My friends keep sharing video links from all social media, and I really don’t want to download tiktok, Instagram, Facebook,…
is there an app that will open those links and show me the video? also given that some of those apps require an account.
Dunno app, but for Instagram, I had found the site https://imginn.com/, which acts as a frontend for it, similar as Nitter for Twitter. Just not FOSS, in case it’s a problem for you. Instagram videos you should also be able to download with yt-dlp.
Also, dunno if it’s working as I very rarely consume shorts-type videos, but for TikTok, maybe Grayjay’s an option? Also regarding Grayjay, it has a few more sources, both from FUTO and the community, as listed here.
Facebook I vaguely remember having seen mentions of a frontend similar to Nitter / Imginn but can’t remember if I’m misremembering.
Other solutions depend on the respective sites. Bluesky for example there’s RSS, embedded, fixed embeddeds and Skyview. DeviantArt and Imgur you can somewhat circumvent issues with embeddeds. Posts from fediverse sites with bad UI you can circumvent by pulling the link into your preferred instance’s search. And so on.
For links from X/twitter you can use xcancel.com.
Just take any link and replace domain x.com with xcancel.com and you can read content without logging in
YTDLnis is a downloader for videos posted on all kinds of social media (started as YouTube Downloader, hence the name). It’s available on F-Droid. See https://ytdlnis.org/ for details.
A web browser.
Yup. I haven’t had any issues seeing shared content in a browser when logged out.
It’s not enough now. Modern social media require you to create an account to see content.
not if you use frontends like proxitok or imginn or invidious ect
No, I don’t think you’re going to find a solution that will satisfy your need. Google, Meta, tiktok, etc. all have the ability to gatekeep their content. Just as an example, when Youtube locks you out of viewing a video unless you are on their platform and sometimes, also logged in.
They are as big as they are for a reason and choosing not to use them will result in truly not using them instead of using them on your terms.
Regarding frontends like newpipe, Freetube, etc., those are all trying to get by on embed links, which are still controlled by Google and they fail at displaying a video more often than not with the never-ending changes that are made upstream.
I’m going on a limb, but couldn’t an app pretend to be a chrome browser and only display the video part?
an app like that would be so fucking convenient
A ton of developers have tried it but not only are they failing at acting like these apps, the apps are also forcing logins more and more often for more content. So even if you faked the app, you still wouldn’t have access to that content unless you also logged in. Just like if you opened tick tock it’s going to force you to log in. If you open Facebook, it will eventually force you to log in a YouTube hides a lot of videos behind a login.
Also, as more and more countries adopt the age verification farce, all of these apps are just going to keep getting more and more restrictive as to when they will finally show you a video.
It really is unfortunate as I would love something like this as well because my entire family shares content fear these platforms and if I want to see it and then talk to my wife about it or whatever, I have to log in on that platform to see that content.
You could try a dedicated web browser just for those videos? Brave is a bit dodgy but you could keep it around only for those sites.
You will still need to go through the login page.
