this post was submitted on 23 Mar 2026
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Peertube

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An ELI5 Guide to Getting Started with PeerTube (piefed.social)
submitted 10 hours ago* (last edited 8 hours ago) by pieland@piefed.social to c/peertube@lemmy.world
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Saw this post this morning and figured people might be interested in me sharing/updating my own post about this issue. The Fediverse will never become mainstream if we make basic tasks unnecessarily complicated.

disclaimer!: i’m not involved with the peertube project in any way! i’m just a person who would really like to see the fediverse succeed. peertube, unfortunately, does still have a lot of issues, some of which i address in this post or are addressed in the comment section. if i knew how to fix these issues i would, but for now, i think the best i can do is share tips i’ve learned to make it usable in its current form. who knows, maybe if the project gets more attention, the issues will be resolved faster, which will help the platform grow!

With that out of the way…

PeerTube is the fediverse equivalent of YouTube with no ads (other than sponsorships creators might add to their own videos). Services on the fediverse are decentralized into instances/servers that talk to each other (think how GMail and Outlook can e-mail each other despite being different providers). Each instance makes their own rules and decides what instances they will communicate with. The more instances an instance communicates with, the more videos you will have access to. You can even host your own for full control, and you have the option to transfer your account to another instance if you don’t like your current one.

Here are three instances to help you get started with PeerTube right away (remember, you can always switch later!):

  • Currently, this instance appears to have the most content available, although they are not allowing sign ups (but you do not have to be logged in to view the videos): https://tube.shanti.cafe/videos/browse

  • The instance with the most videos that currently allows sign ups (so you can create a playlist, comment on videos, etc.) seems to be this one, although I have personally found it slow at times: https://dalek.zone/

  • The instance with the second most amount of videos that allows sign ups is this one: https://video.4d2.org/ I haven’t had trouble accessing this one so far.

You can learn more about PeerTube here: https://joinpeertube.org/

You can browse the official instance list here: https://instances.joinpeertube.org/instances

(While I don’t expect this post to blow up, my sincerest apologies to the servers I’ve listed if it does lol)

Using PeerTube on iOS

Unfortunately, I personally have not found the official PeerTube app to be usable yet. I was also unfortunately having some trouble with the PWAs (Progressive Web Apps - you access your PeerTube instance from Safari and use the “Add To Home Screen” option, which creates a “Progressive Web App”).

The best solution I have found so far, by accident, is the YouPlay app. Its main use is for avoiding YouTube ads. However, PeerTube instances seem to function pretty decently, compared to other options I have tried so far. Iirc, YouPlay is a free trial with a very affordable lifetime option. You can add a shortcut for your PeerTube instance and then use the app. Iirc, this gave me a semi-functional Picture-In-Picture and background play option, which I believe was not working in the PWAs, and has not yet been implemented in the official app. It is janky, but it seems to be the most featured and functional option on iOS at the moment.

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[–] ozoned@piefed.social 6 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

I'd like to throw my mark in here.

I'm the founder of BT Free a nonprofit 501(c)3 organization that's attempting to help foster the Fediverse.

I've recently came up with an idea of a public Peertube index. You can see it at https://ptindex.btfree.org/ for anyone to use. My idea is that we could have a chain of trust. I trust MakerTube, MakerTube trusts SERVER, therefore I follow SERVER.

But I'd like more folks at the top to share with everyone.

Together we'll make our network strong. The PTIndex is public, anyone can use it without contributing, I have a script that's pulling the data from the folks in the chain of trust at https://git.btfree.org/BTFree/PTIndex .

[–] pieland@piefed.social 3 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

i’ll admit i haven’t checked it out yet as i ~~should be~~ am busy with stuff irl so you may have actually addressed this but am commenting in case you didn’t and i forget lol, but if this were implemented, maybe the instance admins/moderators have a section for newly trust-based federated instances

like, because of the chain of trust, it autofederates without the need of approval. however, there’s a section of recently federated instances through the chain of trust, where the admins can double check and can reject it if they disagree

and maybe something where a certain amount of rejections doesn’t remove the federation from other instances (or maybe it removes it but gives the option to reimplement it), but does notify the admins saying “hey, this was autofederated but keeps getting red-flagged, maybe you should take a look at this speific one and see what you want to do?”

i don’t know how to code or the specifics of how federation works at that level, so i also apologize if this is a bad/impossible suggestion

[–] ozoned@piefed.social 2 points 6 hours ago

I've actually opened a feature request with the Peertube folks. I don't expect much honestly at the moment. The Peertube folks lay out their plans and they've probably don't that for the foreseeable future, but having this kind of mechanism, and building it out as you're suggesting, is what I hope that can be built into Peertube some day.

https://github.com/issues/created?issue=Chocobozzz%7CPeerTube%7C7493

I can't do what you're suggesting at the index level. But it's totally valid. We need good tools built into Peertube, or an extension or something, to give us that kind of control.

Honestly I want to eventually come out with lists for like Child Friendly or Music or NSFW or whatever.

But right now what you're suggesting, it's completely built based on my guidelines and what I want. Places like MakerTube have reached out to me and given me specific servers that aren't within our guidelines and I've removed them manually from our list, but I hope there comes a day where EVERYONE can share their lists and groups.

And I honestly think that there's a doc going through the Open Social Web group to allow sharing of groups easier, that this might help Peertube as well.

So the ideas are sound, I don't have the technical chops to do it, and I think it'd take a lot of work, but I absolutely think this is a valid use case and would benefit us all.

The best I can say, make sure to support Peertube however you can, even a $1 a month helps, so maybe we can help them get more folks to move Peertube along even faster.

[–] cat_fishing@feddit.online 3 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

I wish there was better discovery on PeerTube. Seems like most channels from other instances aren’t available (as a guest) and makes it look empty.

[–] pieland@piefed.social 3 points 8 hours ago* (last edited 8 hours ago) (1 children)

i might have a bit of a solution (this is assuming you’re using one of the instances in my post - if it’s another instance, the issue could be that not enough instances are federated with that particular instance. fortunately the first link seems to have the most federation and it’s not taking sign ups, so i think it should be good for guests)

click on the filters. under Displayed Videos, make sure it’s set to “Videos from all platforms”

i feel like it doesn’t memorize your choice consistently, so if you’re not seeing videos from other platforms, you may need to recheck your filter

aside from that, i agree the discovery is still lacking, but at least you should be able to see other instance videos. if you find videos you like, i think some of the recommended videos might be similar…?

the sort function does not seem to function well yet in my experience, unfortunately.

[–] cat_fishing@feddit.online 2 points 7 hours ago

click on the filters. under Displayed Videos, make sure it’s set to “Videos from all platforms”

Thank you for this! This should probably be on by default.

[–] pieland@piefed.social 3 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

@somethingDotExe@lemmy.world @VoiHyvaLuojaMitaNyt@lemmy.world @cabbage@piefed.social @Cris_Citrus@piefed.zip tagging since I figured you might be interested in this post

[–] HuudaHarkiten@piefed.social 3 points 8 hours ago

lol thanks for reminding me. Gotta go delete that lemmy.world account =D

[–] asudox@lemmy.asudox.dev 2 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

What functions are exactly missing from the official peertube app for iOS?

[–] pieland@piefed.social 2 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

It’s been a few months since the app was pretty much unusable for me, but from what I can remember, the app would crash. A lot. YMMV?

Aside from that, I think I had trouble finding videos? It seemed to be limited to videos on the instance iirc. I think it logged me out a lot too or something.

I don’t think it had background play. I know PIP is on the roadmap.

[–] hoppolito@mander.xyz 3 points 9 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago)

It’s also (at least currently) an iphone only app, and afaik does not play videos at all on iPads unfortunately.

[–] amzd@lemmy.world 2 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

TLDR: to use the open source decentralized platform pay for a proprietary app

[–] pieland@piefed.social 2 points 10 hours ago

Yeah, it’s disappointing, but that seems to be the only option on iOS, as no one has chosen to develop a free functioning open source app.

I’ve heard there might be options on Android, though. I’m an iOS user and I’m only sharing what I’m familiar with.

You could also just use the instances normally on the desktop. The guide includes that as well and that’s the main point, if you read it.