VN PremLINK's Invidious instance

Invidious is a fantastic project that creates an ad-free frontend (a web site) for YouTube. It also removes all the scripts YouTube runs in the background that make the fans in laptop computers spin and quickly drain batteries.

When we say latest, it's only because until now it's getting a little proper explanation/documentation on PremLINK's part, and because on a recent move, it was forgotten to move a data directory so while the instance by its own measures is brand new, just before its uptime was checked (in order to list it publicly) where it showed it had been running for almost a year now.

As it's done with everything hosted on these servers, to make it more memorable¹⁾ , a fictitious 1-word hyphen-free brand name was given to the server that matches its subdomain: Skiptube .

Skiptube is a unmodified instance of Invidious, thus its already existing documentation found on Invidious Documentation (docs.invidious.io) should apply to it. For the same reason this document focuses things specific to Skiptube: chosen defaults and routing of traffic.

Let's start with the settings.

These are all the settings safe enough to be publicly published.

        check_tables: true
        external_port: 443
        domain: skiptube.antipostal.com
        https_only: true
        statistics_enabled: true
        banner: "<a href=https://ref.vitanetworks.link/app:skiptube>ℹ️ Skiptube</a>"
        disable_proxy: false
        use_quic: false
        log_level: Error
        popular_enabled: true
        registration_enabled: true
        login_enabled: true
        captcha_enabled: true
        use_pubsub_feeds: true
        locale: en-US
        region: US
        captions: ["English", "Spanish", "French"]
        annotations: false
        comments: [""]
        player_style: youtube
        related_videos: true
        autoplay: false
        continue: true
        continue_autoplay: true
        video_loop: false
        quality: hd720
        quality_dash: auto
        show_nick: true
        extend_desc: true

Below, there's a loosely depicted topology²⁾ towards and from Skiptube — Explanation is next:

The website is served from the same address the request came from. Requests are accepted on the skiptube subdomain of any of our hosted domains on any of our public IP addresses. Traffic from Skiptube to YouTube is sent over our remote gateway in the US is the latency isn't too high and there isn't any data loss on the runnel. If the tunnel deteriorates then traffic to YouTube is switched over to the local gateway (ISP). Unless you're proxying videos through the instance your shouldn't see much difference. That said, our local gateway is over 10x faster.

If you are using an Apple device, it's recommended (and preset) the YouTube-style player to be able to AirPlay videos from Safari.

After a video is loaded, bring up the the video's context menu (right-click, force-click, tap with two fingers, ⌃-click, etc), select Show Controls.

Hover the video to bring up the controls. If you pay closer attention there will be a second set of controls behind the ones in the front. Near the right end there's the AirPlay menu. You have to put the pointer just slightly above both control bars, to click the one in the back. The system makes up for the offset of your click and bring up the closes possible target which are the native controls in the back.

The same is true if you actually click the buttons exactly on top the background UI on. The system will make up for the offset and will correct your click for the front controls instead.y system will make up for the offset then behind the player controls appears another set of controls when the AirPlay button is, it is a little tricky but you can get the AirPlay devices menu from there. It should reconnect automatically as videos change.

You can access Skiptube on the skiptube subdomain of senseivita.com and vitanetworks.link (its old domain), in addition to the same subdomain on its new parent domain antipostal.com. That's:

* skiptube.senseivita.com * skiptube.vitanetworks.link * skiptube.antipostal.com ← Domain configured in instance

The skiptube records doesn't exist (yet) in any of our public nameservers, it gets caught by a wildcard record that points to cloudflare.vitanetworks.link or dmarc.vitanetworks.link. The first address is static, the second isn't.

There's a virtual directory you can use for that, statcap, paired with a made up address.

Any of our domains and their subdomains on any path should return the same thing if the address ends in "/statcap/check", the syntax is this:

[]: optional value
<scheme>: http:// or https://
<sub>: anything alphanumeric+- (any length)
<domain.tld>: vitanetworks.link or antipostal.com or senseivita.com
<string>: same as <sub>+/,_. Consecutive /s are not allowed.

If you create an account, you will only be able to log in on the correct domain. Failed log in requests aren't logged anywhere else, all traffic continues to reach the same server but the domain mismatch triggers protections built into Invidious that won't let you log in from the wrong domain.