CathodeTube
A fast, convergent, and native custom YouTube client for Ubuntu Touch.
Development status
The core features, like search, playback, video info, playlists, or feeds, work fine. Still, quite a few things still need to be implemented, some edge cases are not handled well, hardware acceleration is missing, and the design may need a bit of work. I'd say it's (almost) good enough to be a daily-driver.
Alse, the app's backend is also a little outdated, using the unsupported YouTube.js v1. I'm currently rewriting it for YouTube.js v2 (see issue #5), but in the meantime, some hacks had to be used to keep it together. The new version would make the app speedier, more maintainable, and would unblock new many features.
Testing
If you're a casual user who just wants to help out testing the app, just download the latest build from GitHub Actions. Simply select a .click file for your architecture from artifacts and open it with OpenStore. Report any issues, suggestions, or design proposels in Issues. If you want to see this app in your language, feel free to help out with translation! (may require localization updates due to the UI still being subject to change).
Building
Dependencies
- Docker
- Android tools (for adb)
- NodeJS
- Python3 / pip3
- Clickable (get it from here)
Use Clickable to build and package CathodeTube as a Click package ready to be installed on Ubuntu Touch
Build instructions
Make sure you clone the project with
git clone https://github.com/walking-octopus/cathode-tube.
Install development NPM dependencies with
$ clickable script fetch-dev
The project uses bundled NodeJS, so you'd have to download it for each architecture you'll build for.
$ clickable build --libs nodejs --arch armhf;
$ clickable build --libs nodejs --arch amd64;
where arch is one of: amd64, arm64 or armhf.
Patching YouTube.js v1
Due to YouTube.js v1 that this project currently uses being no longer supported, some things are slowly starting to break with YouTube updates. I am working on migrating to v2, but in the meantime, you could apply a tiny patch to avoid crashing.
The most problematic of changes was the new like button, which caused getDetails() to crash the app. The workaround is to ignore the like button and use slightly less up-to-date stats from ReturnYouTubeDislike.
To apply the patch, run this after fetching node_modules:
$ clickable script patch
To test the build on your workstation:
$ clickable desktop
To prune development dependencies:
$ clickable script fetch-production
To build for your phone:
$ clickable --arch armhf
where arch is one of: amd64, arm64 or armhf.
For more information on the several options see the Clickable documentation
License
The project is licensed under the GPL-3.0.