I’m not sure how I stumbled upon this handy little application but it’s great. It is used for watching YouTube videos without the bloat of a browser or having to log into Google for subscriptions. There is a lot to like about this application as it provides, in many ways, a better YouTube experience. As of recent, it seems like YouTube is getting more bloated with features you don’t need and is getting increasingly irritating to use. There is a drawback, I do want to “like” and occasionally comment on videos to which you cannot do with Minitube but at least you are giving the content creators another “view”.
Installation
When visiting the Minitube home page that there is a Windows, Mac and Ubuntu version available, there isn’t a listed option for openSUSE, not even mentioned but that is not a problem. Some fantastic member of the openSUSE community has taken care of it for you and it is in the official repository for both Leap and Tumbleweed. The easiest method of installation is to utilize the one-click installation method here:
https://software.opensuse.org/package/minitube
Alternatively, you can jump into a nice cozy terminal and fire this off:
sudo zypper install minitube
Once installed, it shows up in the menu under the “Multimedia” section.
Features
When you start it up, you are greeted with a simple screen where you can search for your desired video. It is just that easy.
Alternatively, you can browse for content based on topic of which they have listed 11 topics to choose: Most Popular, Film & Animation, Autos & Vehicles, Music, Pets & Animals, Sports, Gaming, Comedy, Entertainment, How to & Style and Science & Technology.
Once you have subscribed to a channel, that is stored locally only and you can review those subscriptions in the Subscriptions “tab”. There you can watch what is new on that particular channel. Alternatively, you can select “All Videos” or “Unwatched Videos.”
A nice feature here is that, if you select All Videos or Unwatched Videos, it will make a kind of playlist intermixing the different channels, sorted by newest to oldest allowing you to just let it run if you so choose.
Should you want to subscribe to a particular channel, there is a small bookmark looking icon next to the channel name. The icon is a bit counter-intuitive as it shows the bookmark with a red “X” when you have subscribed.
A fantastic feature, that is great if you have kids, is a “Restricted Mode” which hides videos that may contain inappropriate content. I don’t know how effective the filter is but even if it is partially successful, I would at least call that partially a success.
What I Like
This client is fast and efficient. It doesn’t have all the irritating lagging of using YouTube in a browser. Although that can be fixed in Firefox so that it doesn’t lag as much, this is still much faster. I like the way it handles subscriptions, does not require signing into Google, does protect users at least somewhat with a restricted mode.
If you watch something and want to go to the YouTube page to comment, like or look at the description, it is as easy as a right-click and “Open In Browser” or Ctrl+B.
I like how it turns your subscriptions into a playlist automatically. This is handy if you have a bunch of videos to catch up on and you have to knock out a few baskets of laundry in the living room.
What I Don’t Like
There are a few bugs. Very often, stopping the video will only stop it momentarily and it will continue when you are on another tab of the player. The navigation of the application is a bit clunky. When watching a video, there isn’t an obvious way to navigate around back to your subscriptions page or to the Browse page.
Just as much as it is a positive that this doesn’t talk to your Google account, I also think that it is somewhat unfortunate that it doesn’t connect somewhere so that you can keep track of what you have watch across machines. Perhaps a future feature but there are times I start a video in my “SuperCubicle” and move on to the Kitchen or the Living room computers. It would be nice to be able to keep them all synchronized. The work around for that is to check the timer to see how far you are in the video. Just a thought, but this could possibly be done with a simple config file that stores information about the last video watched that could be synchronized between machines using Syncthing.
Final Thoughts
I have been using Minitube on and off and there is a lot to like about it. First and foremost, it is efficient, uses only about 233 MiB of RAM to run the application and play a video so it is certainly lighter than running YouTube in a browser. There are also a few nitnoid issues with it but I am certain those will smooth out over time.
I highly encourage you to try Minitube to see if this is something that would make sense for you. It is a visually nice interface, very responsive and pretty straight forward to use. It does give you the option to jump into a browser to watch the video so there really is nothing lost in using this over exclusively using the browser. Personally, I do see this as a fine piece of software that I am thankful to have.
Further Reading
https://software.opensuse.org/package/minitube
