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YouTube

Fathom includes a complete YouTube client, off by default. Turn it on in Settings. It uses no account and shows no ads, and your subscriptions, playlists, and history stay on your device. Nothing is sent to YouTube.

What it includes

  • Search across videos, channels, and playlists.
  • Subscriptions and feed groups, plus your own local playlists.
  • Comments, captions, chapters, a play queue, and theater mode.
  • The same player as the rest of Fathom: one control bar, seek bar, speed control, and keyboard shortcuts.

Cleaner viewing

  • SponsorBlock skips sponsor, intro, and self-promo segments.
  • DeArrow replaces clickbait titles and thumbnails with community-sourced ones.
  • Return YouTube Dislike brings back the dislike count.

Each is toggled in Settings.

Downloads

Download videos for offline viewing:

  • Video as MP4 or MKV.
  • Audio as M4A or MP3.
  • At a quality and to a folder you choose.

Install ffmpeg for the best quality

YouTube serves high-resolution video and audio as separate streams. ffmpeg merges them, so it is recommended if you want downloads above 720p. Everything else works without it.

Playback details

The Playback Info overlay works here too. On YouTube its Play method line shows whether you are getting a high-quality adaptive (DASH) stream (separate video and audio) or the muxed fallback.