A self-hosted YouTube client keeps family subscriptions together without a Google account
The project offers a household library and familiar controls, with an important choice about which machine fetches each video and who maintains the infrastructure.
A family YouTube library can live on a server you control, rather than inside somebody’s Google account. TubeHaus makes that an option, provided somebody in the family accepts the role of person who fixes the server.
The project’s README offers two routes under one name. One is a browser interface backed by your own server; the other is an application installed on each device, with a similar appearance but a video-fetching path different enough to decide which one you want.
With the server version, Invidious and its companion handle YouTube access through Cloudflare WARP. The browser talks to your server, and YouTube sees the WARP address. The library lives on the server, shared across the devices and people using it.
The standalone app fetches videos itself. In that mode YouTube sees the device’s internet address, even though subscriptions and history stay out of a Google account. Removing the account doesn’t make the network connection disappear. That’s a useful distinction before the word private gets asked to carry more than it can lift.
Apps can also connect to a TubeHaus server to share its library while still fetching their own video. Library synchronization doesn’t turn that playback path into the server route. Same shelf of subscriptions, different trip to pick up the video.
The maker describes the project as young, beta software with one maintainer. Its server setup uses Docker Compose, bringing together the interface, server, Invidious components and supporting services. That is a reasonable route for someone already comfortable maintaining containers; it also means the viewing experience has acquired an operator.
The default household-library behavior is especially important before putting the server on a public domain. “TubeHaus has no accounts of its own,” the setup instructions warn, then document a built-in password option or an external login gate. The separate public-instance mode changes how libraries are stored; it shouldn’t be confused with the shared household setup.
Export is a welcome feature here. The README describes importing subscriptions and history from several existing formats and exporting a full backup or feed-reader-friendly data. Moving away from a Google account is easier to justify when the replacement offers a way to move away from it, too.
Optional services add another boundary. SponsorBlock, DeArrow and Return YouTube Dislike lookups can involve browser requests to those services. A useful privacy assessment names which connection is being removed and which connections remain, rather than treating a self-hosted front end as a force field.
The project also notes that age-restricted videos usually fail without a signed-in account. Whether the videos a household actually watches survive that limitation, and whether its operator wants another stack to maintain, are still part of the trial.
Somebody still gets the support call.