Invidious: Private Youtube frontend instance in Docker Swarm

YouTube is ubiquitious now. Almost every video I'm sent, takes me to YouTube. Worse, every YouTube video I watch feeds Google's profile about me, so shortly after enjoying the latest Marvel movie trailers, I find myself seeing related adverts on unrelated websites.

Creepy !

As the connection between the videos I watch and the adverts I see has become move obvious, I've become more discerning re which videos I choose to watch, since I don't necessarily want algorithmically-related videos popping up next time I load the YouTube app on my TV, or Marvel merchandise advertised to me on every second news site I visit.

This is a PITA since it means I have to "self-censor" which links I'll even click on, knowing that once I do click the video link, it's forever associated with my Google account

After playing around with some of the available public instances for a while, today I finally deployed my own instance of Invidious - an open source alternative front-end to YouTube.

Here's an example from my public instance:

Invidious requirements

Setup data locations

First, we create a directory to hold the invidious docker-compose configuration:

mkdir /var/data/config/invidious

Then we setup directories to hold all the various data:

mkdir -p /var/data/invidious/database-dump
mkdir -p /var/data/runtime/invidious/database

Setup Invidious environment

Create /var/data/config/invidious/invidious.env something like the example below..

POSTGRES_DB=invidious
POSTGRES_USER=invidious
POSTGRES_PASSWORD=youtubesucks

Then create /var/data/config/invidious/invidious-db-backup.env, like this:

# For pg_dump running in postgres container (used for db-backup)
PGHOST=db
PGUSER=invidious
PGPASSWORD=youtubesucks
BACKUP_NUM_KEEP=7
BACKUP_FREQUENCY=1d

Invidious Docker Swarm config

Create a docker swarm config file in docker-compose syntax (v3), something like the example below.. example¹:

version: "3.2"

services:
  invidious:
    image: quay.io/invidious/invidious:latest
    environment:
      INVIDIOUS_CONFIG: |
        db: # make sure these values align with the indivious.env file you created
          dbname: invidious
          user: invidious
          password: youtubesucks
          host: db
          port: 5432
        check_tables: true
        external_port: 443
        domain: invidious.example.com # update this for your own domain
        https_only: true # because we use Traefik, all access is HTTPS
        # statistics_enabled: false   
        default_user_preferences:
          quality: dash # auto-adapts or lets you choose > 720P 
    env_file: /var/data/config/invidious/invidious.env
    deploy:
      replicas: 1
      labels:
        - "traefik.enable=true"
        - "traefik.docker.network=traefik_public"
        - "traefik.http.routers.invidious.rule=Host(`invidious.example.com`)"
        - "traefik.http.routers.invidious.entrypoints=https"
        - "traefik.http.services.invidious.loadbalancer.server.port=3000"        
    networks:
      - internal
      - traefik_public

  db:
    image: postgres:14
    env_file: /var/data/config/invidious/invidious.env
    volumes:
      - /var/data/runtime/invidious/database:/var/lib/postgresql/data
    networks:
      - internal

  db-backup:
    image: postgres:14
    env_file: /var/data/config/invidious/invidious-db-backup.env
    volumes:
      - /var/data/invidious/database-dump:/dump
    entrypoint: |
      bash -c 'bash -s <<EOF
      trap "break;exit" SIGHUP SIGINT SIGTERM
      sleep 2m
      while /bin/true; do
        pg_dump -Fc > /dump/dump_\`date +%d-%m-%Y"_"%H_%M_%S\`.psql
        ls -tr /dump/dump_*.psql | head -n -"$$BACKUP_NUM_KEEP" | xargs -r rm
        sleep $$BACKUP_FREQUENCY
      done
      EOF'
    networks:
      - internal

networks:
  traefik_public:
    external: true
  internal:
    driver: overlay
    ipam:
      config:
        - subnet: 172.16.21.0/24

Launch Invidious!

Launch the Invidious stack by running

docker stack deploy invidious -c /var/data/config/invidious/invidious.yml

Now hit the URL you defined in your config, you'll see the basic search screen. Enter a search phrase ("marvel movie trailer") to see the YouTube video results, or paste in a YouTube URL such as https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxqLsrlakK8, change the domain name from www.youtube.com to your instance's FQDN, and watch the fun ²!

You can also install a range of browser add-ons to automatically redirect you from youtube.com to your Invidious instance. I'm testing "libredirect" currently, which seems to work as advertised!

Summary

What have we achieved? We have an HTTPS-protected private YouTube frontend - we can now watch whatever videos we please, without feeding Google's profile on us. We can also subscribe to channels without requiring a Google account, and we can share individual videos directly via our instance (by generating links).

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