hardware-acceleration and and and).

Maybe one could also embedd that the player is automatically started when clicking on a youtube video in firefox, I didn't check that and I'm content and happy with how it is now.

Btw. for testing quality I recommend a top quality youtube video (which also has smaller resolutions in youtube): "Peru 8k" (by jacob-katie Schwarz), youtube.com/watch?v=1La4QzGeaaQ (I hope this link works for you).

If you know another player/app which 2018 also fullfils the two named criteria (e.g. on an popular *ubuntu system), then I would be happy, if you leave a comment.

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I would suggest Tomahawk:

Add your favorite music subscription services, music promotion platforms, networked libraries, cloud storage, music data providers, social networks and more.

Including these:

YouTube, Spotify, Beats Music, Google Play Music, Soundcloud, Last.fm and any local music you have stored.

Or Unity Webapp for YouTube, from the software center.

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  • 1
    I tried the Unity Webapp, but it didn't work as well as the YouTube HTML5 Video Player in the web browser, so I uninstalled it.
    – karel
    Apr 23, 2015 at 16:55
  • @karel yes, it doesn't work and crashes a lot. I hate it a great deal. However, it does what he wants (ish).
    – Tim
    Apr 23, 2015 at 16:56
  • does it reproduce video or it's only for music?
    – JoKeR
    Apr 23, 2015 at 17:04
  • Which, tomahawk? It may do the video, I don't know.
    – Tim
    Apr 23, 2015 at 17:11
  • tomahawk is an interesting streaming software but it's a music player, it doesn't play videos.
    – JoKeR
    Apr 25, 2015 at 13:33
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In case you choose the GTK YouTube Viewer. Which i would recommend.

On *buntu 14.04 don't forget to update your version of mpv, i find it very useful.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mc3man/mpv-tests

sudo apt-get update ; \
sudo apt-get install mpv

Cheers!

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