What makes OpenTubeX different

Per-channel playback settings

Manage and automatically apply playback speed, video quality, subtitles, and volume for individual channels. Enable each option in settings. Playback speeds can be saved automatically when you change them through the player options, or you can leave automatic saving off and use the dedicated button below the player to save the current speed for that channel manually.

Music player and visualizer

YouTube Music audio tracks and audio-only formats use a dedicated artwork player with an optional animated audio visualizer.

Play media from other sites

Paste a compatible video or audio link from another site to play it in a Watch tab through yt-dlp. Available creator and media details appear alongside the player. This supports individual links, not browsing or playlists from other sites.

Preload upcoming videos and playlists

Preload upcoming yt-dlp videos from the watch queue, playlist or recommendations, or prepare an entire playlist before watching. Choose how many videos to prepare and how many extractions to run concurrently. Preloading prepares stream URLs to reduce playback delays; use Downloads to save videos for offline playback.

Optional seek-interval behavior

Choose whether seek intervals (arrow keys and J/L) are multiplied by playback rate.

Playback-rate adjusted timestamps

Optionally show timestamps adjusted for the current playback rate.

Chapter tooltips and chapter sidebar

Display improved chapter tooltips directly on the seekbar and show the current chapter list in the sidebar.

Transcript panel

Follow a video’s transcript in a dedicated panel.

Caption appearance and preferred language

Customize caption appearance and choose a preferred caption language.

Prevent YouTube translations

Option to prevent title and description translations from YouTube.

Auto Picture-in-Picture

Automatically enter Picture-in-Picture when you switch tabs, minimize the app, or switch windows.

Cast to Chromecast and DLNA devices

Chromecast and DLNA casting are supported on Android and desktop. Choose a device from the optional player control, then stop casting to return to playback in OpenTubeX.

Scroll mini-player

Keep watching in a mini-player when you scroll away from a video or switch to another tab. Use its controls to return to the source tab or hide the player without interrupting playback.

YouTube end-screen annotations

Show YouTube end-screen annotations inside the player.

Recommendations when videos end

When autoplay is off, finished videos show a darkened poster with up to six recommended videos if recommendations are enabled and Hide End-Screen Recommendations is off in Distraction Free settings.

Loop & Copy link in player context menu

Quickly toggle looping or copy the video link from the player’s context menu.

Quick Playback Speed Bar

Add an optional, fully customizable quick playback speed bar to the regular and YouTube-style Shorts players.

Skip silence

Jump over detected silent parts of a video. Enable this behavior in Player settings, and choose whether new tabs start with it enabled.

A-B repeat

Repeat a selected part of a video with draggable markers, player-menu controls, and configurable keyboard shortcuts.

Temporary 2× playback

Hold the left mouse button or Space to temporarily double the playback speed.

Remember volume

Remember the player volume between sessions. Enabled by default.

Sleep timer

Stop playback after a chosen duration, when the current chapter ends, or when the current video ends.

Playlist playback controls

Reorder or remove playlist items during playback and remember the reverse state of each playlist.

Paused fullscreen controls

Choose which player interface elements remain visible while playback is paused in full-window or fullscreen mode.

Rewind live streams and premieres

Use yt-dlp as the stream extraction method to rewind live streams and premieres when YouTube provides a rewindable stream. Streams with DVR disabled cannot be rewound. The built-in method plays live streams and premieres at the live edge without seeking.

YouTube-style Shorts

Choose between a YouTube-style Shorts layout and player or the regular video grid and player.

Live streams, premieres, and chat replay

Automatically refresh upcoming premieres, view comments during premieres, and use chat replay. Live chat also supports optional timestamps, top or all messages, and a full-screen dock.

Voice-over translation

Translate supported videos through the unofficial Yandex API with synchronized voice-over audio and separate translated and original volume controls.

Video zoom and pan

Zoom into videos from the player menu. Press Z to zoom in, Shift + Z to zoom out, or hold Shift and drag to pan the visible area.

Automatic caption translation

Translate captions into any language offered by YouTube.

Return YouTube Dislike support

Show dislike count using Return YouTube Dislike.

Per-channel subscription feed controls

Choose whether each channel appears in Videos, Shorts, Live and Posts, set a daily video limit, and enable members-only videos when playback cookies are configured. Batch-edit channel preferences in Subscription settings, add subscribed channels directly to Saved Channel Settings, or hide a channel’s content type from the feed menu.

Auto-refresh subscriptions

Automatically refresh subscriptions on a schedule so your feed stays current without a manual refresh.

Watch time statistics

Explore your viewing activity with daily and weekly watch-time charts. When statistics sync is enabled, choose a device or All devices above the charts. The combined view adds each device’s recorded watch time. To reset or adjust imported watch time, select the current device.

See sync setup to choose what to synchronize.

Additional video metadata

See more context about a video, including AI-generated content labels, paid-promotion disclosures, collaborators, categories, games, tags, relative publication dates, comment counts, age restrictions, and unlisted status. Channel avatars can also be shown beside channel names in video and playlist results.

YouTube AI video summaries

Choose whether summaries supplied by YouTube are hidden, collapsed, or expanded below video descriptions. They are hidden by default, and the same preference applies to Shorts.

Playlist browsing and saved YouTube playlists

Choose an independent Grid or List view for playlist pages and switch it from Quick settings. Save YouTube playlists as read-only bookmarks in Your Playlists. Copy complete YouTube playlists into editable local playlists, then append missing videos from the source while preserving local order and additions.

Unavailable playlist videos

Optionally skip known unavailable videos while playing a playlist. You can also scan an editable local playlist for confirmed unavailable entries and choose whether to remove them. Videos that could not be checked are kept.

Comment tools

Render nested reply threads, show when comments were edited, reload comments, or copy a comment’s direct YouTube link. Translate comments and replies into the app language, search loaded comments, filter comments from the creator, and pin comments locally.

New subscription content

Show indicators for newly fetched content and optionally collect it in a separate new-content feed. Sort that feed with the oldest content first or switch its categories between combined sections and tabs.

Autoplay preview

See the next video and its countdown directly on the player before autoplay starts it.

Premiere indicators

Distinguish premieres from live streams in video lists and metadata.

Live chat channel links

Open a chatter’s channel by clicking their handle in live chat.

Watch queue

Queue videos from their three-dot menus, then manage and drag to reorder them in a side panel on the watch page.

Inline add-to-playlist

Choose playlists from an inline popover, and personalize the quick-bookmark playlist with an icon, emoji, or cropped image.

Watched-percentage threshold

Choose how much of a video must play before it counts as watched. Set the threshold to 0% to mark videos as watched immediately.

Subscription feed refresh

Cancel subscription refreshes and see new videos immediately while the rest loads.

Live stream and premiere notifications

Get an operating-system notification when a scheduled live stream or premiere starts.

Quick search focus

Focus the search bar by pressing /, in addition to Ctrl+L or Cmd+L.

In-page search

Find text on the current page with Ctrl+F or Cmd+F, including previous and next match navigation.

Command palette

Press Ctrl / Cmd + K to search app actions and settings from one command palette.

Tab support

Place browser-style tabs at the top, bottom, left, or right of the window. Pin, color, preview, duplicate, unload, group, select, reorder, and move tabs between windows. A searchable organizer provides bulk actions and recently closed tab history. Choose an icon for a tab group in the organizer. Internal links support browser-style middle-click, Ctrl/Cmd-click, and Shift-click behavior.

The tab comparison shows how other clients keep videos open.

Playback speed toggle shortcut

Press G to toggle between 1× playback speed and your last used speed.

Configurable thumbnail action

On desktop, choose an extra action button to show on video thumbnails.

Close confirmation

Optionally ask for confirmation before closing the app.

Customizable keyboard shortcuts

Choose the keyboard shortcuts used throughout the app.

Gamepad controls

Navigate menus, adjust sliders, control playback, and go back with a standard gamepad. The current control receives theme-aware focus feedback.

Selection web search

Search selected text using your chosen search engine.

Search history and channel filters

Revisit searches with their filters restored, and use filter chips when searching within a channel. Save the same search query with different filters as separate presets and restore each combination when selected.

Settings window and search

Open settings in a draggable, resizable window with integrated subpages and search across every category.

Desktop tray controls

Use the system tray to show or hide OpenTubeX and control previous, play or pause, and next. Choose separately whether minimizing or closing the window sends it to the tray.

Ambient Mode

Add an ambient glow around the player based on the current video.

Customizable Home page

Resume videos and review recent subscriptions, queues, playlists, downloads, reminders, and weekly watch activity from configurable Home shelves. Enable personalized recommendations for unwatched videos, ranked locally from viewing activity, saved videos and feedback. Choose Familiar, Balanced or Explore discovery and reset learned feedback at any time.

Configurable thumbnail sizes

Choose the thumbnail size used while browsing videos.

Animated thumbnail previews

Preview videos by hovering over their thumbnails. The animated previews can be disabled in Appearance settings.

Full-screen docks

Open video information, comments, playlists, chapters, or live chat in resizable and rearrangeable full-screen docks.

Animation controls

Use the app’s UI animations or force-enable or disable them independently of your system setting.

Resizable playlist card

Make the playlist card taller or shorter while watching a video.

Changed-settings highlights

Highlight settings that differ from their defaults and reset them directly.

Toast notifications

Customize the position of toast notifications with icons, optional timeout indicators, and video thumbnails. Dismiss them by swiping or pressing Escape.

Interface rounding and overlay scrollbars

Adjust how rounded interface elements are and choose whether overlay scrollbars automatically hide or remain visible.

Interface preferences

Choose the app font from fonts installed on your system, adjust mouse-wheel and touchpad scroll speed from 25% to 300%, and select date and time formats independently of the app language.

Customizable navigation

Add, remove and reorder navigation destinations for the desktop sidebar and mobile bottom bar from Appearance settings.

Quick settings and profile icons

Access profiles and common preferences from the top bar. Personalize profiles with emoji or interactively cropped image icons. Choose which controls appear and reorder them, including autoplay, audio-only playback, DeArrow, translations, privacy preferences and light/dark theme selection.

Custom themes

Create, import, export, edit, and share custom themes. Use transparent colors, backdrop blur, custom interaction and text-selection colors, and independent light and dark themes when following the system setting. Import themes directly from the clipboard, or browse community screenshots and install, apply or update themes inside the app.

Selectable icon packs

Choose between Material Symbols and Remix Icon throughout the interface.

SponsorBlock side panel

Open a side panel with segment details, a temporary auto-skip toggle, and an option to exclude the current channel from automatic skips.

SponsorBlock channel exclusions

Exclude individual channels from automatic SponsorBlock skips while keeping their segments visible on the seekbar. Add channels from a video or manage the list in SponsorBlock settings.

SponsorBlock tooltips (unskip / reskip / prompt to skip)

Improved SponsorBlock tooltips with unskip, reskip, and prompt-to-skip when you need to replay a segment, skip it again, or decide on a segment before it is skipped.

SponsorBlock enhancements

Display SponsorBlock community-contributed chapters, including Highlight and Hook/Greetings segments, in the player. Hover over a seekbar segment to see its category label, and choose a custom color for each segment category.

SponsorBlock submission

Submit SponsorBlock segments directly from the player and review your submissions, contributed skips, and time saved.

SponsorBlock full-video labels and mute segments

Display and submit SponsorBlock full-video labels and mute segments.

IP block recovery script

Set a script to run when YouTube blocks your IP. OpenTubeX waits for the script to finish, then reloads the video.

Authenticated playback

Retry age-restricted and members-only videos through yt-dlp with cookies from a browser or file. Configured cookies can also request account-only formats for any video. Use the configured cookies for subtitles, transcripts and automatic caption translations, with a separate subtitle-only authentication setting.

History retention and cleanup

Automatically clean up watch history after a configurable retention period, or manually delete older entries.

Local metadata history

Optionally keep a local history of video titles, thumbnails, and descriptions, then review how they changed over time.

LibreTube import

Import subscriptions and watch history from LibreTube.

YouTube Takeout ZIP import

Import subscriptions, watch history, search history, and playlists directly from a YouTube Takeout ZIP. Select the categories you want to bring in without extracting the archive or importing each file separately.

Data and storage controls

Review disk usage and clean individual caches or saved data from Data & Storage settings.

Complete ZIP backup

Export profiles, playlists, watch and search history, watch statistics, and transferable settings in one ZIP file. When importing, choose which categories to restore; matching records merge with data already on the device.

Encrypted sync

Synchronize subscriptions, playlists, history, saved channel settings, profiles, tabs, and settings with end-to-end encryption.

LibreTube sync servers are also supported, but do not support end-to-end encryption or certain sync features.

Sync sends changes as they happen. Account activity shows which device added, removed, or changed items, and Open on another device sends a video to another device. Upcoming live-stream and premiere reminders can also sync across desktop and mobile when notifications are allowed on the receiving device.

Watch stats sync is enabled by default in Settings → Sync; turn it off to keep statistics on this device. Add another device by scanning a QR code or entering a text code without typing the account password or privacy passphrase on it. Follow Sync between devices for setup, pairing, and recovery limitations.

Download support

Use yt-dlp for reliable playback and advanced video, audio, and playlist downloads. Download subtitles separately as SRT, VTT, ASS, or LRC files, and manage active and completed downloads from a dedicated page. On desktop and mobile, paste an individual supported media URL from another site into Downloads or use the download action on its Watch page.

Automatic downloads and download queue

Automatically download new uploads from selected channels with per-channel templates and filters. A persistent queue provides concurrency and bandwidth limits, and Ctrl / Cmd + J opens Downloads.

Mobile app support

Mobile apps for phones and tablets, with background playback, offline downloads, touch controls and sync with desktop devices. Android builds and experimental iOS/iPadOS builds are available.

Experimental iPhone and iPad app

Use OpenTubeX on iOS and iPadOS 17.4 or later with touch controls, background playback, and on-device yt-dlp playback and downloads. Experimental builds are available as unsigned IPAs that you sign and sideload with an Apple Account.