Materialious

YouTube is a video sharing platform that has seen some more or less controversial changes over the last few years. The removal of the dislike button, as well as Google’s aggressive push for YouTube Premium, have not been popular choices to say the least.

Alternative frontends aim to give users more control over their YouTube experience. Materialious comes forth with an interface redesign, providing users with the YouTube they know, but with a series of key changes under the hood: various privacy tweaks have been applied to minimize tracking, and it also comes with several popular extensions for a smoother, more focused experience.

There isn’t much to talk about YouTube itself, but there is plenty to say about how the frontend implements it. The app comes as a solution for privacy-conscious users that are looking to try something new, which is where alternative frontends can offer them a more personalized experience.

YouTube is YouTube, and while the way you interact with it here is largely the same, some key quality-of-life improvements have been made. For one, fan-favorite add-ons like SponsorBlock, Return YouTube Dislikes, and DeArrow are all built into the program, which, along with the under-the-hood mods to eliminate tracking, confer a sort of de-Googled experience that many are after.

While there is login support, it’s worth noting that it’s an app-specific account you’ll create, so you’re essentially starting from scratch. There’s an option to import your subscriptions to get your content and recommendations back, but clicking it would return no response.

The built-in player worked fine during my testing, but a caveat about playback is that video quality will be limited to 1080P and below resolutions, making content look softer across the board. I still find 1080P largely satisfactory, but a tradeoff is a tradeoff at the end of the day — in this case, in the name of privacy.

You do get access to a video downloader, however, which lets you download your content at the highest available resolution and store your favorite clips locally. Speaking of local content, more advanced users can self-host the app for an even more private experience.

There’s also the matter of the app being Electron-based, resulting in non-neglibile resource usage. The software may often feel slow to load and process everything on-screen due to this, especially noticeable when navigating to a new video page.

Materialious certainly has a lot of things going for it, and as a new release, it can only get better. Some performance optimizations would be very much appreciated, and finding a fix for importing subscriptions would greatly help. In any case, this is a promising release that makes me excited to see what’s in store for alternative frontends.