The last few days on FreeTube and NewPipe I’ve been completely blocked from watching videos while connected to Mullvad. I’m wondering if anyone is having luck with a particular provider or even particular Mullvad servers?
I haven’t been having any issues on my end. I’ve had issues with Freetube in the past, but its been at least a few months since that, and it didn’t seem related to using a VPN.
I don’t currently use Mullvad, but I do use a VPN 100% of the time.
I’m guessing you’ve already tried various Mullvad servers in at least a few different geographic regions? Is the block only when you are using frontends, or are you blocked even when you try to access youtube directly through a browser?
Is it working without a VPN?
I saw YouTube pushed out a new adblock update that broke a lot of the alternative frontends this week, NewPipe released a fix yesterday
Yes, Youtube stopped working with Mullvad VPN (asks for an account) but works if VPN is disconnected.
I would never give YouTube my actual IP, at least not on the official website/app. Once they have that, they can correlate my watch history with me through fingerprinting. This is probably fine if you use a frontend/client tho.
How I bypass this is just by changing VPN servers. I pay for Proton VPN, so I change to a paid secure core server.
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So far how I get around this on the frontbend apps is, If the video won’t play I back out of the video to the search results, change locations in my VPN and try the video again.
Most times it works out with one or two tries.
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Try changing your VPN location - that’s the purpose of having a VPN, to be able to change IP easily and at will. There’s also the new ad blocker change from YT, so it’ll require some trial and error.
I use Mullvad, connect to a super popular city like NYC, and use uBO and Sponsorblock. I’ve never seen one ad.
And CAPTCHAS occur but I’ve noticed the 80x series of NYC servers in Mullvad never give me any issues. For example: 805, 803, etc. You’ll need to experiment.
Or connect to Albania. YT ads there are outlawed I believe so there is no reason for YT to block any VPN IPs from there.
I use FreeTube over Proton VPN. It’s getting blocked when I use a US VPN server, but it still works if I use an Icelandic VPN server.
Invidious has been “working” as usual.
Mullvad + Mullvad VPN occasionally blocks me. The trick is to switch VPN locations.
Ensure you have ‘Killswitch’ and ‘Lockdown Mode’ enabled before you do.
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I normally cycle through 4 different Mullvad IPs, and yeah all 4 of them have been banned from YouTube about a week ago. (I get a “Please sign in to confirm you’re not a bot” error). So I tried a bunch of other Mullvad servers that I don’t regularly use, and found a few that work (for now at least). I’d say just keep trying different locations.
I’m using Toronto servers at the moment on Mullvad and it’s working.
Freetube on Fedora Work Station.
PipePipe on GrapheneOS.
I was using Protonvpn a couple of weeks ago and I had a lot more blocks, about a dozen per day. I get few blocks on Mullvad, maybe 1-3 per week.
Try different Mullvad’s SOCKS5 proxies with FreeTube. I’ve had luck with some M247 servers. Controversial provider for VPN servers (too popular, thus having access to a very big share of global VPN traffic), however it is less of an issue when using as an additional hop just for FreeTube.
NewPipe has a pull request to add proxy support but it’s not there yet.
Lately I can’t even use NewPipe without a VPN. Now even moderate surfing from residential IPs triggers bot notices very quickly. Google really contributed to my touching more grass.
Haven’t had any issues with Youtube while using my VPN (Proton on 100% of the time). I don’t typically use Mullvad Browser for YouTube and, the majority of the time I watch content using Grayjay’s desktop application.
What about ReVanced? I don‘t know this, but since they patch the original YouTube app, shouldn‘t the ad blocking work more reliable?
Update to 0.28.2 if you haven’t yet. NewPipe had a problem recently, fixed now.
I’m not talking about the “Content unavailable” error from the past week. This has indeed been addressed in 0.28.2.
Yup! That’s how I discovered that these amazing FOSS tools are not consistently reliable. Especially when you use a VPN and want to watch videos without an account linked to it. I hope they find a permanent way around it, but I suspect it’s going to stay a game of whack-a-mole.
That being said, just today I stumbled upon this video on Twitter:
I had no idea that Brave mobile could easily play YouTube videos with no account, no ads, no issues whatsoever, regardless so if you use a VPN or not. I just tried it and it works! I don’t have the YouTube app on my phone, nor any modded versions of it. So finding out that I can watch videos on Brave anonymously is great. Especially, since NewPipe hasn’t worked in a minute.
I assume this hack also works on desktop so it’s good to know. On my desktop computer, I am logged into my YouTube account on Brave, but it’s good to know that I can watch videos in private mode with no account.