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Grayjay Desktop App

544 points| pierrelf | 1 year ago |grayjay.app

305 comments

order

bisby|1 year ago

Launching the Linux release and noticed in the logs:

Directories:User Directory: /home/bisby/Grayjay

And there is a directory there now. I absolutely hate having stuff automatically create anything in my home directory like this. Ideally, this should be following XDG directory guidelines on linux: https://specifications.freedesktop.org/basedir-spec/latest/

ThatMedicIsASpy|1 year ago

I gave too many shits about my home dir once too..

My only correct way today is create your own home dir inside your home dir to combat this hell hole of never ending config junk in your home dir

koen31|1 year ago

Grayjay dev here. If you want it to use your user directory like other apps, just remove the file called "Portable". Keep in mind that it just uses your working directory to write files otherwise.

jffasdfwau|1 year ago

Thank you. I thought I was alone in caring about XDG specification.

retrochameleon|1 year ago

You'd be interested in xdg-ninja: https://github.com/b3nj5m1n/xdg-ninja

Like others said, fighting the clean HOME fight is just draining and futile in the end. This script helps you identify low hanging fruit, though, where you can change their storage location with a simple envvar.

lrvick|1 year ago

I love the right to repair work Louis Rossmann does, and this project goal as a whole, but this license is a major step backwards for software distribution with high assurances of security, freedom and privacy.

Debian, Arch, Guix, F-droid or any other independent signed reproducible build channels require a true Open Source license to function legally.

The license thus forces users to download unsigned non-reproducible binaries off grayjay servers and trust blindly that their build server is creating binaries from exactly the published code and not compromised to inject tracking or malware not in the public repo (an increasingly common attack they may not even know about for years!). Or say the grayjay domain is hijacked or even a BGP attack or a LAN MITM. All sorts of ways they could be helping distribute malware and not know it with no signatures or reproducible build proofs.

Thing is, your team would not have to solve these problems if you licensed it so the community could solve them for you, as we do for thousands of open source software projects.

I really want to see a project like this take off and would gladly donate, but only if it can be opened up for accountability via third party compilation and distribution channels so it can never be backdoored or co-opted for surveillance if your leadership or release engineers are ever compromised.

Said license: https://github.com/futo-org/Grayjay.Desktop?tab=License-1-ov...

There are other licenses like AGPL that would kill any attempt for someone to rip your code off to make their own proprietary offering, without locking yourself out of established freedom, security, and privacy preserving software distribution channels.

If anyone from the team is reading this, I would be happy to detail and discuss my concerns further as a software supply chain security specialist. Hit me up.

apex_sloth|1 year ago

As I understand it, GrayJay is not free (as in they want to be paid, which is I think is reasonable). How does this work with something like AGPL?

I'm curious to hear more, because I'm in the process of evaluating licenses for a software I'm planning to build and sell. For me it's important that users can feel safe with running my code and build it themselves - and keep using the software if I'm no longer around to maintain it. Looking forward to hearing your thoughts.

ferbivore|1 year ago

FUTO develops, for the most part, proprietary software that they plan to monetize. The license choice isn't some mistake that you can get them to recant by explaining the virtues of the AGPL and third party distributors. (They're already aware of these things; one of the products under their umbrella is Immich, which was relicensed to AGPL after they started employing the original developer, as a compromise between his goals and FUTO's.) They're deliberately going for the same model as Unreal: source access is only provided a courtesy to users, and/or as part of a marketing strategy, and they have zero interest in allowing you to fork their software.

j1elo|1 year ago

I read the license and of course IANAL but it seems clear that Debian, Arch, Guix, F-droid or any other independent signed reproducible build channels can package and distribute their own reproducible builds of this software, as long as it is "free of charge for non-commercial purposes", isn't it?

(a FOSS license would also work, but if I have learned something in HN before, is that don't FOSS if you ever want to make money from something while preventing others from making money off of it)

bitexploder|1 year ago

Can’t you say this about virtually every single closed source binary only release software? Steam, 1Password, etc? Why is Grayjay special here. Just curious.

2OEH8eoCRo0|1 year ago

The license lets you do whatever you want except rip off FUTO. What does the license prevent you from doing?

RobotToaster|1 year ago

> You may distribute the software or provide it to others only if you do so free of charge for non-commercial purposes.

>Notwithstanding the above, you may not remove or obscure any functionality in the software related to payment to the Licensor in any copy you distribute to others.

>You may not alter, remove, or obscure any licensing, copyright, or other notices of the Licensor in the software. Any use of the Licensor’s trademarks is subject to applicable law.

To me that says that if FUTO decide to paywall the entire app, nobody is allowed to fork it to remove that.

josephcsible|1 year ago

Please remove "Also available on FDroid" from the page. This app is not available on F-Droid and isn't allowed to be added to it since it isn't open source.

risho|1 year ago

where it says available on fdroid it links to their personal fdroid repository. plenty of projects both open source and not have their own fdroid repository. fdroid is both a repository that only allows open source software and a packaging infrastructure tool for people hosting their own repositories. based on the fact their claim that they are on fdroid literally hyperlinks to their fdroid repository i don't see how anyone could find that misleading. if anything it's fdroids fault for giving their own repository the same name as their infrastructure tool instead of doing what every other project did and give them separate names. for example docker and dockerhub, flatpak and flathub, etc.

here is a list of 100+ not official fdroid repositories. https://github.com/userkilled/FDroid-List-Repository

graemep|1 year ago

I agree that is misleading. It has its own F-droid compatible repo so you can use an F-Droid client. When I hear "available on F-Droid" I assume it means its in the F-Droid repo.

moeffju|1 year ago

Maybe F-Droid should just call their official blessed repo "F-Repo" to end the confusion, because this is clearly available through F-Droid, just not in the F-Droid official repo...

627467|1 year ago

It is available in fdroid on my ungoogled phone. I don't know what you're talking about

Arnavion|1 year ago

For anyone who wants a lo-fi solution to subscribing to a youtube channel without having to deal with the youtube.com website, every channel has a built-in Atom feed that contains an entry for each video. My pipeline for watching subscribed channels is to just run a feed reader in one terminal (newsboat) and then copy-paste new videos from that into an adjacent terminal running a loop that runs `yt-dlp` on each pasted line.

You can find the feed URL by inspecting the HTML of the youtube.com/channel/.../videos page and searching for "rssUrl"; it'll look like `www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=UC...`

Downside: this feed will contain premieres, shorts and livestreams in addition to videos and AFAIK there's no way to filter those out. Depending on the channel, the title might make it obvious whether it's one of those.

harryvederci|1 year ago

You can use yt-dlp to get:

- the channel id by youtube channel url

- the duration + aspect ratio (<= 3 min + vertical = short)

- whether or not it's a live / future video

IronWolve|1 year ago

We always been missing good 3rd party search/trending for online videos.

I've been using a youtube frontend called pockettube, where I could make lists(channels) for content I like, without youtube forcing me what to watch.

Example. I have an Art and Food channels with my favorite content creators, I get to see the list in order of newest videos first, totally bypassing youtubes forced interface.

In fact, if people started creating front ends to youtube with real search/suggestion engines, you could find new content and help the less viewed but good content that gets bypassed.

Grayjay is great, since it uses multiple video providers, but you still have to "Know" who to follow. The search "Knowing" part is still word of mouth, random change of seeing a creators video, or the platforms showing it to you. Combine the 2, and it would be unstoppable.

I think if someone came up with a external database of content providers on multiple platforms that allows apps like grayjay/pockettube/etc to find new content, that is the missing piece.

koen31|1 year ago

Grayjay dev here, the idea is to have a plugin system for recommendation engines in the future. You can choose whichever recommendation engine you like and it will tell you what data will be sent to the recommendation engine in order to be able to make recommendations for you. There will likely also be recommendation plugins that run fully offline for people who care a lot about privacy.

duxup|1 year ago

Finding content is so hard.

All YouTube wants me to watch are "OMG YOU WOULDN'T BELIEVE WHAT THIS COP DID" content. I have no idea why they want me to watch those videos, I never do and I block the videos and the channels from recommendations but they keep coming ...

All I get are ads for weird suspect drugs and products, just going on these platforms is such a bad vibe.

damiante|1 year ago

The Grayjay Android app (which I use regularly) has a "Recommended" tab under each video that provides anonymous recommendations based only on the video you're watching. I recall them asking me to opt-in to the creation of a database like this as well recently, but I don't think it's available yet.

pxoe|1 year ago

Does this app has any creator monetization in mind, or does 'your way' means 'fuck you, i'm not paying you for shit, i'm just taking it'? None of it is "your content", or their content, it's just someone else's content they're leeching on. "full ownership" - of what?

literally just, what are their thoughts on that. do people deserve being paid? or don't? and if they don't and it's not worth paying for, how is it still worth watching? what is this bizarre mix of disdain and yet desire and entitlement to things, that they'll try to get them in whatever roundabout way, instead of just not watching the thing?

cxr|1 year ago

There is way too much incoherence and righteous indignation in this comment for it to be the top thread here.

> "full ownership" - of what?

By a reasonable and charitable reading: full ownership over your legally-obtained copy of the material that folks (the creators/rightsholders themselves) are publishing for gratis online for anyone to watch, and likely some non-gratis stuff that you are paying these creators for if you are a subscriber and decide to enter your account details into the app.

This whole app looks to be a video player that works like an alternative frontend to the official players by e.g. YouTube, Twitch, and so on, in the vein of "unity of interface"[1] and a continuation of the spirit of the Miro player (see also: virtually every podcast app in existence).

You seem, bizarrely, to be responding to it like a new KaZaA or Popcorn Time or other torrent-backed something-or-other.

1. <https://www-archive.mozilla.org/unity-of-interface>

Liquix|1 year ago

creators deserve to be paid. viewers deserve to not be psychologically manipulated by advertisements and algorithms.

insisting viewers "pay" by subjecting themselves to ads is an unethical business model; refusing to support the practice is a rational reaction.

navane|1 year ago

No one is taking YouTube away from you. People make choices. There are many alternatives yet to explore. The network effect, the fact that many people, including me, are on the platform, is a benefit to the platform, more users more worth, yet no one is paying me to be there either.

paweladamczuk|1 year ago

Creator support is probably the reason why Grayjay doesn't have SponsorBlock integration.

What it's trying to bypass is walls being put in place by Youtube after it established itself as a monopoly by leveraging technologies that worked and succeeded because of their no-walls philosophy.

augstein|1 year ago

I pay for Youtube premium to not have to see ads and potentially be manipulated by them.

Yet I still have to watch a lot of ads there, since for a large chunk of content creators, the economic model of Youtube doesn’t seem to work and they additionally include inline ads.

emaro|1 year ago

Grayjay allows you to view member (pay only) content if you log in with an account that has access. That allows creators to monetize their content.

I'm glad Grayjay includes an adblocker, I wouldn't use it otherwise.

weberer|1 year ago

Well its a two way street. Take it up with Google for not offering paid API access so people wouldn't have to rely on hacky web scraping solutions.

mawise|1 year ago

Oh cool, it's like RSS consumption for video content (I think). I worry that since it isn't using blessed APIs it would get shut down by the platforms if it gets much traction. Also "trust me instead of them" can be a tough sell to the privacy-focused crowd. I'd love something that makes it trivial effort for the creators to directly publish on more open platforms--more like RSS publishing for video content. But youtube gives you discovery and a cut in the ad revenue, so I'm not sure how to get the incentives to align...

altairprime|1 year ago

You don’t need APIs if your app includes a web browser, though; you just need the patience to hook into the browser’s APIs, rather than the page’s, in order to backup content when viewed. User-operated Selenium is legitimately the biggest threat model to content islands. It’s too bad a third-party had to invent Grayjay as a standalone, rather than one of the browsers figuring this out and shipping it as subscription-payment functionality :/

(It has to be subscription payment to deal in a scaleable and timely manner with sites changing their page schemas anticompetitively.)

oaththrowaway|1 year ago

Linux version seems to work good. Was able to sync with my phone with no issues. My only complaint with either of them is YT Shorts support. I'll have to stick with Freetube for that I guess since there is a couple of creators that I follow that only release shorts

tonijn|1 year ago

Having no Shorts would be a huge plus imho

dzhiurgis|1 year ago

Does freetube has macos arm app yet? I found emulated one unbearably slow.

rollcat|1 year ago

Bug report (macOS): the app does not allow copy/paste, text selection, or even quitting thru Cmd-* shortcuts - it has no entries in the top menu bar whatsoever. There are also no context menus.

koen31|1 year ago

Grayjay dev here, noted. Thank you.

dgreensp|1 year ago

The site CSS is a little broken on iPhone, causing elements to hang off the screen or overlap. FAQ link gives a 404.

Technically, I think this is against YouTube (for example) TOS, though I don’t expect that would be enforced against end users.

aniviacat|1 year ago

It's broken on Android/Firefox, too.

duxup|1 year ago

This feels like a central hub for media you like?

I would assume these privacy claims would also include a ToS violation for the given platform?

And then of course the user has given Grayjay a lot of info so privacy?

Are they scraping the actual content too or just accessing it in some different way?

Joe_Cool|1 year ago

It doesn't use any API (at least the YouTube plugin). So they are (according to their lawyers) not bound to any TOS. All it does is open the page (like a browser) and grab it and only show stuff to the user that's "relevant".

You can check it yourself, while it is not "open-source" or "free" in the usual sense its source is available.

More details from Rossmann himself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqTYg6vnQvw

edit: TOS not API

ethagknight|1 year ago

This looks really interesting. Specifically I would love to be able to set up something like this for my kids so that I have control over what they are able to watch on YouTube. I want to offer my kids whitelisted shows and creator accounts. I know theres a lot of interesting and high quality stuff out there but I do NOT want YT recommending things to my kids without going through me first.

Grayjay looks like it may be a solution!

koen31|1 year ago

Grayjay dev here, this is for sure a use case we have in mind. The idea is in the future to allow you to share subscription groups you've made for your kids with friends.

Maybe there can be a website where people share subscription groups with each other in general. Good archery channels, good fitness channel, kid safe channels, etc.

Another thing I am pondering is if it is worth adding a mode that prevents your kids from accessing other content then what is in a specific subscription group.

foxbarrington|1 year ago

This is the most maddening thing about all content now. It's all platform based and every platform wants to constantly push/"recommend" things to you and your kids. Right now I use Roku and Plex but even both of those are constantly trying to break down the wall.

oaththrowaway|1 year ago

I have NewPipe on my kid's tablets which is pretty good too, but it breaks more often. But it's great to have no ads + sponsorblock.

Between that and pirated shows/movies my kids are absolutely puzzled by commercials when we stay at a hotel or with family.

smcleod|1 year ago

Weird that it disables the use of right click, paste and seemingly your password manager when trying to login to services via the app.

koen31|1 year ago

Grayjay dev here, good point, will add right click, paste.

thih9|1 year ago

> Our Apple signing/notarization is not entirely done yet, thus you have to run the following command once to run the application

This is unclear to me, what does “not entirely done” mean in this context? Has the process been started and they are waiting for Apple?

chrismorgan|1 year ago

The screenshot in the “Add and configure sources” section has the YouTube plugin with the caption: “One of the biggest video platforms owned by Google”.

The stupid thing is that it’s entirely believable that Google would have multiple competing video platforms. Certainly they tend to have half a dozen competing chat things alive at any give point in time, two or three with the same name for bonus confusion.

(The sentence could do with a comma: “One of the biggest video platforms, owned by Google”.)

AiAi|1 year ago

Trying this since YouTube just started blocking my ad blocker. It seems to be working well on Linux.

I didn't find a feedback button on the app itself, so if the authors are reading, some things I miss from using YouTube's website:

- Videos in new tabs; - Search bar always visible.

jhund|1 year ago

I also noticed that Youtube prevents me from watching videos on their site starting today because I have an adblocker (uBlockOrigin) installed.

ddingus|1 year ago

Request: When I use NewPipe, I can drop a YT URL into the search bar, which then treats it just like an address, more or less immediately playing the video

This would be nice to see in GreyJay.

Edit: Oh never mind! I just took the update, and it is in the can now!

You guys rock. Thank you.

eZwa_306|1 year ago

I've unzipped Grayjay for Windows into a folder and is ready for use, and am trying to set up the "grayjay://" URI so that it opens Grayjay when a link is clicked on.

Namely, trying to add plugins to my Grayjay install via https://plugins.grayjay.app/, but my browser doesn't know how to handle links that have the "grayjay://" URI as a prefix.

Any help with this is welcomed. I'm also hoping that future releases will either be distributed as an executable installer that automagically takes care of this, or with a patch that can be applied to allow for true "OOTB" functionality without having to tweak/meddle with Windows settings/registry.

EDIT 1: Running Win 10

EDIT 2: Found a way within Grayjay to install plugins, but would like to still have this URI set up for future use.

high_priest|1 year ago

I love the dictation (STT) app from the same (FUTO) creator. It has completely replaced any other dictation solutions on my phone & it is fully offline!

withinboredom|1 year ago

FYI: I accidentally logged into my wrong patreon account and expected "logout then login" to prompt me to login again. It doesn't. It just logs me back in with the same user.

koen31|1 year ago

Grayjay dev here, that's a bug, I wrote it down. You can probably work around it for now by logging out -> restart app -> log back in.

lkurtz|1 year ago

Recommending (and running) `xattr -c` can be extremely dangerous. I would suggest withholding Mac releases until they can be distributed/run safely.

josephcsible|1 year ago

That doesn't map to safety or danger at all. It's purely a way of opting out of the developer having to pay the Apple tax.

crazygringo|1 year ago

As someone not very familiar, is there any legitimate reason why they say "Our Apple signing/notarization is not entirely done yet"?

It feels extremely suspicious, given that I download lots of other popular utility software from independent devs and I've never had to do that before.

margana|1 year ago

Do you also suggest never releasing any software for Linux because there is no megacorporation there policing what software you should and shouldn't run?

kfajdsl|1 year ago

It's about as dangerous as running a Linux or Windows binary.

NotPractical|1 year ago

The best feature of alternative YT clients IMO is "multiple subscription lists". I have so many subscriptions, when using the official YouTube app or site the "subscriptions" feed is overwhelming, and I prefer not to use the algorithmically-generated "home" feed. Since YT has kind of become the de facto "place to upload videos on the Internet", video topics are broad enough to constitute multiple web sites, and I like to be able to filter channels by topic rather than having them all grouped together.

If you're opposed to using a separate app just for this, you can achieve something similar using an RSS reader and YT's official RSS feeds (which I'm surprised they still publish tbh).

hysan|1 year ago

Did you know that YouTube used to have this exact feature? It was called subscription collections and they publicly promised that they would replace that feature with something better when they removed it. That never happened. It's been 9 maybe 10 years since they said that. [1]

The removal of that feature was an intentional push to take away user agency and push them into using YouTube's recommendation algorithm. The lying was a way to misdirect user complaints until it was too late.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38101629#38104494

ortusdux|1 year ago

Reddit had the same issue not too long ago. I remember a popular post where a user described their workaround of creating an account for each field of interest. To Reddit's credit, they did implement custom feeds not to long after, which lets you group batches of subreddits. Not something I'd expect YouTube to do.

jimmydddd|1 year ago

Great point. There are many yt channels that I would subscribe to if yt had multiple subscription lists. Channels I find interesting, but not enough so that I want them to "clog up" my main subscription channel.

em-bee|1 year ago

freetube has multiple subscription lists. they call it profiles. any channel can be in multiple profiles of your choice.

Vt71fcAqt7|1 year ago

Seems like a verry brittle setup. Since it adds adblock by default all this will do is make youtube crack down on adblock even more.

Joe_Cool|1 year ago

I thought so too when I started using the android version. I was surprised when GrayJay's Youtube plugin was promptly updated the same day Youtube broke it. NewPipe needed a few days to work again.

duxup|1 year ago

It feels like there is a trend of apps out there that are "about" creators, but then happily shaft them ...

mh-cx|1 year ago

Can someone explain what this is? The page has almost no information (on mobile) and I don't want to install just to find out.

nfriedly|1 year ago

Grayjay is a video player for YouTube and other services. I believe its ad-free and "algorithm-free", meaning it just gives you every video from every channel you subscribe to, in chronological order. It was initially for Android and iOS.

It's backed by Louis Rossmann, who does a lot of right to repair advocacy, among other things.

moralestapia|1 year ago

"Grayjay combines video content from multiple platforms, such as YouTube, PeerTube, Twitch, and others, into one app, removing the need to switch between different platforms."

ramon156|1 year ago

I don't get the motivation. You want to prevent doom-scrolling? I don't doom-scroll on Spotify, why is that there?

RandallBrown|1 year ago

I think the point is to follow a creator. So if you like an artist, you'd follow them and get their Instagram, YouTube, Spotify, Twitch, etc. all in one place.

c54|1 year ago

I'm interested in trying this out and started to go through the login flow for youtube, for some reason it opens in a tab within the Grayjay app which then means I can't use Google's passkey auth, and something is even preventing me from copy/pasting my Google password in from my password manager (it's too long for me to want to type out just to try the app.)

Gentle feedback to open the auth flow in the default browser, might make things easier.

xyst|1 year ago

The modern day “Trillian” for video/musiv

nurettin|1 year ago

The Trillian I knew was a jabber client

AnonHP|1 year ago

I’m getting a 404 error for the FAQ link in the footer. It seems like this is similar to FreeTube [1] (which is YouTube only though, whereas Grayjay supports multiple platforms). Does Grayjay allow downloading videos (and if yes, does it also allow choosing the quality/format)?

[1]: https://github.com/FreeTubeApp/FreeTube

Joe_Cool|1 year ago

Yes, you can download on both the mobile app and the desktop program.

willywanker|1 year ago

Of course it's an Electron app that unzips to about half a gigabyte for the Linux version thanks to having to bundle a whole Chrome browser runtime. Totally insane for a streaming video application. If only there was a Qt version, that respects keyboard and mouse focused desktop UI conventions.

uxjw|1 year ago

Seems similar to the updated Reeder app for mac/iOS. Its an RSS reeder that now works with Youtube channels, Reddit subreddits, Bluesky, Flickr, etc. https://reeder.app/

NelsonMinar|1 year ago

Looks interesting, does it allow for offline caching or archiving of media?

It mentions using the Harbor identity service, that's new to me. https://harbor.social/

monkeynotes|1 year ago

Last thing I want is even more ways to distract myself. I want an anti-algorithm or something to permanently ban me from addictive content.

thegeekpirate|1 year ago

Would be great if we could change the playback speed to more than 2.25, as I'm normally between 2.5x and 3.5x.

tines|1 year ago

Instead of having to visit several drug dealers, this will aggregate all my favorite drugs into one convenient place. Fantastic!

khana|1 year ago

[deleted]

tetrisgm|1 year ago

This seems cool. Will test on Mac later today. Would like an iOS app

daft_pink|1 year ago

I’m excited. Are we ever going to see an iOS version?

NotPractical|1 year ago

The App Store forbids any app that violates the terms of service of any company [1], regardless of the legality [2]. Since YouTube forbids alternative clients in their terms of service, Apple will not allow Grayjay onto the App Store. Even in the EU, where multiple app stores are available, you still need to follow a subset of the App Store guidelines. I looked through them and it appears that the ToS violation guideline is in fact exempt for EU apps [1], so they could release a version in the EU exclusively. However, they may be subject to the Core Technology Fee.

[1] 5.2.2, 5.2.3: https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/#int...

[2] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/04/federal-judge-rules-it...

Hadriel|1 year ago

What about Tiktok? Add that and i'm interested

koen31|1 year ago

Grayjay dev here, TikTok plugin pretty much works already, we just need to add the respective UI for both mobile and desktop to make it work nicely.

k3vinw|1 year ago

Lol. Don’t hold your breath. I used to enjoy TikTok until they forced me to create an account and install their spyware.

grahamj|1 year ago

This looks cool. Sort of a FreeTube with plugins?

metadat|1 year ago

How is this different from Jellyfin?

vanjajaja1|1 year ago

will grayjay do the push/creation side as well, or is that a different product?

2OEH8eoCRo0|1 year ago

Works well so far! Good work!

Nit: the Linux release should use a compressed tarball, not .zip

smithza|1 year ago

What is the functional difference? unzip is installed as a default on linux distros just as tar is...

int0x29|1 year ago

God those content screenshots contain so much reactionary BS.

riazrizvi|1 year ago

I’d like to believe it but I’m so jaded at this point. Give you, one vendor, all my data from these different platforms to ‘protect my privacy’, that I only have at this point because my behavior is dispersed across platforms. Hmmm.

oaththrowaway|1 year ago

I don't have a FUTO, Grayjay, or Youtube account and use the app just fine

koen31|1 year ago

Grayjay dev here, you are not giving us any data. You can review the source code, the only data being sent to us is a single data on bootup to let us know how many users we have.

RobotToaster|1 year ago

You're right to be sceptical, they still have their proprietary license that basically forbids forking.

alex-robbins|1 year ago

"Source First License 1.1" is an interesting choice. Sounds like something specific to this developer (so far, at least). I'm not savvy enough to be sure, but it doesn't sound compatible with any of the commonly accepted-as-FOSS licenses.

https://github.com/futo-org/Grayjay.Desktop/blob/373cd8448cb...

bramhaag|1 year ago

> it doesn't sound compatible with any of the commonly accepted-as-FOSS licenses.

Correct, it violates the four essential freedoms by placing restrictions on commercial use amongst other things.

akimbostrawman|1 year ago

It's closer to source available than proprietary

WaltPurvis|1 year ago

What is this app? Avast blocks the site as malware. False positive?

"This URL contains malicious code that could harm your computer. If you’re willing to risk it, you can turn off your Avast Web Shield to continue. But we strongly recommend walking away from this one."

DaSHacka|1 year ago

Somewhat ironic trusting malware to tell you what's malware and what's not

nixass|1 year ago

[deleted]

OsrsNeedsf2P|1 year ago

As someone who tried to build a browser-based, serverless Youtube video downloader, every hack under the moon doesn't work. But doing it from a fully controlled client is easy.

RandallBrown|1 year ago

That's sort of the point of this isn't it? Instead of having an app for every damn thing, you have one app.

1zael|1 year ago

[deleted]

OsrsNeedsf2P|1 year ago

This isn't designed to be a hypergrowth company. It's a side project someone with money is funding out of passion

risho|1 year ago

it looks like you just described the customer. apparently it isn't you. just because it isnt you and it isnt 90+ percent of people, doesn't mean it doesnt exist. there are all sorts of niche products for niche groups.