FreeTube is an open source desktop YouTube player built with privacy in mind. Use YouTube without advertisements and prevent Google from tracking you with their cookies and JavaScript.

It does not require an account, all datas are on your local storage. In case of you use FreeTube on several computers, you can't synchronize them easily. FreeTube stores datas on plain text files, loaded in memory and rewrite them on each updates.

FT-Sync tries to solve this problem.

⚠️ Disclaimer

FT-Sync is not a project maintained by the FreeTube Team. This project is still experimental and problems may occur. I cannot be held responsible for any possible loss of data. Feel free to open an issue here in case of problem.

Before using FT-Sync, backup your datas:

• ~/.config/FreeTube/history.db
• ~/.config/FreeTube/profiles.db
• ~/.config/FreeTube/playlists.db

⚙️ What are requirements?

FT-Sync requires a server accessible by all machines running FreeTube (on a local network, through a VPN or on the web).

🧬 How does it work?

The role of the server is to store the history, the playlists and the profiles of FreeTube instances (clients).

After starting the server, each client must initialize their local datas on the server. This action must be processed only once. At each time you want to use FreeTube, you have to pull datas from the server before. A watcher will push updates on the server when your history, your playlists or your profiles are updated. When FreeTube is restarted, history, playlists and profiles will be updated.

sequenceDiagram
    participant Client
    participant Server

    Note over Client, Server: Only once
    Client->>+Server: Send initial history, playlists, profiles<br>ftsync-client init
    Server-->>-Client: Response OK/KO

    Note over Client, Server: Before launching FreeTube
    Client->>+Server: Pull update to date history, playlists, profiles<br>ftsync-client pull
    Server-->>-Client: Response datas
    Client->>+Client: Update databases

    Note over Client, Server: While FreeTube is running
    loop Watch local db updates<br>ftsync-client watch
        Client->>+Server: Send updated history, playlists, profiles
        Server-->>-Client: Response OK/KO
    end

📗 How to use it?

Go to releases and download the client and the server according of your system architecture.

On the server:

chmod +x ftsync-server-xxx
sudo mv ftsync-server-xxx /usr/local/bin/ftsync-server

On clients:

chmod +x ftsync-client-xxx
sudo mv ftsync-client-xxx /usr/local/bin/ftsync-client

Server

To start the server, simply run:

ftsync-server

By default, it listens on all interfaces, port 1323.

⚠️ Consider installing a proxy to secure access (HTTPS, IP access restriction, …).

Client

First, sync your local datas to the server:

ftsync-client -s http://ip.of.the.server:1323 init

Create ~/.bin/freetube-wrapper and fill it with:

#!/bin/sh

ftsync-client -s http://ip.of.the.server:1323 pull
exec freetube $@

Then run chmod +x ~/.bin/freetube-wrapper.

Create ~/.local/share/applications/FreeTubeSync.desktop and fill it with:

[Desktop Entry]
Type=Application
Icon=freetube
Terminal=false
Exec=/home/foo/.bin/freetube-wrapper
Name=FreeTube (synced)

Create ~/.config/systemd/user/ftsync-watcher.service and fill it with:

[Unit]
Description=FTSync Watcher

[Service]
Type=simple
StandardOutput=journal
ExecStart=ftsync-client -s http://ip.of.the.server:1323 watch
Restart=on-failure
RestartSec=1s

[Install]
WantedBy=default.target

Then run:

systemctl --user daemon-reload
systemctl --user start ftsync-watcher.service

Choose FreeTube (synced) to open FreeTube.

🧪 Compile the sources

• GO 1.23
• build-essential
• gcc-arm-linux-gnueabihf in case of cross compilation

git clone https://gitnet.fr/deblan/freetube-sync
cd freetube-sync
make