Red

Red is a YouTube client for the Linux desktop: a native app to watch YouTube without ads, with a smart TV mode, a YouTube Music mode, SponsorBlock, media keys, a mini player and a built-in YouTube downloader. Sign in with your Google account and your subscriptions, history and recommendations work as on the website, in a lightweight window instead of a browser tab.

Three ways to watch, one window:

• Desktop mode: the full YouTube website, signed in, in light, dark or system theme, with picture-in-picture style mini player
• TV mode: the YouTube Leanback interface from smart TVs and consoles, full screen, driven by keyboard, mouse or gamepad controller, ideal for a media center, living room PC or handheld
• Music mode: YouTube Music in the same window, a music player with media keys, tray and MPRIS controls, background play, and audio downloads one click away

Watch without interruptions:

• Ad blocker built in: video ads, banners and sponsored feed items are removed before the page renders, and playback is never touched
• Tracker blocking, SponsorBlock to skip sponsor segments, intros and reminders, Return YouTube Dislike counts, and a switch to hide Shorts

Download what you watch:

• YouTube video downloader for any video, playlist or channel, as MP4, MKV or WebM up to 4K
• YouTube to MP3: save audio only as MP3, M4A, Opus, FLAC or WAV for music
• Subtitles, thumbnail, metadata and chapters embedded; sponsor segments cut out on request
• Playlists detected from any link, entries picked one by one, a queue with pause, resume and retry
• Your YouTube sign-in is reused, so age-restricted videos and anything your account can watch download too

Made for the desktop:

• Media keys and MPRIS media controls, a tray icon with play, pause and skip, the screen kept awake while a video plays
• Hardware video decoding, native Wayland and X11, notifications when a download finishes, single instance that opens YouTube links from the command line

Red is a lightweight alternative to the browser tab, to Electron YouTube apps and to a separate downloader. Everything works on any Linux distribution.