What is PeerTube? | JoinPeerTube (@joinpeertube.org.web.brid.gy)

PeerTube v8.1 is out! A host of improvements, refinements, bug fixing… Let's see what this minor version has in store for you! #### Better podcast support Since PeerTube v7.1, there's been support for podcasts, but apps haven't been playing well with HLS files generated by PeerTube. This new version of PeerTube lets admins force the creation of an optimized audio file and fixes most issues reported with podcasts. #### Rework of image management PeerTube's image management (for avatars, thumbnails, favicon, etc.) dates back to the early daysof the project and needed a major overhaul to adapt it to changes in the project and the Web. Over the past few weeks, we have worked extensively to completely overhaul the system and **make it both more efficient and more robust in the face of change**. Among these developments are **improved video thumbnail quality** (if your administrator has regenerated it), particularly for podcasts, support for WebP and PNG image formats for video thumbnails, and a preparatory work to enable images to be moved to object storage in the future. These improvements are part of our ongoing efforts to optimize PeerTube's performance in order to facilitate the scaling of platforms. #### Restricting embeds to chosen domains From now on, video creators will be able to restrict the domains on which their videos can be embedded. This enables institutions, media outlets and other organisations to exercise greater control over access to their videos and integrate PeerTube more efficiently into their existing publishing process. #### Added playback speed x3.0 Unlike some alternatives to PeerTube, **you don't need a premium account here to enjoy x3 playback speed!** With this new version of PeerTube, you'll no longer experiment this feeling of slowness when watching a video! You can now watch videos at the ultrasonic speed of your brain and listen to the sweet melody of voices under helium! #### Lucide is now the default player Lucide is the new player that came with PeerTube v8. It's now the standard player for all new PeerTube installations. If you've already got a PeerTube platform and you want Lucide to be the default player, you can enable it in the customization settings of your platform. #### And more… Notable new features include also an improved user experience with notifications grouped by date, an improved experience for managing a channel collaboratively, increased compatibility with other Fediverse softwares, and improved video SEO. Finally, **we have optimized the management of the transcoding queue to enable faster publishing** and improved the robustness of channel synchronisation again (thanks to community feedback)! Of course, many other improvements have been made in this version and you can view the complete list of changes on the dedicated page. All of these changes have been made possible thanks to the feedback you have provided, either by reporting an issue on the software repository or by sharing your ideas on our dedicated platform! If you're running a platform, please read the important notes carefully before upgrading. Thanks to everyone for following the PeerTube project over the years! If you wish and are able to, please, consider making a donation to Framasoft (the non-profit organization that develops PeerTube) to support the project! Support Framasoft

11.03.2026 00:00 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Publish your videos with PeerTube for mobile! The PeerTube mobile app continues to grow and **now includes a creator mode!** Let's take this opportunity to review the latest developments and the improvements we will be making in the future. #### Publish your videos wherever you are This was our commitment during last May's crowdfunding campaign: to add a "creator mode" to the PeerTube app so you can upload your videos wherever you are, directly from your smartphone! **You will now find a "Creator" page in the app.** From there, you can manage your channels and videos! At the top of this page, you can access to your different channels to view and edit their information, or add a new channel. In the middle of the page is a list of all your videos. Each video has a menu that allows you to perform actions on it. From there, **you can edit the video information, download the video, add it to a playlist, or delete it.** Finally, at the bottom of the page, you will find the "Publish" button, which allows you to… publish a new video. (Which is surprising, indeed! 🙃) When you click on it, a menu will pop, allowing you to choose a file from your phone or record a new video directly through the app. _Live streaming and importing from a URL are two options that are currently unavailable, but we plan to work on them in the future._ After selecting the video, you will be able to preview its content. Then, all you have to do is select the channel where you want to publish your video and start uploading! You will then receive a notification that your video is uploading in the background. While you wait, you can do something else in the PeerTube app or elsewhere on your smartphone. **The upload will continue even if you are using another app!** Finally, on the last two pages, you can edit your video's information: thumbnail, subtitles, chapters, description, etc. As with PeerTube for the Web, the mobile app lets you enter all the necessary information! After clicking on **" Publish my video"**, you will be redirected to the **" Creator"** page. There, you will find your new video and the upload status, if it is not yet complete. As you can see, it's quick and easy to upload a video with the PeerTube app! Of course, we can (and want to) improve the process even more. **The paint is still wet, so we expect a few minor bugs.** We will spend the next few weeks fixing them. We also plan to add several new features. These include live streaming and the PeerTube studio, for example. There are two other major features, but they require a lot of work. In any case, we are thrilled to finally allow you to upload your videos within the app. We look forward to continuing our work to improve your experience with PeerTube on mobile! Download the app Support Framasoft #### A year of improvements Last year, we announced the release of our official PeerTube mobile app. Thanks to your support and that of the NLnet Foundation, we were able to hire Wicklow, a junior developer who had just completed an internship with us, to develop the app. From the beginning, our plan was to move forward in stages. We focused on the main building blocks first, gradually adding new features and improving the app based on community feedback. > Developing a widely accessible application for PeerTube is no easy task. Its decentralized and federated nature of the platform is difficult for many people to grasp because they are accustomed to the centralized applications of Big Tech companies. That's why we chose to work with La Coopérative des Internets. They designed the application to ensure its “decentralized” aspect causes minimal friction. Thus, each new element added to the application is preceded by discussions and mock-ups created by a designer. We are delighted to have been able to integrate this process into the project! This decentralized aspect of PeerTube not only poses a challenge in terms of user experience, **but also presents a real headache when it comes to getting past the restrictions imposed by Google and Apple's app stores.** For this reason, the list of available platforms in the app was limited for several months after its launch. Needless to say, these restrictions were as frustrating for you as they were for us. Fortunately, we were able to publish an unrestricted version on F-Droid (although publishing on F-Droid was no easy task either, for other reasons… 😅). Wicklow shared his experience in developing the app in two articles: Part 1 and Part 2. **Despite the many difficulties encountered during this journey, the PeerTube application is making steady progress!** Since the beginning of the year, we have added the following features: * the ability to log in to your own account; * the ability to comment on and read comments on videos; * the ability to receive notifications related to their account activity; * enjoy playlists; * report problematic videos; * access your viewing history; * download videos (on platforms that allow it); * use gestures to change the volume and brightness; * as well as many other diverse and varied improvements… **All these improvements were made possible thanks to your support!** Thanks to crowdfunding in May, we raised the necessary funds to continue developing the application. However, it is also the year-round donations made to Framasoft that finance the PeerTube project as a whole and allow us to look forward to the future of PeerTube with confidence. If you can and want to contribute to PeerTube's robustness, consider making a donation and sharing our support page! Download the app Support Framasoft #### More to come… Among the recent improvements to the app (including creator mode), several were part of our May commitments. However, we haven't delivered everything yet! Several features are still in the pipeline and will arrive in the coming months. These include, as mentioned above, the ability to **play videos in the background** (so you can turn off your screen while listening to a podcast), the ability **to broadcast live** directly via the app, and the release **of a tablet-friendly version of the app**. PeerTube is an ambitious project. Creating software that allows users to build alternative video platforms to those of the digital giants, centered around users (rather than the financial interests of a company), is a monumental challenge. However, after ten years of development, **more and more organizations recognize PeerTube as a reliable solution for distributing their videos**. Our solidarity-based economic model has given us a considerable advantage, allowing us to develop software we are proud of, without pleasing investors and submitting to their endless quest for quick returns. **You are our compass.** Thanks to your feedback, we are developing PeerTube to best meet your needs. The PeerTube mobile app follows the same model as the web app: we are building our vision of a digital world designed for everyone, brick by brick. Admittedly, there is still a long way to go… but the path is Free! Download the app Support Framasoft #### Let's build the robustness of PeerTube and Framasoft Framasoft (and therefore PeerTube) relies on your donations for funding! By supporting our solidarity-based model, you are not only ensuring a secure, commercial-free future for PeerTube. You are also enabling Framasoft to provide 23 alternative, free services to more than 2 million users! To achieve this, we need to raise €250,000 by the end of the year. **Thanks to over 3,000 donors, we have already raised around €150,000! 🥳** Help strengthen Framasoft by making a donation (66% of which is tax-deductible for French taxpayers) and spreading the word to your friends and family! Together, let's prove that a non-commercial digital world accessible to all is possible! _The illustrations were designed by David Revoy and are licensed under CC-BY 4.0._ Download the app Support Framasoft

16.12.2025 00:00 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

PeerTube v8 : manage your videos with your team! We're thrilled to announce the release of PeerTube v8! This version features **a redesigned video player** , **an improved experience for importing videos** and the ability to **share channel management with other accounts**! #### A brand new video player > We created a new theme for the video player for the first time since the beginning of PeerTube development! This new theme is named Lucide, in reference to the new icons used. It has been designed to be cleaner in order to better highlight the content. Instead of bold, imposing icons, we opted for a more discreet style with finer lines on the buttons. We also reworked the volume adjustment button to hide the volume state by default. Finally, we moved the peer-to-peer information to the "Stats for nerds" menu, which is accessible by right-clicking on the player. These few improvements breathe new life into PeerTube, giving it a more modern and professional look. They accomplish this by limiting the displayed information to what is strictly necessary. Less is more, as they say! If you prefer the old theme, don't worry, it's still available! **You can choose the player theme at the platform, channel, or video level.** These changes are in line with all the design improvements we've made this year. With each update, PeerTube becomes more customizable, allowing you to create a video platform that reflects **your** personality! Support Framasoft #### Manage your channels as a team Since PeerTube's inception, many have asked us to add the ability to collaboratively manage a channel. This is, by the way, one of the most requested feature on our platform dedicated to idea suggestions! Although use cases can very, it is often a critical need for organizations where several people are responsible for uploading new videos. We are therefore delighted to announce that **the collaborative channel management is now possible with PeerTube!** 🥳 Thanks to this new feature you can now designate other members of your platform as editors. Thus, a channel editor will be able to publish new videos, update or delete videos, playlists and comments, as well as add or delete synchronizations and update channel information! Please note that editors cannot add or remove other editors, or delete the channel. Support Framasoft #### And more… Of course, as with each new major version, many other improvements have been made. Some are invisible to the general public, such as ilfarpro's contribution, which adds the ability to generate storyboards (you know, the thumbnails that display the different images from a video when you hover over the progress bar) through a remote runner instead of the PeerTube server. Others, however, are much more visible! For example, this is the case with the improvements made to the system for importing videos and channels from other platforms. **It is now possible to manually rerun a failed import.** Also, in the case of a channel synchronization, PeerTube will try to run again a failed import after some time (at the next verification for synchronization, which interval, being 1h by default, is configurable by the platform's admin). Finally, information about the status of a video import is now available in the video management page. Another new improvement is that we have redesigned the appearance of notifications to better match PeerTube's overall theme! A complete list of all changes made in this version is available in the dedicated changelog. Support Framasoft #### Looking back on a year of PeerTube The year 2025 was marked by numerous advancements for the PeerTube project as a whole. **In total, we will have released four versions of PeerTube** , all of which adhere to the guiding principle of making PeerTube easier for organizations to use. Indeed, thanks to an NLnet grant, we were able to incorporate important features for this type of audience into the updates. Keeping this in mind, we improved PeerTube's design this year and made it easier to customize. Previous versions included the ability to translate PeerTube emails, a **redesigned the "About" and "Video Management" pages**, and an improved interface for easier batch batch action management (e.g. deleting videos)! We also added — and this was the big feature in version 7.3! — **a configuration wizard** to help admins set up their platform according to their profile (institution, community, or individual). Among other major improvements this year, we can also mention **a new moderation tool that allows you to monitor certain words** , making it much easier to track comments on your videos or platform! Finally, thanks to a previous NLnet grant, but also because it was important to us: **we completely redesigned the management of sensitive content**. We have long known that people's sensitivity to a subject varies greatly and that the old system was too simplistic to truly meet the needs of video creators and their audiences. That's why we collaborated with La Coopérative des Internets to design system that is more complex (but not more complicated) yet more true to reality! #### Institutional recognition and adoption > In addition to technical improvements, the entire PeerTube ecosystem is making steady progress. Notably PeerTube was recognized as a digital public good by the DGPA (Digital Public Goods Alliance). This recognition reinforces our confidence in the choices (both technical and political) we have made to ensure that PeerTube is a project that serves everyone. When platforms like YouTube seem to continue to enshittify daily, more and more organizations (particularly medias outlets and institutions) are contacting us to make PeerTube their backup or even primary solution for hosting their videos. We're really proud to see that PeerTube truly meets the needs of all these organizations allowing them **to create a video platform that they control and that respects their viewers**. Support Framasoft #### What PeerTube has in store for you in 2026… First, regarding the mobile app, we aim to finalize the features promised during the crowdfunding campaign , including background video playback, live streaming, and TV apps. If all goes well, background video playback should be available in early 2026! Spoiler alert: The app's video maker mode will be available in a few days… 🤫 Regarding the PeerTube project as a whole, **we would like to improve the experience for newcomers by reducing the effort required to find their first PeerTube platform**! The project is still in the planning stages and we still have a lot of work before it can happen. However, our ambitions could have a serious impact on the PeerTube ecosystem and we can't wait to get started! Early next year, we will publish the PeerTube project's traditional roadmap. There, you will find more details about our vision for PeerTube in 2026. We are shaping this vision based on your ideas, so please feel free to share your suggestions on our dedicated platform! To keep up with all our news (roadmap announcements, new projects, upcoming updates, etc.), you can subscribe to our social media channels and our newsletter. * * * PeerTube is developed by Framasoft, a french non-profit association raising awareness about digital issues. **Framasoft is currently running a fundraising campaign to finance the year 2026.** At the time of writing, there are just over three weeks left to reach our goal of €250,000. However, we have only raised 24% of this target so far. So if you appreciate PeerTube and would like to support its development, please consider making a donation (66% tax deductible for French residents) and help build a bright future for PeerTube! Support Framasoft

09.12.2025 00:00 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

PeerTube v7.3 is out! Facilitating the adoption of software is a long-term endeavour involving several stages. We are proud to present to you few of them that PeerTube has completed! #### Emails in your language! Until now, emails sent by PeerTube platforms were only available in English, regardless of the user's language. This could cause confusion for non-native English speakers, making it difficult to use PeerTube in a professional context. This was one of the most popular requests on our community suggestions page: it is now possible to translate emails into all the languages available on PeerTube! Some languages, such as French and Chinese, have already been fully translated, meaning you can now receive emails in these languages from this version onwards! We encourage the community to help us translate emails, as well as other parts of PeerTube, on our translation platform (contributing guide is available at https://docs.joinpeertube.org/support/doc/translation). #### Configuring your platform We have significantly enhanced the user experience and interface to assist administrators in configuring their platform.. The horizontal menu has been replaced with a new side menu for navigating between setting pages, which is **more user-friendly**. A new configuration page called _Customisation_ has been added, allowing admins to easily change their platform's main colors and shapes. For example, it is now possible to replace PeerTube's orange color with blue or make the buttons more rounded with just a few clicks. **These new settings make it much easier to customise a PeerTube platform**. Another configuration page called _Logo_ has also been added. This allows admins to configure the icons and logos displayed on their platform, including the header icon on the web and mobile versions, the favicon, the banner, the image displayed on social media, etc. This new version also features a wizard to help admins configure their PeerTube platform. Once logged into your admin account, you can easily set up elements such as your platform's name, description, logo and main color, as well as choosing a preconfiguration based on the type of platform you want to administer, such as private, community or institutional. If you are caught up in the excitement of using your PeerTube instance during installation and do not feel like using the wizard, you can launch it later by going to your platform's settings. #### Schedule your live streams Thanks to a contribution (made in live on PeerTube), it is now possible to schedule streams. To do this, simply go to the live stream settings and enter the start date and time in the relevant section. The scheduled date of the live stream will be displayed on the live stream page, as well as on the page listing a channel's videos. #### And much more! As always, the new version brings many other features and redesigns, in addition to the new features described above. Among them: * The playlist management page has been redesigned to make it easier to use. It is also possible to choose the order in which playlists are displayed publicly within a channel. * Admins can now configure the default values for the "Licence", "Visibility" and "Comment Policy" fields when publishing a video. * Users can list active login sessions and revoke them if necessary. You can find details of all the changes at https://github.com/Chocobozzz/PeerTube/releases/tag/v7.3.0. Feel free to share this information and suggest ideas. If you can, please make a donation to Framasoft, the non-profit organisation that develops PeerTube. Framasoft. Support Framasoft

09.09.2025 00:00 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

The application crowdfunding was a success! **You did it!** Thanks to your support, we achieved all three of our fundraising goals for developing features in the PeerTube application! We now have the necessary resources to work on it during the year! Throughout the campaign, **your enthusiasm has truly warmed our hearts**. We would like to thank everyone who contributed to its success, from those who talked about the campaign on social media, to the various news outlets that relayed the information to their audiences and the hundreds of people who made a donation! Furthermore, through this crowdfunding campaign, we aimed to introduce PeerTube and Framasoft to individuals who may not be familiar with them, particularly in the English-speaking world. **Thanks to your many voices and your help, we've succeeded!** You really are wonderful... thank you! ❤️ #### How your donations will help Here is an overview of the features we'll be able to develop, thanks to you: * **Free** PeerTube "Premium" enhancements **for everyone** , which allow you to play your video in background, download it, change its resolution, etc. * Adding a video manager to the application, enabling you to publish your videos directly from your smartphone! * The ability to broadcast lives via the app! We also had a fourth, slightly more "meta" objective: **to support Framasoft**. We saw this objective as a bit of a bonus, which would of course help the PeerTube project, but whose main aim was to make Framasoft and its actions more visible. Emphasize that PeerTube is not just a technical project, but part of a broader vision that we have at Framasoft. The vision of a digital environment that empowers everyone. Despite the fact that this "meta" aspect didn't seem directly related to PeerTube, **you supported us in achieving it... and what a support it was!** On behalf of the entire Framasoft team, from the bottom of our hearts, thank you! #### In a nutshell During the three weeks of the campaign, the PeerTube project continued to live on via: * Our participation in Fireside Fedi show * The release of the v7.2 of the software, including major enhancements in the way to identify sensitive content. * More recently, **v7.2.1 was released** , which fixed some issues and integrated new translations. * **Our participation in two AMA** (Ask Me Anything) on Lemmy and Reddit. These were high points for us and we were thrilled to be able to answer to questions we'd rarely been asked! * The publication of two articles in which **we shared our experience developing the mobile app**. Part 1 - Part 2 #### And now? The rest of this year's adventure is fully planned. For the mobile app, we'll be spending the rest of the year developing features you've enabled us to fund! While some of these will arrive fairly quickly, others, such as live broadcasts, are unlikely to be released before the end of the year or early next year. On the PeerTube software side, we've already published the roadmap for 2025. Many improvements are planned for the coming months! To stay informed about developments and improvements to the PeerTube project, follow us on social media (Mastodon, Bluesky and other platforms) or subscribe to our newsletter. Finally, we count on you to promote the PeerTube project, install the mobile app, and ensure that more people discover spaces where they can control their digital lives, including posting videos. Thank you all for following us in this campaign, and thank you again for supporting us during it! Without you, PeerTube would never have been possible. **Thanks to you, we'll put PeerTube in everyone's pocket!** The Framasoft team

18.06.2025 00:00 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

App crowdfunding — Let's go live! We have just reached €55,000 in contributions for the PeerTube app crowdfunding! We were not certain to reach it but you followed us until now... that means a lot to us, thank you very much! 🥰 Thanks to this completed goal, we will be able to work with peace of mind on every improvements we wanted to make to the application this year! 🎉 #### 📹 Broadcast live streams using PeerTube app Whether you want to cover an event happening in your street or to share your road trip with your community, you will soon be able to do so directly from the mobile app! In addition to making broadcasting easier (no more need for computer or OBS), this enhancement will let you be more spontaneous: **you will soon be able to start your live streams on the fly, in just a few seconds...**! 🥳 For those of you who have been following the PeerTube project for a long time, maybe you remember we have already funded an app dedicated to PeerTube live streams, soberly called PeerTube Live. At the time, we called on an external developer to work on this app: we never thought that one day we would maintain our own mobile app! Today, we can't imagine not integrating this major feature for videomakers into our app. Fortunately, we will be able to draw on the previous work to implement it, even if that will still be a lot of work! #### 🫶 Next goal: Support Framasoft We can imagine many of you have questions about this goal. If you didn't know, PeerTube is developed by a small french non-profit called Framasoft (yeah, this is us!). **Our mission is to raise awareness about digital issues and cultural commons** : to help people all around the world (even if we mostly work in France) to have a critical look on our digital society by sharing keys to understanding. However, we define ourselves as being an organization "that does". We like to think but above all we seek to build solutions that enable everyone to take ownership on these issues and become emancipated. That is why we built PeerTube: **to allow everyone to get back control on their videos**. That is also why we have been running the "De-google-ify" campaign for the past 11 years, providing alternative services to those offered by Big Tech. These services, which are free and accessible to all, are among the largest non-commercial services in the world! Finally, we opened Framaspace for the same reason: to provide a free collaborative space (based on Nextcloud) for small non-profits and collectives. **We seek to equip those who wish to build a fairer and more equitable world.** Of course, even though all of our services are free, they still have a cost. We have to pay each month for our 10 employees and the whole infrastructure we maintain. To do so, our business model is based on solidarity: that's donations from thousands of people (mostly based in France) that fund us! That's thanks to all these people that PeerTube was born, that 2,000 collectives can enjoy Framaspace today or that more than 2,000,000 of people can freely use our services each month! By supporting Framasoft, you support both PeerTube and all our other projects. **By doing so, you allow us to help to (digitally) empower those working for a better world.** To support Framasoft and help us to continue to act, you can: * Follow our social media and share our posts: Mastodon, Bluesky, Reddit & Lemmy * Subscribe to our newsletter and share the latest PeerTube news! * Share the crowdfunding campaign with your friends and family or on your social medias * And indeed, if you can so, support us by making a donation! Thank you very much! 💖 Support PeerTube

16.06.2025 00:00 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Flutter application development: feedback (2/2) #### Application development in Flutter: Publishing to application stores (2/2) Publishing a video streaming application from the Fediverse on various application stores was like navigating an obstacle course. Due to the stores' sometimes very strict policies and the sensitivity surrounding video content — particularly that generated or broadcast by third parties — we had to exercise extreme caution. Apple and Google consider us, as the application's publisher, responsible for all content accessed via the application. They are particularly strict on this issue with regard to video formats, much more so than with podcast applications or web browsers. Here's an overview of the various stages, from the initial submission to the production launch. #### Precautions taken To maximise our chances of being accepted by the stores, we took several precautions right from the start. ##### Filtering accessible platforms The first measure was to restrict access to the platforms via a filtering system using **identifiers specific to each store**. This identifier is used to maintain an **allowlist** of trusted platforms adapted to each store. * On the **Play Store** (Android), only a restricted allowlist of platforms is accessible to meet Google's requirements. * On the **App Store** (iOS), the allowlist is even more limited, with Apple imposing particularly stringent validation criteria. * On **F-Droid** , however, all platforms listed in our moderated index are accessible without additional filtering. The advantage of this tag-based system is that it is entirely **deported server-side**. In other words, if we need to **remove a problematic platform** or **add a new one** , this can be done **without updating the application itself**. This gives us great flexibility and responsiveness when the need arises. ##### No manual addition of platforms at the start To ensure the first submission was validated quickly, we deliberately **disabled the option to manually add a platform in the application**. Consequently, only the platforms authorized by our filter, of which there were very few, were available. Once the application had been validated and was available on the **Play Store** , we **re-enabled manual addition of platforms** on the Android side, watching carefully to see if it caused any problems. After several months with no negative feedback, **we opened this possibility on iOS** as well. ##### Presentation and deployment strategy To give ourselves the best possible chance of success, we paid particular attention to the **user interface** and the **store listings** (thumbnails, descriptions, keywords, screenshots, etc.). This is because the stores also pay close attention to appearance, perceived quality, and adherence to good UX/UI practices. We decided to take a **step-by-step** approach: 1. First the **Play Store** , which is faster and more flexible. 2. Then the **App Store** , which is more demanding but unavoidable. 3. Finally, **F-Droid** , which requires a different approach and is essential for FOSS users. #### Google Play Store: smooth validation The official Flutter documentation was followed for publication on the Google Play Store: https://docs.flutter.dev/deployment/android. The Play Store allows several deployment types, which are useful for testing different stages of the application: * **Internal testing** : This allows you to distribute the app to a small group of internal testers (up to 100). * **Closed testing** : Allows you to target a larger select group via an email address list or Google group. * **Open testing** : Allows any user to join the testing programme via a public link. * **Production** : This is the stable version published on the Play Store for all users. ##### Validation steps Each deployment type is automatically validated by Google with very short turnaround times. * Internal and closed tests are generally available **within an hour**. * Open tests and production releases can take a **few hours** , but rarely more. Google **has always accepted the application** upon initial submission, without requesting changes or asking questions. There have been no exchanges or feedback from them, just validation after submission and a well-written changelog. It seems that the precautions we took beforehand were sufficient, or even that we could have been more relaxed! #### Apple App Store: complications... Once I had successfully navigated the Google process, it was time to move on to Apple, which is known for being **significantly more demanding**. As with Android, I followed the official Flutter documentation for iOS deployment. Flutter iOS Deployment] ([https://docs.flutter.dev/deployment/ios). On iOS, apps can be distributed through two main channels: * **TestFlight** : for sharing beta versions with up to 10,000 testers. This process is more flexible than the production process, but is still subject to validation. * **Production** : the stable, public version of the app, visible on the App Store. ##### The validation steps ###### Gabe's warning Before submitting PeerTube to iOS, we consulted Gabe, the developer behind the OwnCast project, who had previously been rejected several times by Apple. He shared his valuable feedback and strategies for complying with the App Store Guidelines. Here is a summary: * **Guideline 1.2 – Security – User-generated content** ➤ _Solution:_ Integrate a client-side “reporting” system that sends an email to a moderator who can remove an instance if necessary. * **Guideline 5.2.3 – Legal aspects** > Your app contains content or features that may violate the rights of one or more third parties. Specifically, your app provides potentially unauthorized access to third-party audio or video streaming, catalogs, and discovery services. ➤ _Solution:_ Provide a PDF document listing each video server preconfigured in the app, with “Authorized” marked for each one. Apple is not satisfied with a simple statement: they want tangible proof. * **Guideline 3.1.1 – Commercial Activity – Payments – In-App Purchases** ➤ _Problem:_ The app allowed donations via links such as PayPal, OpenCollective, KoFi, etc. ➤ _Solution:_ Remove all payment-related interactions from the app. All links to donations must open a page in an external browser (Safari, Chrome, etc.). No payment links should be displayed in an internal WebView. * **Guideline 5.2.3 – Legal (bis)** ➤ _Solution:_ Provide as much documentation, links, and evidence as possible that the integrated catalogs and discovery services are operated by us and not by an unauthorized third party. Thanks again to Gabe for his valuable advice! ###### We got started and hit a snag. Despite rigorously following Gabe's advice, Apple didn't cut us any slack. Of the two apps we were trying to publish at the end of 2024 — Lokas and PeerTube — we received **eight rejections for Lokas** before getting approval and **three for PeerTube**. As soon as an Apple reviewer found an issue, even a minor one, the request was rejected and we had to correct it before moving on to the next step. Here are the main guidelines that caused us problems: > Guideline 5.2.3 - Legal > > Your app contains content or features that may violate the rights of one or more third parties. Specifically, your app provides potentially unauthorized access to third-party audio or video streaming, catalogs, and discovery services. Despite providing Apple with a document listing the authorised platforms in the iOS app, this was not enough to convince them. We therefore replied: > The platforms listed in the PeerTube application have granted the right to list and access their video content to the PeerTube application. > These authorizations are listed in the document "Authorized Platforms for PeerTube App". > > Can you explain what kind of evidence we need to provide to show that we have the right to access this content? The document attached was exactly the same as the one submitted when the application was filed. > Guideline 3.1.1 - Business - Payments - In-App Purchase Apple reported a link to the website joinpeertube.org in the app, which contains a donation button. This simple external link was enough to justify rejection. In our initial response, we explained that all donation links now open an external page in the browser and that no collection is made within the app itself. We emphasised that this approach complied with the App Store guidelines since the donation process was completely separate from the app's functionality. Despite this clarification, Apple was not convinced. Looking back at the App Store Guidelines, I found a paragraph in our favour: > Section 3.2.2 (iv) : Apps that are not approved nonprofits or otherwise permitted under Section 3.2.1 (vi) may collect charitable donations outside of the app, such as via Safari or SMS. I therefore sent another message to the validation team, reiterating that the app does not collect any donations internally and that all support links open an external page in Safari, in accordance with Section 3.2.2 (iv) of the App Store Guidelines, which permits this for non-charitable apps. I therefore requested a reassessment of the decision or clarification of any other issues. 🎉 Result: **The PeerTube app has been officially released on iOS!** Since then, I have submitted **six updates** to PeerTube, all of which have been approved without issue — including the one that introduced the login feature. Each update was approved within a few hours — at most, within 24 hours. The App Store is never easy, but with patience and careful reading of the guidelines, **it works**. #### F-Droid: another adventure Once the Apple stage was complete, I moved on to submitting to **F-Droid**. Here, the problem wasn't with the guidelines, but with the **process**. The official documentation is rather sparse and I struggled to find a comprehensive resource for a Flutter project. So I relied on: * the 'Quick Start' documentation: https://f-droid.org/docs/Submitting_to_F-Droid_Quick_Start_Guide/ * the developer FAQ: https://f-droid.org/docs/FAQ_App_Developers.html * and, above all, analysis of **other Flutter apps already on F-Droid**. #### Adapting to how F-Droid work F-Droid has specific requirements: * The **build must be reproducible** and completely free. * All external dependencies must be verifiable or removable. * Any **anti-features** , i.e. limitations that do not correspond to the ideals of free software, must be declared. ###### Example: `TetheredNet` The PeerTube application uses two Framasoft-maintained services by default: * instances.joinpeertube.org to list available instances * SepiaSearch to search from a local account. As these services are not configurable by the user, this was considered an 'anti-feature' of the `TetheredNet` type (i.e. connection to a centralised service without the possibility of changing it). This anti-feature was therefore **added during the initial submission**. The good news is that since then, this anti-feature has been removed, as we have made these services customisable in the app. #### Overcoming the blockage caused by an obsolete dependency Before reaching validation, we encountered an obstacle related to a dependency that was used to manage the local database. Although this library was popular when the initial choice was made, it is no longer maintained and does not offer a version compatible with the latest Flutter version required by F-Droid to guarantee build reproducibility. This prevented the application from being compiled on the F-Droid infrastructure and made publication impossible. Following an analysis, we concluded that the most sustainable and secure solution was to replace the obsolete dependency with a maintained alternative that met F-Droid's requirements. Although this required a partial rewrite of the local data management, it unblocked the situation and ensured the long-term stability of the project. ##### The merge request submission After several iterations, we were finally able to submit our app to F-Droid. You can view the merge request (MR) here: https://gitlab.com/fdroid/fdroiddata/-/merge_requests/17235 You can also view the **final configuration** of the PeerTube app on F-Droid (file metadata/*.yml): https://gitlab.com/fdroid/fdroiddata/-/blob/master/metadata/org.framasoft.peertube.yml Using F-Droid requires patience and rigor, but it also provides a better understanding of the challenges of free software and decentralisation. Ultimately, this experience reminds us that making an application available online is a skill in its own right. This skill is often overlooked, yet it is nevertheless essential and requires time, rigor and a variety of skills. We are therefore particularly happy and proud to offer PeerTube on the major app stores and make this project accessible to as many people as possible. Finally, don't forget that crowdfunding for the development of the PeerTube app is still ongoing until **17 June 2025**!

13.06.2025 00:00 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Flutter application development: feedback (1/2) While developing the PeerTube application, we gained experience in choosing technologies and encountered obstacles created by certain decisions. We share these insights here. #### Why flutter? When it comes to developing mobile applications, the question of which technologies to use quickly arises: **should we create a separate application for each platform, or adopt an approach that allows us to pool our efforts?** This is where **cross-platform** development comes in: a method that involves creating a single code base for several operating systems, primarily Android and iOS. Cross-platform development offers many advantages. First and foremost, it considerably reduces costs and maintenance efforts since only one code base is required, limiting the need for bug fixes and multiple updates. It also enables faster and wider deployment, reaching a broader audience without the need to develop separate applications. As our developer was not initially specialized in mobile development, he had to train himself to master the necessary tools. Two main technologies emerged: **React Native** and **Flutter**. We therefore conducted a comparative study to select the solution best suited to our needs. After analysis, we chose Flutter. You can consult the complete study for more details by following this link: https://framagit.org/wicklow/peertube-prototypes After making this decision, our developer set about learning and mastering Flutter. He shares his experience in the rest of this article. #### Learn Dart and Flutter The first step was to understand how Flutter works. Flutter applications are written in Dart, an object-oriented programming language. I started by exploring the official Dart and Flutter documentation to grasp the fundamentals. Here are the different resources I used to get started: * The official Flutter documentation: An excellent official introduction to understanding the fundamental concepts of Flutter. * Flutteris blog: Detailed articles and practical tutorials to deepen my knowledge. * Code with Andrea: Guides and practical examples to help me structure and optimize my Flutter projects. #### Choosing your architecture Once I had established the fundamentals, I turned my attention to the ideal structure for the project. After exploring various approaches, **I opted for a 'feature-first' architecture**. This method involves organising code by functionality rather than by file type, such as models, views, or controllers. The 'Feature First' approach offers several advantages. It brings greater clarity to the project by isolating each feature in its own folder, which makes the structure of the code easier to navigate and understand. Additionally, this method promotes modularity by making features independent, enabling them to be reused or modified without impacting other parts of the project. Finally, in the context of an open-source project, this organisation makes it easier for external developers to contribute, as they can focus on specific functionalities without interfering with the rest of the code. #### Choosing dependencies Each library integrated into the project must be reviewed to ensure that it meets the project's functional requirements, can be maintained over the long term, and does not introduce technical risks. As Flutter is still a relatively new technology, caution should be exercised when selecting dependencies. Some libraries may lack maturity or community support, which could lead to bugs or issues with future updates. The following are some general criteria for choosing a dependency on pub.dev: * Check the number of people actively contributing to the project on GitHub. A larger team of contributors often indicates a more robust project in the long term. * Ensure the project is active with recent commits and regular pull requests, ideally from different users. * Look at the overall score on pub.dev, which measures package quality. * Check the frequency of publications. * Give preference to packages published by a verified publisher. #### Selected dependencies Taking these criteria into account, I carefully selected the libraries needed to develop the PeerTube mobile application. The main libraries chosen for the project are listed below, along with the reasons for their selection. ##### The state manager A state manager is a tool used to manage the state of an application. In the context of Flutter, state refers to dynamic data or information that can change during application execution, such as user input, data retrieved from an API, or the state of an animation. There are several approaches and libraries are available for state management in Flutter applications, each with its own advantages and limitations. ###### State management approaches * `StatefulWidget`: The simplest built-in mechanism for managing local state. * `InheritedWidget`: A native solution for sharing state between widgets. * Global variables: An approach where state is stored in global variables that can be accessed throughout the application. ###### Popular libraries Provider: * Pros: Simple, lightweight and widely used by the Flutter community. * Cons: Requires standard code and lacks advanced features. Bloc: * Pros: Highly structured, promotes separation of concerns and is ideal for managing complex application logic. * Cons: Steep learning curve. Requires more code base than other solutions. Riverpod: * Pros: A modern alternative to Provider with a simpler API, better testability and support for dependency injection. It removes Flutter's widget tree constraints, making it more flexible. * Cons: It is a more recent library, but development is very active. Riverpod was chosen for its simplicity, flexibility, and scalability, and it offers global state management that is independent of the widget tree. I like Riverpod's global variable approach. In addition, integrating code generation into the project promises to improve performance in the future. **However, it's important to choose a solution that matches your preferences and specific needs.** ##### The router A router is an essential component that manages navigation between the various screens of an application. It allows routes to be defined and transitions to be managed, and it supports deep links and the transmission of parameters via URLs. Several libraries are available to manage navigation in Flutter applications: * Navigator: Included in the Flutter SDK but lacks features such as deep links. * AutoRoute: Generates code to simplify route management, but can be difficult to configure. * GoRouter: An official library supported by the Flutter team, combining ease of use with advanced deep-linking support. After analysis, GoRouter proved to be the best choice for this project, particularly because of: * active support from the Flutter team and comprehensive documentation, guaranteeing a reliable long-term solution. * Deep link support, which is essential for redirecting users between PeerTube platform web pages and the application. * It is based on the Navigator 2.0 API included in the Flutter SDK. ##### The video player **The video player is an essential component of the PeerTube application, forming the heart of the user experience.** From the very start, it was crucial for us to make the right choice of library to ensure smooth playback, compatibility with different video formats, and seamless integration with the application's functionality. Several libraries are available that are used by the Flutter community to implement video playback functionality. * video_player: An official library supported by the Flutter team that provides basic video playback functionality but requires extensive customisation for advanced features. * Chewie: Is a powerful overlay for video_player, supported by the Flutter community, which provides a pre-built, highly customisable player interface and supports basic controls such as play/pause, full-screen mode, and subtitles. * BetterPlayer: Is an advanced video player built on top of Chewie with additional functionality, but it is not very well maintained. * MediaKit: Is a newer package that aims to provide a consistent, feature-rich video playback experience across all platforms. However, its ecosystem and community support are still developing. Following our analysis, Chewie emerged as our top choice thanks to its balance of simplicity and functionality. * It is easy to integrate and provides a ready-to-use player interface with minimal configuration. * It is also customizable, allowing developers to adapt the user interface and behavior to the needs of the application. * It is maintained by the Flutter community, which guarantees reliability. However, after several months of use, we found that Chewie's maintenance was weaker than expected. Some features and bug fixes contained in merge requests were not being integrated, which limited our ability to respond quickly to the application's needs. Consequently, we decided to migrate to video_player. Although implementing a customized user interface and advanced functionality takes more time with this library, it offers more granular control and greater stability. **This transition has enabled us to design a customised user experience while guaranteeing greater long-term reliability.** #### Flavors We needed two distinct applications: * **stable** : The production version intended for deployment in public stores. * **nightly** : The version incorporating the latest changes, based on the development branch. Flavors make it possible to manage these two versions separately by creating two applications. To set this up, you need to configure Flavors on each targeted native platform (Android and iOS). Additionally, each application must be signed separately for each flavour. Finally, the Dart code shared by all platforms can be configured according to the environment using the `--dart-define-from-file` argument, which provides a `.env` file containing the necessary variables. The example command for building the stable environment is: flutter build apk --flavor stable --dart-define-from-file=env-stable.json For more details on configuring flavours and signing applications, see this report, which details how we set up the flavour system. #### Mistakes made ##### Writing tests too early One mistake I made at the start of the project was trying to write unit and integration tests too early in the development process. **While tests are crucial for ensuring code quality and stability, writing them prematurely can be counterproductive** , particularly when the application's architecture and functionality are still in the process of being defined. Indeed, many changes were made to the code structure and functionalities at the start of the project, quickly rendering the tests obsolete. From this experience, I learned that **the stability of the architecture must be prioritised**. Before writing tests, it is crucial to ensure that the application architecture is well defined and stable. This reduces the need for frequent test modifications. ##### Underestimating the complexity of dependencies Initially, we integrated several libraries without fully assessing their maturity and compatibility with our project. Some of these dependencies turned out to be unstable or poorly maintained, which led to unforeseen problems and delays. A more thorough dependency analysis would have prevented these issues. This Flutter learning path has enabled me to lay a solid foundation for developing the PeerTube mobile application. In the next article, we will look at a crucial stage: publishing the application on the stores (Google Play, the App Store, and F-Droid). We'll detail the necessary steps, best practices, and potential pitfalls to help you successfully launch a mobile application like PeerTube. **We would like to take this opportunity to remind you that you can participate to thecrowdfunding campaign for the development of the PeerTube application until 17 June 2025!**

11.06.2025 00:00 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

App crowdfunding — We are halfway there! 35 000! Thanks to your many contributions, we have reached the €35,000 goal for our crowdfunding! From the bottom of our hearts, thank you! 🩷 So... the second collective goal has been achieved! 🎉 #### 🎬 Manage your videos from anywhere Videomakers can be happy! Thanks to your support, we will develop an interface to manage your videos directly from the app! You will soon be able to publish your videos from anywhere! No more need for your computer or to use the web interface! Yeah, okay, anywhere at the condition you have a working connection, that's right... 🙃 The video management interface will be as complete as possible. It will let you integrate subtitles into your videos, define their chapters and edit their metadata. But that's not all! You will also be able to find statistics about your videos directly from the app, allowing you to track the evolution in popularity of your videos! Finally, we will integrate notifications concerning your publication actions. They will let you know, for example, when video upload has finished. #### 📹 Get ready for the live stream We believed that this second goal was important for videomakers contributing to PeerTube. Your contributions have shown you share this belief and we are infinitely grateful to you for showing it to us! We're halfway there now! Thank you very much! 💖 But the journey continues! We still have two more goals to reach in this adventure and we hope you'll follow us all the way! The next step is to unlock the ability to broadcast lives via the app! Imagine broadcasting live on your PeerTube channel: your loved ones' wedding for those who couldn't attend; the Orphan Socks Festival; or your stroll through the next Free Software meeting. And all without any complicated technical setup, using only your phone! We can't wait to see PeerTube live streams grow in popularity as you share your vlogs or films of events that drive you! To help us to reach this next collective goal, you can: * Follow our social media and share our posts: Mastodon, Bluesky, Reddit & Lemmy * Subscribe to our newsletter and share the latest PeerTube news! * Share the crowdfunding campaign with your friends and family or on your social medias * And indeed, if you can so, support us by making a donation! We rely on you! Support PeerTube

10.06.2025 00:00 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

PeerTube v7.2 is out! New design for video management and publication pages, rework of the display and filter system for sensitive content… this new version is ready for the summer! #### Video management redesign Thanks to the work done by our design provider team La Coopérative des Internets, PeerTube has become clearer. This time, they designed a new video management interface that we've integrated! You can now: * Navigate between your videos using the clearer pagination system which is more efficient than previous version's infinite scroll * Choose columns to display like, as example: "channels", "duration", "name", "views", "publication date" or if there are comments or not * Choose to display videos from a particular channel (or several) using specific buttons * Filter videos depending on their visibility, whether they are lives or not, if they are password protected, if they are VOD… also, a work on the search have been done! #### Redesign of the video update page Another page has been given a makeover: the one of the publication and update of a live or a video! This module has been divided and reorganized in navigable sections via a new side sub-menu. The Studio and the statistics pages have also been included in this new sub-menu, which brings together everything to do with managing videos. The non-available features are clearly displayed and a help button explains why they can be unavailable (disabled by the admin, unavailable because the video is being encoded, etc.) A horizontal banner makes it easy to undo or save changes, or to go to the video's public page. It can also display additional information, such as whether if the video is waiting encoding. Finally, the page to replace a video has been redesigned, and you can now use the "Drag'n'Drop" feature to upload a new version of your video. #### Hiding is nice, explain why is better Having studied existing systems on major platforms (social media, video, music, etc.) as well as Fediverse software, La Coopérative des Internets helped us to get a better understanding of improvements to develop in PeerTube's system for hiding sensitive content. The very notion of "sensitive content" varies a lot from one person to another, from one culture to another, and an overly binary system could put people off viewing a video because of this vagueness. What is obvious to you may not be obvious to everyone. That's why it's now possible for video makers to give a reason about why they judged their video deserved a warning message (a similar system than the "content warning" of Mastodon, for example). People who want to watch this video will be in a better position to know if they really want to see it or pass by. We also took the opportunity to review the viewer settings for managing sensitive videos: * **Display** : list without being warned about sensitive videos * **Warn** : list but display a warning below the thumbnail and in the video player * **Blur** : list but display a warning below the thumbnail and in the video player and blur the thumbnail * **Hide** : do not list at all If enabled by the platform admin, it's also possible to apply rules according to predefined tags chosen by the video maker. For example, hide sensitive videos in general, but choose to display videos marked as violent by the video maker with a warning. #### But also… Every new version comes with its share of less visual but equally useful improvements and bug fixes! You'll find the full list for this version in its changelog. To help us to continue to improve PeerTube, you can share this news release, suggest ideas for improvement and, if you can afford it, make a donation to Framasoft, the non-profit association that develops PeerTube. And, last but not least, we're currently in the midst of a crowdfunding campaign! The aim is to help finance the development of major improvements for the PeerTube mobile app. Find out how we intend to get PeerTube in everyone's pockets on the campaign website! Thank you in advance for your support! Framasoft Support Framasoft

04.06.2025 00:00 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

App crowdfunding campaign — First goal reached! We are thrilled to announce you that thanks to your contributions we've reached our first crowdfunding goal! 🥳 On the behalf of the whole team, thank you a thousand times! This goal is a very important first step to allow PeerTube to reach a wider adoption! Indeed, this goal was focused on enhancing the user experience and unlocking a YouTube Premium-like experience... but free and available to everyone! Here are the details of what your donations will make possible this year. #### 📱Play your videos in the background That's common use to have to move the video in background. Whether you want to read the rest of a recipe or simply because you only need the audio because you're just listening to a podcast, it can be frustrating to have your video paused each time you leave the app or when you turn off your screen. To solve that, we will develop an update that will allow you to play your video in the background. And, unlike some other apps (You know who we mean... 😏), this feature will be free for everyone, thanks to your surge of solidarity! 🫶 #### 🔔 Be notified of new content Thanks to the notifications we will add to the app, you will be able to be notified when your favorite videomakers publish new videos! These notifications will be able to occur even if you didn't start the app. Of course, we will add a dedicated area to the app to manage these notifications, allowing you to customize their behavior. #### ⚙️ Change your videos resolution For now, the app doesn't let you change the video resolution. However, this feature helps to enjoy a better experience, especially on mobile devices where connections could be unstable! So, we will add the ability to choose the video resolution as well as an "auto" mode that automatically switches to the most suitable resolution regarding your connection, following what is already available in the Web version! #### 📺 Cast your videos to your TV! Very popular on social medias and on our platform dedicated to feedback, we are really happy to announce that we will add support for casting your videos to your TV, using Chromecast! Apple devices will follow as soon as possible. We already imagine fun times you will be able to share with your friends thanks to this enhancement! #### 💖 You are amazing! Adding to all major features listed above, we will continue to enhance the interface and to fix different issues you report! All these improvements are possible thanks to your support and the spirit of solidarity you have shown us! Thank you very much for letting us reach this first goal! 🥰 However, the crowdfunding has just started and we hope that even more of you will support us in reaching our next goal: Manage your videos directly from the app! To help us to reach this next collective goal, you can: * Follow our social media and share our posts: Mastodon, Bluesky, Reddit & Lemmy * Subscribe to our newsletter and share the latest PeerTube news! * Share the crowdfunding campaign with your friends and family or on your social medias * And indeed, if you can so, support us by making a donation! Thank you and see you very soon for the next blog post!👋 Support PeerTube

02.06.2025 00:00 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

PeerTube from your pocket! Thanks to your support, we (Framasoft, a small french not-for-profit) have been developing PeerTube for seven years! From a student project to a software with international reach, our video platform solution is now used and acknowledged by many institutions! Of course, we've still a lot to do, and if the PeerTube community is growing by the day, we can already see some crucial steps that would help PeerTube to reach a wider audience! With your help, **let's put PeerTube in everyone's pocket**! Support PeerTube #### An application for everyone! Last year marked an important milestone for PeerTube. Indeed, we hired Wicklow to work on the PeerTube mobile app, which doubled our workforce dedicated to the PeerTube development. Yes, that may sound a bit crazy, but PeerTube has so far only been developed by one single employee and a handful of volunteer contributors! (Many thanks to you! 💖) We've been thinking about building our own mobile app for a long time, noting the massive use of smartphones to enjoy video content. Thanks to your votes on our feedback platform for PeerTube, we were convinced to get started on this project, and now we want to put some resources into it! Since its preliminary release at the end of the last year, the app has evolved a lot and you were able to discover, some weeks ago, its first major version! Details of the improvements introduced by this version can be found in the dedicated blog post. #### A bubble of autonomy outside of the YouTube-Twitch-Vimeo system More than a mobile app, PeerTube is a vibrant ecosystem: 1,300 platforms listed, with 300,000 user accounts and 756,000 videos. In addition to many other improvements, version 7 introduced a new design, thought to be more modern, accessible, and better suited for institutions. Among these institutions are the French Ministry of National Education and the GARR (the IT network of Italian universities). > **For all these reasons, we consider PeerTube to be a mature piece of software.** (even if, yes, there are always ways to improve it and we'll work this way! 😛) We see in PeerTube as **an emancipatory software** , allowing **a non-commercial sharing** of videos. Whether you wish to share your videos with your students, publish your tutorials about easy gardening or to have an autonomous video platform for your organization, everything is possible with PeerTube! #### Let's popularize videos and live streams shared by humans, for humans! To give even more people access to PeerTube, we're delighted to announce the launch of a crowdfunding campaign! 🎉 Our roadmap for PeerTube being already funded, we want to focus on improving the mobile app. We'd like to add some key features that make it easier to add content. Together, let's get a step further and get PeerTube in everyone's pocket! #### Four collective goals PeerTube was thought as a Common, a tool that can be used by everyone. That's why we've come up with four key objectives to support the development of the mobile app. **Unlike most participatory funding, we don't offer any "rewards" for your contributions. By supporting PeerTube, your reward is to have contributed to a Common, which serves everyone and belongs to everyone.** However, we played around with the concept, and are offering you different possible "contributions", to show you the work that your support enables us to do. > **€15,000 - Free PeerTube "Premium" for the people** > > > This goal unlocks "PeerTube Premium"... but free and for everyone! > > * **Play video in background** so you can continue to listen to a lecture or lesson without interruption, even if you need to take a quick look at a document > * **Cast videos to your TV** and show your friend the video tutorial super-useful for your association > * **Be notified of the latest videos from your subscriptions** so you never miss a release from your favorite videomaker > * **Change the video definition** and save on your data rate > > > All without ads! The magic of an application designed to serve you, not track you! 🪄 > **€35,000 - Share videos from your pocket** > > Sometimes, you don't have any major editing to do on your videos and just want to upload them quickly without using your computer. > That's what this goal will let you do! > > * **Manage all your channels from your account** , directly from the app > * **Edit chapters, subtitles and other information about your videos** > * **View detailed stats on your content** : how many people watch your videos, for how long, from where, etc. > * **Upload new videos from your smartphone** > > > Should the app answer to videomakers needs...? That's up to you to tell us, because we're looking forward developing these features by the end of the year. > **€55,000 - Livestream from your mobile** > > So you can broadcast a social movement or your discovery of Seoul live! > > * **Configure and manage your livestreams from your phone** , without OBS! 😎 > * **Use your device and its data** , no additional equipment required > * **Broadcast your lives right in your hands** , without needing a computer > * **No more need for a secondary mobile app dedicated to live streams** - all your needs in one place! > > > We can already imagine live broadcasts shared from demonstrations, conferences, and community debates. However, even if this goal is funded, we don't think we can finish it before the end of the year, and are counting on a release in 2026. > **€75,000 - Support Framasoft & PeerTube** > > PeerTube is a major project in the history of Framasoft, but it is not the only one. If Framasoft was able to develop PeerTube, that's because our association has been supported for its other actions by donations. > > By supporting Framasoft, you're helping to build a digital world that is inclusive, emancipatory and non-commercial. > > * **We do not make a profit** : we provide Commons > * **All donations fund all our projects** , both PeerTube and dozens of others > * **We maintain PeerTube** , with a free and qualitative support: this daily, behind-the-scenes work is done in addition to new developments > * **We de-google-ify more than 2M people each month** , by providing web services enabling them to emancipate themselves from Big Tech. > > > We'll detail all of these goals in dedicated blog posts very soon! Stay tuned! #### Contribute to commons: a virtuous circle! By contributing, you donate not only to the PeerTube mobile app, but also to all Framasoft's projects! Here is a graph showing, in detail, how we use this money. If you would like more details, you can also consult our financial report (in french). This crowdfunding campaign is really important for us because not only does it allow us to secure the money we need to develop the project, it also allows us to gauge public enthusiasm for the mobile application and the PeerTube project in general! But let's be clear! We will implement the improvements proposed in this crowdfunding campaign, **regardless of whether we achieve our objectives**! If we don't meet our fundraising goals, we will have to dip into the donations made by the French-speaking community at the end of last year for all of Framasoft's projects. This will show us that our enthusiasm for PeerTube and its application isn't shared. (That happens sometimes! 🤷‍♀️) We'll then ask ourselves whether we really need to add video uploading (or live streaming) to the app, and above all whether we should ease up on our strategy to popularize the PeerTube ecosystem. **Your support is our compass** : it's up to you to tell us if you share our enthusiasm! Support PeerTube #### Support the PeerTube ecosystem by sharing your attention... The PeerTube ecosystem extends beyond Framasoft. Month after month, more and more people and organizations are adopting the project and bringing it to life! Thanks to its powerful extensions system, volunteer developers are constantly expanding software's functionalities. The PeerTube extension catalogue includes over 200 extensions, each of which can be used to add new features to PeerTube or change its appearance! In the community, there are a number of inspiring initiatives! Take the Mastodon Fedi.Video account, for example, which had helped to make PeerTube videomakers more visible for years! Also, specialized platforms are springing up, like MakerTube, dedicated to those who "make". Obviously, we can't list all the great initiatives we've spotted in this article, but a kudos to you all for your fantastic work. Thank you for enriching PeerTube with your colors! 🫶 If you'd like to know more about the PeerTube ecosystem, you can sign up for the PeerTube newsletter. We'll keep you up to date with the latest news about the project and community initiatives! You can also follow the PeerTube account on our social media accounts: * PeerTube on Mastodon * PeerTube on BlueSky In addition to occasional news updates, we publish weekly tips on how to use PeerTube! Finally, you'll be able to ask us anything during next AMAs (Ask Me Anything) organized on Lemmy and Reddit: * This Wednesday, May 28 at 5p.m., on the Open Source Lemmy community. * During the week of 08 June, on the Open Source sub-reddit. The precise date will be shared later. #### ...and helping us raise the money! We're giving ourselves 3 weeks to collectively fund our actions to popularize PeerTube. We sincerely believe that we can do it, because we're convinced PeerTube is a Common that's as important to you as it is to us! So if you would also like to see a world where PeerTube is used by everyone, support us by making a donation (if you can) and spreading the word about the campaign! Together, **let's take back the video platforms**! Support PeerTube

27.05.2025 00:00 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

App v1 is out! Today, our not-for-profit (Framasoft) is proud to present v1 of the PeerTube mobile application, 4 months after its first release! It's the work of a single developer, Wicklow, thanks in no small part to your feedback (and support). Let's have a look at what's new! #### Log on your PeerTube account This version allows you to connect to an existing PeerTube account (in addition to the local account, linked to your device). Even better, you can connect to multiple accounts! Then, it's up to you to choose the default account. You'll access your subscriptions, playlists, viewing history, etc. right into your application! #### Comment from your pocket Whether you want to thank the person who showed you how to make a speculoos cake, or tell them that it tastes even better with less sugar, you can comment directly from the app! And if you're not happy with your comment, just delete it. #### Manage channel subscriptions Did you like a channel highlighted in the PeerTube ecosystem newsletter? Subscribe to it from the app! Are you no longer interested in this channel specialising in speculoos-based recipes? Unsubscribe now! And of course you can manage your subscriptions directly from the app. #### Playlist management Spotted several videos while waiting for a friend? Want to combine clips from several PeerTube videos? Add them to one of your playlists before you put your phone back in your pocket! You'll be able to watch, edit, create new playlists and even delete them as you wish, all from your phone. And if you're logged on your account, you'll be able to see these changes on your computer, in the web version of PeerTube! #### But also... * Don't know what to say in the comments to let creators know you like their content? Don't worry: you can also give a thumbs up from the app (or thumbs down: we don't hide those, on PeerTube); * When you long on an existing PeerTube account, you can be extra secure with two-factor authentication; * Enjoyed a video you recently watched but can't remember its name? Find it directly in your recently watched history (that you can clear at any time); * Find the full list of improvements on the application repository; * A new icon appears for a this version: thanks to the always joyful work of David Revoy under a CC-BY 4.0 licence! #### Coming soon... We don't intend to stop there. The PeerTube mobile app is an excellent tool for opening up new audiences to a whole world of freely shared videos. Here's an idea of the features we plan to develop: * Soon (depending on your support and enthusiasm) * Play a video in the background * Next video recommendations * Improve the current situation of limiting the list of platforms in the application * Improve notifications * Broadcast to TVs * ...should we go as far as being able to upload videos and manage PeerTube channels from the app? Do you think it's worth it...? * Later (thanks to renewed support from NGI0) * Adaptation to tablets * Adaptation to TVs (Google TV... AppleTV will depend on their limitations) * Offline viewing (for downloadable content) #### Funded by Europe, thanks to you! So far, Wicklow's work on this application (and the work of the mobile design and development experts who have supported him) has been funded by the NGI0 Entrust programme, with money from the European Commission, and managed by the great people at NLnet. We can't say enough about how much this kind of programs have contributed to digital commons, giving free software communities the means to work and give everyone more digital autonomy (remember to tell your representatives, who have to decide on the future of this funding). The success of this application (and PeerTube) depends on your support! We're counting on you now to download (or update) the application and spread the word! And as always, there are many ways you can help us improve PeerTube: by sharing this news, by suggesting improvements, by reporting bugs directly in the application, by translating to our platform, by helping with the code and, if you can afford it, by donating! Thanks in advance for your support! Framasoft Download the lastest apk (Android/Advanced)

06.05.2025 00:00 👍 2 🔁 2 💬 0 📌 0

2025 PeerTube Roadmap! We (Framasoft) are proud to present the 2025 roadmap for the project! PeerTube is improving thanks to (only) two developers, the financial support of donors, the support of the NLnet foundation, and external contributions, whether in the form of code, design (hi La Coopérative des Internets), or user feedback from hundreds of people! Thanks to all of you! #### Already done at the beginning of the year Before we list future improvements to PeerTube, we can already tell you what we've done at the beginning of the year. Broadly speaking (since you can get the detailed version of what's new in version 7.1 here), you'll find the redesign of the "About" page, your PeerTube content as podcasts and improved playback comfort thanks to the update of the p2p-media-loader, the library that allows PeerTube to use P2P in the video player! As for the released late 2024 app (available on F-droid, the Play Store and the App Store), it allows you to watch videos (pretty handy for a video-viewing app, isn't it?), have a local account so you can add videos to a "to watch later" list, explore platforms, channels and so on, all while avoiding the _dark patterns_ of applications developed by the GAFAMs (like _doom scrolling_ , ubiquitous notifications, etc.). Version 0.6.0 (released end of January) now allows you to see comments under videos! #### What's coming this year ##### Channel transfer This year will see the arrival of a much requested feature: **the ability to transfer ownership of a channel to another account**! Currently, a channel is linked to the PeerTube account that created it. It will soon be possible for the account associated with the channel (or the admin of the instance) to transfer the ownership of this channel and propagate this change throughout the federation (as is already the case when changing the ownership of a video). This feature goes hand in hand with the development of another much-requested feature: **shared** administration of a channel (see... below 👀). ##### Instance customisation For many instance administrators, it is important to be able to customise their platform as they see fit (in their own image, in the image of the institution they represent, etc.). That's why we're working on making it easier to make changes such as the general colours of the interface, the ability to add a logo, customise the video player, allow or disallow the integration of videos according to an allowlist/blocklist, and much more... This extensive customisation of the interface will be accessible to admins directly from the PeerTube web interface. ##### Set-up wizard PeerTube is designed for a wide range of audiences: institutions, non-profits, media, companies, etc. In order to simplify the configuration of a platform, we are going to develop a graphical configuration wizard that will allow, after the installation of PeerTube, to apply and display several recommended configuration rules according to the desired profile of the platform (with the installation of plugins depending on the use case: adding chat if lives are authorised, LDAP/OpenID, etc.). ##### Multi-user channel management Once the work on transferring channel ownership is complete, we'll finally be able to offer the **multi-user channel management**! To the public, the channel will belong to a **main** account, but can be managed by several other users in the same instance. These co-manager accounts will have the same rights (upload videos, create and manage playlists, customise the channel, etc.) but will not be able to: * delete the channel; * transfer it; * manage the list of co-managers These changes will be accompanied by a number of design and database changes, which is a lot of work! #### But also... This year will also see an improved warning system for sensitive content and "quality of life" features for the management and moderation of instances, allowing institutions, associations, media, administrations, etc. to use PeerTube more serenely. This will be done via shared lists of instances or accounts to be banned and also via auto-tags preventing video publication that contain specific keywords. We're also planning to add batch action capabilities on videos, so you can update the licence of multiple videos in a single action, for example. #### What the year holds for the mobile application The mobile application is an excellent way to facilitate the adoption of PeerTube by a wide audience. We now want to expand the audience to also include tablet and TV users. We'll also allow you to connect to your PeerTube account, giving you access to all your subscriptions, likes, comments, history, notifications, settings and playlists. By the end of the year, you'll be able to play your videos in the background, stream them from your phone to your "smart" TV (initially Android; Apple TVs will take a bit more work) and receive notifications. The video player will also be improved. For content creators, it will be possible to upload and manage your videos, start a live broadcast and manage your channels **directly from the application**! #### PeerTube moves forward thanks to you! It's thanks to the trust you've placed in us over the years, your financial (and/or moral) support, the help of la Coopérative des Internets and the funding of the NLnet Foundation that we can offer you this roadmap. We hope you like it enough to continue to help us!

10.04.2025 00:00 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Design, mobile development, documentation: let's share resources! In the last few months, we released the v7 of PeerTube (7.1 is also out!) and our official mobile app (with a major update incoming). Both those projets benefited from external expertise (in design and mobile development ). Plus, both implied updating or even creating user documentation to facilitate adoption. So here are the links to share those resources that show how the ~~cuttlefish~~ seaweed sausage is made! #### Funding expertise is hard, and worth every cent FOSS projects are underfunded, they seldom have the means to hire such talents, even though they make a world of difference. We have been fortunate enough to get funding from the NGI0 Entrust program (thanks to great people at NLnet) to co-finance such expertise. We have worked with La coopérative des Internets (designers), and Zenika (development expertise), who happily agree to share their reports as commons (please forgive the typos: they've been translated from French) #### Sharing design and development reports Click on the line to get: * The UX / UI design report that inspired the v7 makeover * The UX / UI design work to create the PeerTube mobile app * The mobile developments report explaining strategies and tips for developing the mobile app Obviously, those reports are deeply focused on PeerTube and its specificities. The choices, lessons, tips and the expertise shared here should not be applied as is on any other FOSS project. That being said, the FOSS community know how sharing experience and expertise is always a win-win strategy. We sincerely hope that bringing this work in the Commons will inspire and help other projects. #### People who "read the manual": we care about you! PeerTube v7 came with a complete design remodel. Meaning that all the screenshots in our documentation became obsolete... And that we had to update changes in menus, paths, etc. * The updated PeerTube documentation is here. * The mobile app also needed its own user documentation, so it's right here! #### Help us share and care about PeerTube! PeerTube is maintained by Framasoft (hi! That's us!), a small French not-for-profit advocating for digital emancipation and commons. We are funded though grants and grassroots donations, have only 2 devs on PeerTube, no marketing department... but we have you! You can help us and support PeerTube by: * sharing this news, the joinpeertube website and our socials * subscribing to our newsletter, our mastodon account (or even Bluesky, Insta, etc.) * suggesting an improvement on our feedback tool * making a donation to Framasoft. Your help matters! Framasoft

20.03.2025 00:00 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

PeerTube v7.1 is out! We're excited to release version 7.1 of PeerTube, which continues to evolve graphically, but also to simplify your discoverability! Let's take a closer look. #### Redesign of ‘About’ pages Thanks to the work of La Coopérative des Internets, the "About" pages of the platforms have been redesigned to make them even clearer and easier to access, with information such as a description of the platform, the terms of use, some key figures, the main rules in clear sentences, etc. We've had a lot of positive feedback and hope you like it too! Before redesign After redesign #### Better platform identification The concept of platform federation is not always easy to explain, so why not take it one step at a time? That's what this new video component does by highlighting the address of the platform where the video is hosted. Clicking on it gives you an explanation of where the video comes from and you can get more information, such as seeing all the videos hosted on the remote platform. #### Your PeerTube content as a podcast Podcasts are a very popular way of consuming content, so it's important to make them easy to distribute. PeerTube was already compatible with Podcast 2.0, which brings new features (transcription, chaptering, etc.) to the world of podcasts. Version 7.1 improves support for Podcast 2.0, allowing users to subscribe to channels and play the video audio stream (if available) using classic podcast applications (AntennaPod, Podverse, etc.). In addition, this new version also makes the podcast feed compatible with Apple Podcast, allowing content creators who have correctly added a banner, avatar and description to their channel to submit their podcast feed to Apple. #### Revised views The new view protocol, which increases the number of simultaneous viewers by reducing the number of messages sent to the federation, is now enabled by default. We talked about this in the stress test we ran on PeerTube in December 2023 (it's a bit technical). #### Verification on Mastodon Mastodon's micro-blogging software allows you to link your accounts to certify them. This allows you to say on your profiles ‘This account is also mine! It's now possible to do this for channels and PeerTube platforms! To do this, add the link `<a href="https://my-mastodon-instance/@profile" rel="me">Follow me on Mastodon!</a>` (replace `https://my-mastodon-instance/@profile` with your actual Mastodon profile link) to the description section of your channel and/or profile. Administrators can do the same from their homepage settings. #### Playback stability We worked hard to update p2p-media-loader, the library that allows PeerTube to run P2P in the video player, to improve the stability of the player, especially for live streams configured in 'low latency' mode! It's certainly less visible work, but it's something we're proud of because it really improves the user experience. Many thanks to the developers of this library who have done a great job! #### And much, much more! As always, we're only highlighting some of the improvements to the software, but you can find the full list of changes made by the community in the changelog! To help us continue to improve PeerTube, you can share this information, suggest improvements and, if you can afford it, make a donation to Framasoft, the non-for-profit organisation behind PeerTube. Thanks a lot for your support! Support Framasoft

18.03.2025 00:00 👍 1 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0

PeerTube v7: offer a complete makeover to your video platform! With its brand new design, PeerTube's new interface isn't just prettier (although it is). It is also simpler, easier to use and understand and more accessible. Welcome to a new era of this software that empowers creators to get, control and connect their own video platforms. #### Let's reflect the growth of the PeerTube Ecosystem Seven year ago, PeerTube was mainly a tool that tech-savvy FOSS enthusiasts were happy to toy with. Then it became popular among content creators that wanted a self-hosted mirror of their YouTube/Twitch channels; and among communities who wanted to create and regulate their safe space (deaf people, queer people, etc.) Nowadays, **PeerTube is experiencing increasing success** among content creators who publish original content (or exclusive content for their community), alternative media, and institutions: colleges, ministries of education, national television and radio archives, etc. > Public structures often need to share video content without attention-grabbing mechanisms or data exploitation. Find out more about the history and values of PeerTube in this interview with the Association for Progressive Communication. To us, this is a new step in the evolution of PeerTube's audiences. That is why this year, we've asked La Coopérative des Internets to lead a thorough UX research (complete with interviews, tests, etc.) and help us start a top to bottom redesign of the interface. Our goal was to improve on PeerTube so it would better fit the need of those new audiences. We were clear that everything was on the table : colors, vocabulary, layout... Well, **we are proud torelease this v7 of PeerTube**, that lays the ground to a complete remodeling of the interface. Check the source code Support Framasoft #### First look: themes, new colors and vocabulary PeerTube design, color schemes, vocabulary, etc. has been constructed over seven years, as we went along, learning, getting help from the community. This new design was an opportunity to **take a step back an get some intentions behind the interface**. The new Light/beige default theme is calmer, easier on the eye than the original Black & orange one. We also added a Dark/brown theme into the core for the dark mode aficionados. Both aims to **facilitate video browsing**. Creating those new themes was an opportunity to **clean up and simplify how the interface is coded** (specifically: clean up the CSS, with a focus on the variables), while limiting breakages with preexisting customized themes. It is now really **easier to create new themes for PeerTube** , and we hope you'll share your creations! We also updated the PeerTube lingo. **There is a reason we are now using the word "platform(s)"** to talk about all the servers where PeerTube has been installed. Yes, calling them "instance(s)" has been the norm in the tech savvy-world of activity-pub enthusiasts. But, to those not privileged enough to know about the fediverse and its protocol, the word platform is self-explanatory, and facilitates inclusion. PeerTube Website Support Framasoft #### Enjoying simpler and relevant layouts There are lots of informations to display on any PeerTube page. The layouts and menus grew organically during seven years of development... and needed some pruning! **We remodeled those menus and pages** to bring forward relevant informations, and present a more intuitive way to find out what you are looking for. For exemple, content creators used to access their channels and uploaded video in their library (where any PeerTube user can get to their playlists, history, etc. of the videos they watched). **Now in PeerTube v7, there is a new section called "video space"** specific for video uploaders' needs. In the same way, "admin" pages **for PeerTube platforms administrators** have now been separated int**o an Overview page** (to get more info about users, hosted videos, etc.), **a Moderation one** (to manage abuses, blocking, registrations), **and a Settings one** (to access configurations, runners, etc.) The several pages that presented the videos on a PeerTube platform (Recently added, Local videos, Trending) have been merged into **a "Browse videos" page**, that includes quick filters to display the same selections of content in a more forward way. The same intent has driven the **new layout of the "Discover videos" page** we hope it will empower curious users. Obviously, the left bar and header menus have been reorganized to reflect those changes and make navigation even more intuitive. You can now **access your account settings and notifications from the header menu** , as it is customary on other websites. PeerTube Search Engine Support Framasoft #### Displaying relevant information to show video diversity A big feedback from new users was that the old interface was confusing, that is was hard for a user to know where they were, and where the videos came from. That is why, in PeerTube v7, we have added **more ways for platforms owners to customize and identify their platforms** : easily add a banner (used on pages, mobile app exploration, and our search engine SepiaSearch) and a platform icon (used by the mobile application) More, the name and description of their platform is now displayed to non-registered users in the left hand menu. We have also changed **how video miniatures appear in all pages that lists videos**. Channel avatar are always displayed so it's easier to identify creators, titles are highlighted, the date and viewcount of the video are present but toned down. Those changes make pages that lists videos easier to read, and facilitate identifying the video you want to watch. PeerTube Mobile App Support Framasoft #### Accessibility on the forefront The redesign was also the opportunity to **prioritize the interface accessibility** (for impaired people). In 2023, we prepared the code and worked on what we knew... so the planned 2024 full accessibility audit (thanks to the NGI Entrust consortium) would bring as much new and detailed improvements as possible. Thanks to the audit, **we have improved on so many issues** : we fixed color contrats and themes, progress bar, several components, and various screen reader issues. We added missing labels on interactive elements, "skip menu" links, underlining to links. We also improved keyboard navigation, and re-implemented components of a non-accessible dependency. We sincerely think that **PeerTube have caught up with accessibility issues and should be up to standards**... but we know, now, that there is always room for improvement, and for **learning directly from those who are concerned**. Follow PeerTube on Mastodon Support Framasoft #### Editing captions, promoting videos and more... With the brand new remote transcoding tool we introduced last year, getting a transcription or subtitles for your video is easier than ever. But the caption editing tool was... hum... let's say "barebone". We are now introducing **a new modal that makes editing captions really convenient**. We welcomed and integrated upstream **a community contribution on SEO** (search engine optimization), to help promote PeerTube-hosted-content on search engines. A platform avatar now appears in the opengraph tags, empty accounts and channels are hidden from the sitemap, while additional video tags are now present there. Last, **PeerTube has been translated into Slovak**. We really want to take time to **thank the community that contributes to translations of PeerTube,** we would never have thought that our software would one day be available in more than 38 languages. > Huge thanks to all of you, wonderful people, who took time and care to contribute on our translation tool: you are amazing. Illustration: David Revoy - Licence : CC-By 4.0 Subscribe to PeerTube news Support Framasoft #### There is more to come... We still have **more work planned from this whole interface remodel**. We hope to deliver it in the firsts months of 2025. First, we are currently finishing the translation of **the UX research report** from La Coopérative des Internets and **we will publish it** in the hope that it will help the whole fediverse community. We will also wait a bit for PeerTube administrators to update their platforms, and then **update the PeerTube documentation** with new screenshots, and the new menus pathways. Our next interface changes will focus on **streamlining the channels & videos management experience** for content creators (where several tools and menus added to the pile over the years). We also plan on **fine-tuning the categorization of NSFW videos**. Illustration: David Revoy - Licence : CC-By 4.0 We obviously have many more items to **our 2025 roadmap, but are still trying to secure funds to realize them** : we'll keep you informed as soon as we know more! About funds, we really want to **thank theNGI0 Entrust program** for their grant that funded most of the work on this new version (and on the PeerTube mobile app we released last week). **TheNLnet team has been a great partner** on the management of this grant, and **the accessibility audit from the consortium** has really made a huge difference. Share ideas & Feedback on PeerTube Support Framasoft

17.12.2024 00:00 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

PeerTube mobile app: discover videos while caring for your attention Today, at Framasoft (bonjour!), we publish the very first version of the PeerTube Mobile app for android and iOS. A lot of care went into its conception, to help a wider audience watch videos and discover platforms, while not getting their attention (and data) exploited. #### Another step into PeerTube growth Even though we have been developing and maintaining the PeerTube software for 7 years, we, at Framasoft, are far from being an IT company. First because **we are a not-for-profit** (funded through donations, you can support us here), and then because **our goal is, actually, to help others educate themselves on digital issues, surveillance capitalism** , etc. and to give them tools that helps them get digitally emancipated. **Developing PeerTube has been, to us, an (happy) accident**. We wanted to show that with one paid developer (for the first six years, then two), very little means (~ €650,000 over 7 years) and lots of community contributions, we can create a radical alternative to YouTube and Twitch. It also took a lot of patience. From the get go, **we knew we needed to aim for a slow but steady pace of growth** for the software, the network of video platforms it federates, the whole ecosystem and the audiences it reached. Videos and live-streams are increasingly watched on mobile devices. We knew **the next step to widen the audience of the PeerTube network of platforms was to develop a mobile client**. Last year, we decided to hire Wicklow (who completed his last internship, before graduating, here with us), to train him on mobile technologies, develop a mobile app, while continuing to get familiar with PeerTube's core code. #### Getting funded and getting help This was (and still is) a big decision: a new hire needs to be funded (our huge thanks to NLnet and the NGI0 Entrust program!), and we want to stay a small structure, so we don't have lots of room in our team. In hindsight, though, we believe it was the right one. We surrounded ourselves with Zenika, to get help on architecture and experience on mobile strategy. We soon realized that peer-to-peer video sharing wouldn't be a wise strategy on mobile devices. After benchmarking different technologies, Wicklow picked Flutter for the development. La Coopérative des Internets (French design workers-owed-company), helped us pinpoint the relevant user experience and design an app fit for videos on the fediverse. **We decided, for the first release, to limit the scope of the app to the "spectator use-case"**: browsing and watching videos. We plan to share all their reports soon (early 2025), as soon as we put in the final touches. We hope that sharing this expertise and experience will help other FLOSS initiatives in their endeavor. In the meanwhile, the PeerTube Mobile app is (as always with us) Free-libre and open-source, and you can find the source code here on our repository. #### Fediverse complexities made simple This preparatory work helped us realize that a mobile client was **an amazing opportunity to simplify the PeerTube experience**. PeerTube is not a video platform: it's a network of video platforms, each with their own rules, means and focus, that can choose to federate with others (or not). It is, by design, more complex than a centralized platform. One of the main feedback we got from video enthusiasts was > "I don't know where to get an account. I don't know where to search & find videos" (even though we maintain SepiaSearch). ##### Local account Within a mobile client, we can create some kind of local account, directly on your device, so you get your watch-list, playlists, faves, etc. **It saves you the hassle of finding a platform where you'd need to create an account** if you just want to enjoy video content. ##### Explore platforms We can also include a search engine and an interface to explore the federation of PeerTube platforms and find videos suited to your interest. Not everyone knows SepiaSearch (and other fediverse search engines) exists: **you get it from the get go, in your pocket**. ##### Highlighting platforms' diversity Finally, we can present content in a way that highlights the platforms, and show you where the videos/channels you watch are hosted. Differentiating platforms is **a practical, visual way of introducing the concept of federation** to a wider audience. #### Designing out dark patterns Humility check: a small French nonprofit will never have Google's workforce nor Amazon's money (and vice versa). But **we have an edge: we are not constrained by surveillance capitalism rules** , and its captology models. > Neither PeerTube nor the mobile app have any interest into grabbing your attention, forcefeeding you ads and milking behavioural and personal data from you. That is how **we freed the design from toxic design patterns such as doom scrolling, curated feeds, needy notifications and so on**. It might sound obvious, but it takes real effort to concieve an interface cleaned from what has unfortunately became the new normal. Even more if you need to keep it familiar enough so it says easy to use. #### A very first build, limited by (play & i) stores We knew beforehand that **fitting into Google's PlayStore and Apple AppStore would be a challenge**. They clearly weren't ready to host a client for (not-a-platform but) a network of autonomous video-sharing platforms, published by a small French nonprofit, funded through its independent donation website. We knew about the issues encountered by Thorium (another PeerTube mobile client). We got help and advices from Gabe, who develops the streaming tool Owncast (may your keyboard always repel crumbs and click smoothly), and encountered many obstacles... We knew about all that but, oh my Tux, it was a wild ride. After jumping though hoops, here we are, you can download the PeerTube mobile app here: Download the lastest apk (Android/Advanced) #### (un-)Limiting the federation To get through Apple's (and, in a lesser way, Google's) validation processes, we had to present the mobile app with a curated "allowlist" of PeerTube platforms that meet their standards. Here is the state of those limitations right now: * **Apple AppStore** : limited to a very strict allowlist. Truth be told, a week before release, we are still unsure of being validated. Once we manage it, we'll see how to widen the list & let users add platforms they want * **Google Play Store** : limited allowlist, but users can already add the platforms they want. We plan to widen the allowlist next * **F-Droid** and direct download apk: all PeerTube platforms we have indexed on SepiaSearch are available. If an instance isn't declared to our index or is moderated, you can add it manually. We cannot stress enough how **their stores are not ready for independent solidarity-oriented networks**. For exemple, a small "support us" donation link in our website footer or even on one of the allowed platforms triggered a "nope" from Apple. And that's consistent: as seen in their fight with Epic (owners of Fortnite) Apple take their share in every in-app purchases. They have an economic interest to keep your expenses enclosed in their ecosystem. Please, please: consider getting your freedom back ;). #### Coming soon, in the PeerTube App Fitting into Apple's (and Google's) very small boxes took time and energy, more than what we expected. We decided to release a first (incomplete) version of the app in December anyway, and gradually improve on it. Here are the **features we plan to develop and share for the PeerTube app** : * Soon (early 2025) * Finalize and publish design and mobile strategy reports * Publish documentation * Play video in background * Log in to one's account, gets subscriptions, comment videos * next video recommandation * improve on the limited platforms list situation * Then (mid 2025 (if funded)) * adapt to tablets * adapt to TVs (AndroidTV... AppleTV will depend on their limitations) * Watch offline (for downloadable content) Right now, we are still waiting to secure funding for those mid-2024 features (for which we have requested a NLnet grant). Depending on the app success and usage, **we would love to add the content creator usecase to the app**. But that's a big one: upload and publish a video, manage one's content, create a livestream, etc. We are still wondering **where, when and how to get funds for this undertaking**. #### Care, Share and Contribute! **This is the part where we need you**. We hope you will **enjoy this app, download and use it, and share it** with your friends. This is a new gateway to promote PeerTube content, get audience to fabulous content creators, entice them to share more and boost that virtious loop. This app is also **a way of showcasing how media could be presented** , when they are made with care for your agency and attention. More than ever: **sharing is caring**. You can also **contribute by reporting bugs** (within the app), helping on the code (here is the git repository), and translating the interface. This is an important one: right now, the App is only available in English and French. **Your language contributions are welcomed here on our translation platform**. Obviously, we plan to maintain the app, add translations, implement bugfixes and security updates when needed: but this has a cost. **We need to secure Framasoft's 2025 budget** to make Wicklow's position permanent in our team (which is a priority to us). **Our donation campaign is active right now** , you can add your support here (and thanks!). * * * You can help us continue to improve PeerTube by sharing this information, suggesting improvements and, if you can afford it, making a donation to Framasoft, the association that develops PeerTube. Thanks in advance for your support! Framasoft Download the lastest apk (Android/Advanced)

09.12.2024 00:00 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

PeerTube v6.3 released! This is the last minor release before v7, but it's packed with interesting new features! Let's have a look :) #### Separate audio and video streams for more flexibility Separating the audio and video streams not only reduces the size of the files on the server, as it is no longer necessary to duplicate the audio file for each video resolution, but also allows you to stream only the audio of a video via an _Audio only_ option in the player! This is a very useful feature for streaming music that can display an album cover, or for using less bandwidth when listening to a conference where no video is required. This new feature also allows PeerTube to ingest an audio only live stream. This means that you can stream live music on PeerTube, which will only display an _Audio_ player. Finally, we've taken the opportunity to simplify the video download modal, which now displays the essential information for each available resolution, with the option to include or exclude audio in the file being downloaded. The advanced options are still available by selecting _Video File_ next to the _Download_ modal title. #### Browse subtitles in the transcription widget In addition to the classic subtitles integrated into the video player, it is now possible to have a subtitle panel on the right side of the video. This panel allows you to: * Follow subtitles in real time * Return to a section of the video by clicking on a sentence * Search for a sentence or word to return to a specific point in the video #### Set up Youtube-dl for smoother imports Youtube-dl is an essential tool for importing videos and related information from other video platforms (such as PeerTube, Youtube, Vimeo and many others). This new version of PeerTube adds the ability for administrators to set up multiple proxies dedicated to youtube-dl, which PeerTube will randomly select to bypass certain restrictions. It is also now possible to use another version of youtube-dl, a binary that contains additional dependencies that enable features such as impersonation (i.e. pretending to be a real browser). #### And much more As with every release, a number of user experience and interface improvements have been made: * Better resolution label for custom video aspect: _1920x816_ videos are now displayed as _1080p_ instead of _816p_ * Better visibility of chapter markers in the player's progress bar: they are now displayed as small dots in the progress bar * Smoother resume of live playback: only the video player is reloaded * Added the ability to easily copy server error logs via a dedicated button * Instance admins can now change the maximum number of frames per second for videos (limited to 60 by default) You can find all the bug fixes, improvements and other changes in the changelog! Finally, we're still preparing the mobile application and we'll have some good news to announce at the end of the year! * * * You can help us continue to improve PeerTube by sharing this information, suggesting improvements and, if you can afford it, making a donation to Framasoft, the association that develops PeerTube. Thanks in advance for your support! Framasoft

18.09.2024 00:00 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

PeerTube 6.2 is out! This new version is all about making your life easier. Easier moderation, easier subtitle creation and easier video highlighting. Let's take a look! #### Comments moderation Moderation is always the least exciting part and can also be the most time-consuming. To help you manage this, PeerTube v6.2 not only adds a new page listing all the comments made on your videos, which you can now approve manually, but also the ability to create word lists that will automatically put comments containing them in the moderation queue! For example, if you want to prevent negative comments from appearing directly on your videos, you can create a word list: This means that comments containing them will automatically be put on pending review for approval: You can then approve or reject them on the page where the comments are listed: This feature is also available for administrators! They can easily display videos uploaded to their instance that contain specific keywords. This can be useful for monitoring content that doesn't comply with your terms of service, or for monitoring a sporadic phenomenon that is particularly viral. The idea for this feature came from the study conducted by the German ISD. Our goal is to improve this in the future, when we envision users being able to subscribe to and share lists of words to make moderation of accounts and instances easier! #### Automatic transcription In version 5.2 of PeerTube, we introduced the concept of _PeerTube runner_, a small program that allows PeerTube to perform heavy tasks (such as video encoding) remotely. France Université Numérique, a public interest group running a MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) platform with a lot of videos, was interested in the flexible architecture of the PeerTube runner for their own use. In order to improve the accessibility of videos and at the same time contribute to the PeerTube ecosystem, France Université Numérique and the NLnet Foundation, through the NGI Zero Entrust fund, funded the development of automatic video transcription within PeerTube and the _PeerTube runners_. This transcription makes it possible to automatically create subtitles for videos using an artificial intelligence tool, Whisper, which provides very good results. The artificial intelligence engine and its model can be customised in the configuration. This new feature can be enabled by PeerTube admins to automatically generate subtitles for newly published videos. The creation of subtitles can also be triggered on demand, allowing administrators to create subtitles for videos published before PeerTube 6.2. This automatic subtitling can also be done by _PeerTube runners_ , as it requires a lot of computing power. France Université Numérique is already planning to use this method to subtitle all its content, which represents 3,500 hours of video. Many thanks to NLnet (whose funding, unfortunately, is in danger of drying up) and France Université Numérique for their help and contribution! #### And more… As well as making your moderation life easier, PeerTube offers a new way of creating a thumbnail preview for your videos (in addition to the ability to select it from your device): directly from an image in your video! Play the video down to the image that perfectly illustrates the content and display it. Thanks to Kent Anderson for this external contribution! To make sure you don't miss a live broadcasts, they are now highlighted on the _Recently Added_ , _Trending_ , _Account videos_ and _Channel videos_ pages. And as with every new version, you can find all the bug fixes, improvements and other changes in the changelog! * * * You want to help us improve PeerTube? You can do so by sharing this information, by suggesting improvements and, if you can afford it, by donating to Framasoft, the non-profit that develops PeerTube. Thanks in advance for your support! Framasoft

16.07.2024 00:00 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

PeerTube 6.1 is out! We're pleased to announce the 6.1 release of PeerTube 🙂 In addition to the integration of account import/export and other great features that we'll detail in this blog post, this version fixes 2 important security vulnerabilities concerning the ActivityPub federation (detailed at the end of the article). We therefore recommend that you update your instances as soon as possible! #### Account import/export It is now possible to export all your account data (videos, channels, preferences, etc.) to a downloadable archive. This archive can be used as a backup tool or re-imported to another PeerTube instance. To be clear, this is **not** (yet) an account migration! Data (such as channels or videos) is **duplicated** and **not moved** from your old PeerTube account to your new instance. You can find the list of data that will or won't be exported in our documentation! This feature simplifies the process of creating an account on the "right" PeerTube instance, as it's now much easier to switch! #### Original video file preserved Until now, when you uploaded a video to PeerTube, it was transcoded into multiple formats and the original file was deleted. From v6.1, this version is preserved and can be downloaded from your library, as well as being present in the export archive! In practical terms, this means that you can have **an archive of your videos on a PeerTube instance** (rather than taking up space on both your personal hard drive **and** a lower quality on the PeerTube instance). #### Banner and avatar for instances To help you better customize your instance, you can now add a banner that will be visible in the instance search on JoinPeerTube and on your PeerTube instance on the _About_ page, login page, registration page, and also on the homepage using the special `<peertube-instance-banner>` tag! As for the avatar, it will be visible on the future mobile application and can also be used on the homepage of your instance! #### Shorter duration to count a view To get closer to the behaviour of other centralised video platforms (Vimeo, Instagram, TikTok, Mux...), we've decided to count a _View_ after **10 seconds** (instead of 30 seconds). But that's not the only thing that's changing: a view is no longer based on the user's IP address, but on a unique identifier generated by the web browser. This ensures, for example, that a video watched by 20 people in a university does not count as just one (because the computers tend to have the same IP address). By the way, uploaders can access to detailed statistics on views and viewers. And PeerTube v6.1 now shows the number of viewers by _region_ in addition to _country_. #### More accessible subtitles Access to subtitles has been made easier by adding an icon directly in the video player. Clicking on the **CC** button (7 in the screenshot) will display the subtitles in the last used language (or the first available in the list). You can also select a different language from the player settings menu (8 in the screenshot). #### ...and there's always more! As always, there are many other improvements, bug fixes and changes. The full list can be found in the changelog, but here's a small selection: * This release fixes 2 major security issues in the ActivityPub federation. The first fix prevents data associated with private videos (likes, comments, etc.) from being leaked. The other fixes incorrect access control of objects coming from the federation. More details about this second vulnerability will be provided at a later date. * Turkish joins the family of 37 languages available on PeerTube! Thank you (_merci_ , _gracias_ , _teşekkürler_) to everyone who contributed to the thousands of translated strings! * On the UX (User eXperience) side, you can now download a video directly from your library, and admins have the ability to sort users and videos by file size stored on the server disk. Do you want to help us improve PeerTube? You can **by sharing this information** , by suggesting improvements and, if you can afford it, by donating to Framasoft, the association that develops PeerTube. Thanks in advance for your support! Framasoft

29.04.2024 00:00 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

April 2024 PeerTube newsletter! Bonjour, We are Framasoft, the French non-profit developing the PeerTube software! You have been waiting for this for years, and so have we... ... **welcome to the PeerTube Ecosystem Newsletter!** _jingle_ In this newsletter, we'll share with you some news, videos, projects or anything else related to the PeerTube ecosystem that we're excited about! #### PeerTube in 2024 PeerTube is now 6 years old 🥳! The project has come a long way to become the mature software it is now. Does that mean it is finished? Not at all! Find out what we plan to do with PeerTube this year in our news from last December! Spoiler alert: get your smartphones ready! #### P2Play — An Android PeerTube application for smartphones Speaking of smartphones apps, Ivan Agosto resumed the development of P2Play! P2Play is an open-source Android application for PeerTube. You can download it from Play Store and F-Droid! By the way, did you know that we at Framasoft are also working on a mobile app? We'll let you know as soon as we're ready! #### A PeerTube Retrogaming Playlist Fedi.Video, a fediverse account that helps you discover PeerTube content, has made a playlist full of retrogaming content found in different instances of PeerTube! If you like pipes and shells, this is probably for you! #### Obsidian Urbex - Abandonned Places Videos Obsidian Urbex is a channel dedicated to urban exploration videos. If, like me, you're fascinated by abandoned places that used to be luxurious, you'll love this collection of short videos! #### "How do I find PeerTube content?" If you read about PeerTube on the Fediverse a lot, you'll see this question is getting asked a lot! We, at Framasoft, are working on improving this aspect of PeerTube but for now, did you know about Sepia Search, the search engine we built to find out PeerTube content? Check it out at https://sepiasearch.org/ #### Very quick fix Can you believe there has been only 2 hours between the reporting of an XSS injection in embed, by Syst3m0ver from aramido GmbH, and the release (v6.0.4) with the fix? If you're the administrator of a PeerTube instance, please update as soon as possible to v6.0.4! Reminder: If you find a vulnerability, please contact us! * * * If you enjoyed this first newsletter, please give it a thumbs up and click the bell… wait, no 🤔 But if you have any PeerTube related content (channel, videos, app…) that you want to highlight, feel free to share it with our mastodon's account and we may relay it in our next newsletter! Peertube also evolves thanks to your ideas, so don't hesitate to share them on our ideas board. À bientôt !

18.04.2024 00:00 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

PeerTube stress tests: resilience lies in your peers! We have many admins or uploaders wondering how many concurrent viewers a PeerTube instance can handle and how much its P2P feature can help the server to broadcast a live/video. It's the reason why, with the support of NLnet and Octopuce, we have been running a _real world_ stress tests on a regular PeerTube instance. Of course with the aim of optimizing the software, but first and foremost to be able to confidently give the number of concurrent viewers a PeerTube instance should be able to handle and understand how the P2P behaves in such conditions. We chose to simulate 1,000 viewers as it is a symbolic number, but also because it covers 99% of the streams broadcasted on Twitch in 2022. PeerTube would then be able to technically handle 99% of these use cases, which is a large number of users ;) If you would rather skip the technical stuff, you can jump directly to the conclusion. #### Setup the benchmark To get closer to real life testing, we decided to run 1,000 Chrome web browsers watching the same video, each one having a dedicated public IP to properly simulate actual real viewers. In order to run 1,000 real Chrome web browsers, we decided to create a Selenium grid and to spawn 1,000 Selenium nodes using Docker. This way, each node can have its own IPv6 public address. Luc, the amazing sysadmin at Framasoft, developed scripts to automatically generate this Selenium grid using Hetzner cloud. His work can be found on https://framagit.org/framasoft/peertube/selenium-stack. After the first conclusive tests where we reached 500 web browsers, we encountered difficulties with Hetzner cloud as they refused to increase our VPS quota to a number that would have allowed us to seamlessly run the Selenium grid with 1,000 web browsers. After spending several days trying to find alternatives, Octopuce, a French hosting company that hosts several PeerTube instances, offered us to use a powerful server to help us reach our goal of 1,000 web browsers. Shout out to them! We have made several performance improvements in PeerTube core to reach 1,000 viewers. Some of them are already available in PeerTube V6 like federation and view events optimizations. Some others will be available in the next release (V6.1): ability to customize views/playback events interval, new viewer federation protocol to send much less messages etc. Once the Selenium grid is ready and the PeerTube instance is updated to include the above performance improvements, we can spawn 1,000 web browsers to load a video on https://peertube2.cpy.re/ (our nightly updated PeerTube instance) using WebdriverIO. Each automated web browser is programmed to load the video watch page, play the video, and wait there until the test ends. #### Benchmark conditions The test PeerTube instance that has been installed following the official installation guide on Debian 12.2 with nginx, PostgreSQL and Redis on the same machine. Hardware specifications: * 4 vCore of i7-8700 CPU @ 3.20GHz * Has a hard drive (not a SSD) * 4Go of RAM * 1Gbit/s network The important PeerTube instance settings: * The chat plugin is not enabled * Logs are in warning mode to reduce logging overhead * Client logs are enabled * Metrics are enabled but HTTP request duration metrics are disabled * Viewers federation V2 is enabled (feature behind a feature flag that we plan to enable in PeerTube 6.2) * Object Storage (S3) is not enabled Benchmarked videos/lives are public, so static files are directly served by nginx. The Chrome web browser has its network speed limited using: browser.setNetworkConditions({ offline: false, download_throughput: 2000 / 8 * 1024, // 2000kbit/s, upload_throughput: 300 / 8 * 1024, // 300kbit/s latency: 500 }) Unfortunately, network conditions don't apply on WebRTC so we were unable to limit P2P uploads/downloads. These settings apply only on HTTP requests. #### Benchmark results We ran stress tests on 4 scenarios: * A live video with _Normal Latency_ setting * A live video with _High Latency_ setting * A live with _High Latency_ setting where half of the viewers had P2P disabled * A regular VOD video Live videos provide only one resolution with a bitrate of 650kbit/s, while the VOD video provides 4 resolutions, with the highest one having a bitrate of 1.2Mbit/s. Here are the results of our 4 scenarios where 1,000 viewers are connecting on the live/video within a few minutes. ##### Live with a normal latency Using the default live settings and so a latency of ~30 seconds, we can see that PeerTube CPU usage peaks as web browsers load the video (`11:08:00`) and tapers off as viewers watch the video (`11:11:00`). The main job of PeerTube at that time is to handle playback metrics and view events coming from web browsers for statistics and federation. RAM consumption and NodeJS event loop lag remain stable. Most viewers download the video using HTTP when they load the page to buffer the live segments, and progressively try to download more distant segments using P2P. It's the reason why we see an HTTP download peak of 150Mbit/s at the beginning of the graph (`11:08:00`) which gradually drops to 90Mbit/s (`11:12:00`). At this point, web browsers mainly exchange live segments using P2P at up to 370Mbit/s. Under optimal conditions, the P2P aspect of PeerTube reduces the bandwidth required to broadcast a live video by a factor of 3 or 4, which corroborates feedback received from some PeerTube admins. ##### Live with a high latency We wanted to test a live with _High latency_ setting set (~60 seconds) so web browsers have more time to download live segments. We now have a ratio of 65Mbit/s for HTTP and 370Mbit/s for P2P (`15:25:00`). A nice improvement, but we think we can improve the HTTP/P2P ratio in the future by changing some P2P engine settings. ##### Live with a high latency and half of the viewers with P2P disabled This scenario tries to mimic "real world" viewers by disabling P2P for half of them. We have a ratio of 260Mbit/s for HTTP and 190Mbit/s for P2P (`15:42:00`). The swarm of 500 P2P-enabled viewers exchange segments with the same ratio as the live with a high latency, while viewers with P2P disabled just download segments from the server. ##### VOD video It's interesting to focus on lives and analyze their P2P ratio since viewers are simultaneously watching and sharing the same segments. But we can also imagine use cases when a VOD video becomes viral: Bandwidth consumption is much higher than for a live because the video bitrate is higher, but also because the web browser buffers much more the video, especially if P2P segments are available. This is the reason why we have a peak of 2,000Mbit/s for P2P at the beginning, gradually dropping to 1,150Mbit/s (`15:10`). If we zoom on the HTTP graph: We observe that web browsers download nearby segments using HTTP to avoid playback problems, and then try to download distant segments using P2P. That's why we have a peak of 200Mbit/s for HTTP download at the beginning of the graph (`15:09:00`). After a few minutes the P2P/HTTP ratio becomes very big with 1150Mbit/s for P2P and 25Mbit/s for HTTP (`15:14:00`). It means P2P works very well on VOD videos when viewers are watching the same parts of the video. It's an expected behaviour since we have more time to exchange and buffer distant video segments using P2P. As a bonus, here is the screen of my personal web browser during the stress test where we can see that in an optimal situation and a fiber broadband connection, "regular" viewers can have a very big P2P ratio (800MB uploaded/100MB downloaded). #### Technical Overview Here is an overview of P2P ratio of the live with normal latency and the VOD video with 1,000 viewers: | HTTP peak | HTTP after 5 minutes | P2P after 5 minutes | HTTP/P2P ratio after 5 minutes ---|---|---|---|--- Live | 150 Mbit/s | 90 Mbit/s | 350 Mbit/s | 25% (P2P saves 75% of bandwidth) VOD | 200 Mbit/s | 25 Mbit/s | 1150 Mbit/s | 2% (P2P saves 98% of bandwidth) We consider these values hold in optimal conditions, since our simulated web browsers had a fast internet connection for P2P that we could not limit. But in our experience, they seem to represent what happens in real life. #### Conclusion and further work With these results we can see that a regular PeerTube website (server rental at around 20$/month) can correctly handle 1,000 concurrent viewers if the administrator follows our scalability guide. It means that PeerTube, a Free-Libre software funded by grassroots donations and grants from the NGI programs, that has been developed over 6 years by benevolent contributors and one paid developer, offers an affordable, resilient, efficient and solid alternative to tech giants' technology. It might be hard to realize but it is true: together, we made it this far. Even if handling 1,000 concurrent viewers is a nice achievement, PeerTube can still go further with extra configuration. We also have a few ideas on how to handle even more simultaneous viewers in the future: * Optimize the settings of our P2P engine for when "High latency" is set for lives * Add PeerTube configuration to specify external P2P trackers more suited to handle more peers * Distribute the work to handle _views_ events on multiple machines * Lazy load some components in the client (like the comments section) to avoid making HTTP requests if the components are not in the web browser viewport Thanks for reading and don't hesitate to share your experiences with PeerTube and/or limits you encountered, we'd be happy to work on them. Also, don't forget to support our work if you can, and share the good news! Support Framasoft

21.12.2023 00:00 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Mobile App, redesign, new dev, promotion... let’s build a bright future for PeerTube! Developing an ethical and emancipating alternative to YouTube, Twitch or Vimeo without Surveillance Capitalism’s means is a huge undertaking. Especially for a small French not-for-profit that already manages several projects to promote digital commons. **🦆 VS 😈: Let's take back some ground from the tech giants!** _Thanks toyour donations to our not-for-profit, Framasoft is taking action to advance the ethical, user-friendly web. Find a summary of our progress in 2023 on our Support Framasoft page._ ➡️ Read the series of articles from this campaign (Nov. - Dec. 2023) We (Bonjour! We are Framasoft!) have been developing PeerTube for six years. Two weeks after releasing the sixth version of the software, let’s take a step back on six years of work, examine the huge opportunity that the present times hold for PeerTube, and look towards what we plan to do next year to prepare for its success... if you give us the means to get there! Click to support Framasoft and push back against the Yetube – Illustration CC-By David Revoy #### Not a rival, just an alternative The realization that led us to develop PeerTube is that no one can rival YouTube or Twitch. You would need Google’s money, Amazon servers’ farms... Above all, **you would need the greed to exploit millions of creators** and videomakers, groom them into formatting their content to your needs, and feed them the crumbs of **the wealth you gain by farming their audience into data livestock**. Monopolistic centralized video platforms can only be sustained by surveillance capitalism. We wanted small groups such as institutions, educators, communities, artists, citizens, etc. to be able to afford to emancipate themselves from Big Tech’s platforms, without getting lost in the world wide web. We needed to develop a tool to democratize videohosting, so it had to be designed with radically different values in mind. **And that is what we did. We build PeerTube to empower people, not databases or shareholders.** Today, PeerTube is: * a **Free-Libre software** (transparency, protection against monopoly) * you can host **on your server** (self-hosting, autonomy, empowerment) * to create your video and livestream platform, **with your own rules** (community building, self-management) * that lets you **federate** (or not!) to other PeerTube platforms through ActivityPub protocol (federation, network, outreach) * that adds (optional) **peer-to-peer streaming** to classic streaming so it can withstand affluence (resilience, sharing, decentralization) * where more powerful servers can help less fortunate ones with **redundancy** (solidarity, resilience) * that can **store videos externally** with S3 storage (adaptability, cost-efficiency) * that can **deport CPU-hungry tasks** such as video or live transcoding to a dedicated server (efficiency, resilience, sustainability) So no: PeerTube is not, and will not be a rival to YouTube or Twitch. **PeerTube is powered by other values that those coded into Google’s and Amazon’s ecosystems**. PeerTube is an alternative, and that’s exactly why this is so exciting. Click to support Sepia – illustration David Revoy – licence: CC-By 4.0 #### PeerTube is a software: 6 years of developments In the last six years, with more than 275 000 lines of code, we got: * From a POC to a fully operative federated video platform with p2p broadcasting, complete with subtitles, redundancy, video import, search tools and localization (PeerTube v1, oct. 2018) * Notifications, playlists, a plugin system, moderation tools, federation tools, a better video player, a presentation website and an instances index (PeerTube v2, nov. 2019) * Federated research tool (and a search engine https://sepiasearch.org), more moderation tools, lots of code improvement, UX revamping, and last but not least: p2p livestream (PeerTube v3, Jan. 2021) * Improved transcoding, channels and instances homepage customization, improved search, an even better video player, filtering videos on pages, advanced administration and moderation tools, new video management tool, and a big code cleaning session (PeerTube v4, Dec. 2021) * A video editing tool, improved video statistics and metrics display, replay feature for permanent livestreams, latency settings for lives, an improved video player (for mobile displays), a more powerful plugin system, more customization options, more video filtering options, a new and user friendly feedback tool and a renewed presentation website (PeerTube v5, Dec. 2022) * Account request moderation, « back to live » button, remote transcoding (to deport CPU hungry task on a dedicated server). storyboard (previews in the progress bar), video chapters, improved accessibility, upload a new version of a video, and password-protected videos. (PeerTube v6, Nov. 2023) And that is just **when you only consider the software development part of PeerTube**. In order to support and promote this software, we had to build a whole ecosystem. #### PeerTube is also an ecosystem PeerTube, nowadays, is **also a coding community**. On the project forge (online space to contribute on developments), we’ve had more than 400 contributors, 4,300 issues (features and support requests) closed over 6 years and 500 still open, and 12,400 contributions integrated upstream. As not anyone can familiarize themselves with more than 275 000 lines of code, an easy way to **contribute to PeerTube is by developing plugins** : there are hundreds of them! Among them, there are the live chat (to get a chat during livestreams), plugins to authenticate against external authentication platforms, annotations to add in the video player, a transcription plugin to automatically create subtitles for your videos or plugins to add monetization to PeerTube videos. Contributors also helped by **translating PeerTube** into more than 36 languages (join them here), by providing answers on our forum, by updating our official documentation, or by sharing ideas on our Let’s Improve PeerTube feedback tool. There are now more than a thousand PeerTube platforms all over the world (that we know of ^^), hosting almost a million videos. We created an instances index that feeds content to SepiaSearch, our **search engine for PeerTube** videos, channels and playlists. We moderate it according to our terms and conditions, but anyone is free to use the code we develop to create their own index and search engine. Fortunately, others are working towards **promoting and moderating PeerTube content** , by creating directories FR], recommendations threads, moderation tools, [Firefox extensions, and all kinds of amazing content. We **promote PeerTube** with an official website Joinpeertube.org, where the latest news are shared on the blog and the newsletter. There is also a mastodon account (and an -almost abandoned- account on Twitter). We also spend lots of hours talking to medias, researchers, innovators, communities, contributors, etc. #### Fighting dragons with toothpicks So, how can we **estimate the cost of those 6 years of work**? Should we just consider development time and the management of the development community (issues, code review, support)? Should we also count the work done on blogposts, illustrations and promotion material, establishing roadmaps, working with designers, exchanging experience with researchers, videomakers, and amazing projects, some of which we supported with funds? What about the time for moderating our search engine or cleaning after spammers on our feedback tool? Even though we cannot pinpoint the exact budget Framasoft spent on PeerTube since 2017, **our conservative estimate would be around 500 000 €**. Over six years. As we got two grants from the European commission (through the NGI0 Search & Discovery and Entrust programs) totaling 132 000 €, it means that 73,6 % of PeerTube budget came from donations. Now **let’s overestimate the cost of PeerTube to 600 000 €** over 6 years, to make sure we covered every expense. **Even then, PeerTube total cost would represent 22 millionth (0.0022 %) of YouTube’s ad revenues last year. Yes, we did the math.** _(source – 29.243 B USD // 632,853 USD)_ We are – figuratively – fighting dragons with toothpicks. That’s why we think that PeerTube cannot and will not rival YouTube nor Twitch (and even less TikTok that presents a whole other experience). But, as an alternative, PeerTube is already successful. Click to support Sepia against the Videoraptor – illustration David Revoy – licence: CC-By 4.0 #### A success in our eyes Today, we know of more than 1000 instances (servers on which PeerTube is installed and running), sharing almost a million videos. As it is not limited by the captology mechanics of an ad-and-attention-based model, **PeerTube offers features not available from tech giants** : * **compatibility with other social tools** via ActivityPub (Imagine you could tweet a comment to a YouTube video: with Mastodon and PeerTube, you can.) * **share a video** from a start timecode **to a stop timecode** (YouTube has caught up with us, since) * **untempered chronological access to your suscriptions** feed (no need to « click the bell » in addition to subscribing) * **password-protected videos** (unavailable in YouTube, paid in Vimeo) * **replace a video** by an updated version We intended to make PeerTube specifically for people that need (and want) to s**hare their videos outside of the surveillance capitalism model**. Obviously we all know (and like) some YouTubers and Twitch-streamers, but they are the visible part of the iceberg of online video sharing. Institutions, Educators, Independent medias, Citizens, and even creators should have the freedom to share videos online without contributing to a company’s monopoly, having to accept forced advertisement, or sacrificing on their audience’s data and privacy. The great news is, some of them have already found such freedom, and it makes us proud: * **Institutions** * European commission * Netherlands Institute for sound and vision * **Educators** * French Ministry of Education FOSS-based platform * University of Philippines Diliman’s digital learning programs * **Independent medias** * Blast (French independent left-wing online media) * Howlround (Theater Commons media based in the Emerson College, Boston) * **Citizens** * Urbanists.video (videos about walkable, livable places) * S2S (safe space for deaf and hearing impaired people, videos about/in French Sign Language) * Live it live (live music concerts) * **Creators** * Skeptikon (French collective, videos about critical thinking and scepticism) * TILvids (Til = Today I Learned, edutainment videos in English, with authorized and official YouTube mirroring) * Bunseed (French initiative, FOSS-based alternative to Patreon, by and for creators, built upon PeerTube) We want to build on the recognition PeerTube is getting, that’s why we have planned a lot of work for 2024! #### PeerTube’s roadmap for v7, in 2024 The features we have planned for the next year of development on PeerTube all have the same goal: facilite adoption by improving ease-of-use in several ways. As for version 6, most of those features has been chosen from the ideas you shared and voted for on our feedback tool. We plan to: * **Add a data export/import system** (with or without video files), so users can easily change their instance. * Get **a full accessibility audit** , to facilitate use for people with specific needs, and complete the work done this year (see version 6 release). If we have time left on integrating the report’s recommandations, we will see if and how we could add speech-to-text transcription * Add a **comment moderation tool** usable for both instance administrators and video uploaders. * Create **a new moderation tool** to sort content according to preset keywords lists ( « far-right dogwhistling words in German », « queerphobic idioms in English », etc). This tool will present corresponding content to instance administrators and moderators, that will then determine if it fits their moderation policy. * (Technical) **separation of audio and video streams**. Such improvement will unlock the possibility, in the future, to develop and get multi-audio track videos (e.g. multiple langages), or multi-videos track with the same audio stream (e.g. multiple angles) * Add **a new « audio-only » resolution** (in the « 720p », « 1080p », etc. menu) for our HLS player. It will enable users to only get the audio track streamed to them, improving sustainability when they only want to listen to a video and look at other tabs. * Rethink the **sensitive content characterization**. At the moment, you can only tag videos as « Safe For Work » / « Not Safe For Work ». But « sensitive content » can imply lots of cases: violence, nudity, strong langage, etc. We will work with designers to think about the appropriate way to characterize and treat such cases. * **Revamp the video management space**. We have added lots of new features along the years (live and replay, studio editor, etc.)... it’s great, but tabs and menus accumulated. We will work with designers to rethink it from the ground up and make it easy-to-use. * Get a complete review and implement a **redesign of the experience and interface of PeerTube**. Even though we’ve had lots of help along the way, PeerTube has not benefited of guidance in design from the get-go. We want to think this work as a reboot, where everything (even the orange?) is on the table, if it helps with adoption and ease of use. Hep us push back against the Videoraptor- Illustration CC-By David Revoy #### Doubling the dev team for resilience... OK, when you go from one to two developers, « doubling » is easier... but it was still a big deal to us. First, because **Framasoft is a not-for-profitfunded mainly by donations**. So far, we’ve had the honor and privilege to get enough support to fund our expenses, the main being our 10 employees. But donation-based economics models are, by definition, highly unpredictable. That is especially true in an economy where inflation, energy costs, etc. make most of our supporters rethink their budget. Another reason lies within our core value: **we believe in decentralization and networks of small actors** (over growing into giants and monopolies). We also believe that prioritizing humans and care implies to **stay in a small team configuration** , where we truly know each other. And we think that the way we applied those values into our not-for-profit is key to the efficiency, the creativity and the talents expressed by our members (both volunteers and employees). That’s why we worked on limiting Framasoft’s growth, and had the symbolic limit of « ten employees tops ». During 2022 and 2023, there were lots of discussions on this topic within Framasoft. On one hand, we can’t keep on developing PeerTube with only one developer (even though someone as talented as Chocobozzz), who could win the lottery, leave, or just change carriers. On the other hand, if we hired a new developer, what would be their profile? How can we make sure they would fit in? Can we secure a long lasting job for them? In **late 2022, Chocobozzz asked us to post an internship offer**. It was both to test if, after 5 years coding solo on PeerTube, teamwork came back easily (it did) ; but also to train someone on PeerTube’s code core, see how it can be apprehended by newcomers, and how to improve its documentation. Wicklow joined us for an internship between February and August 2023, and produced the « password protected video features » released in version 6 of PeerTube. **We didn’t plan on hiring him** : we had, then, other profiles in mind, and thought we wouldn’t be able to start a hiring process before 2024. We specifically told him so, as not to give him false hope... But as we benefited from a grant extension from NGI0 program, we also realized that he was a perfect fit in the project, for the team and in our not-for-profit. **Long story short: we hired Wicklow in September 2023** , just as he graduated, on a one-year contract (that we hope to secure with your help!). #### ...and to create an iOS/Android mobile app! This new hire has two goals. First and foremost, we want another developer to become familiar with PeerTube’s core code, and **lessen the «bus factor »** . Wicklow should also become gradually able to help Chocobozzz in managing the code community. As the community grows (and we are very thankful), so does the managing workload: answering to issues and support requests on our forum, reviewing code contributions, etc. Even though being present for the community is important, it’s taking up to half of Chocobozzz’s time, and that means even less time to develop new features. The second and main goal for Wicklow in 2024 would be, with the help of designers, **to create and publish an official PeerTube mobile app**. Mobile viewing has become the main way to watch videos. Even though there are already mobile apps that can play videos on PeerTube, we feel that an official app could help with PeerTube’s adoption and attractiveness. For 2024, the app would be limited to finding and watching videos. We want users to be able to use a federated search engine, watch videos and livestreams, log in to their account on their PeerTube instance, access their notifications, subscriptions, playlists, etc. If successful, this first version of the app could be extended to other use-cases and features in the future. Our plan is **to publish this app both on iOS** (pending Apple’s review, that can be tricky) **and Android**... and, as an extended goal (so « if all goes well »), on Android TV as well. Sepia, PeerTube’s mascot, strong from your support – illustration David Revoy – licence: CC-By 4.0 #### Promoting the PeerTube Ecosystem PeerTube is more than code, and we want to **shed a light on the incredible community that is thriving around this project**. We often see amazing plugins, interesting instances and channels, new initiatives and experimentations... that we would like to share. But we seldom have and take time to do so. In the meantime, we also witness many people wondering if PeerTube allows livestream (it does!) if there is a chat for lives (yes: it’s a great plugin!), or if there are websites to find content on PeerTube (yes again!) We plan to **work on promoting PeerTube’s ecosystem** , through the blog and newsletter on our website JoinPeerTube, our Mastodon account, and by working on a showcase Peer.tube instance. To kick off this work, **we will go live and answer all your questions about PeerTube** during a livestream hosted by Laurens from the Fediverse Report blog and newsletter, on our Peer.Tube channel! You can already go on Mastodon and ask your questions with the #PeerTubeAMA hashtag. This AMA (« Ask Me Anything ») will take place tomorrow, Dec 13th, from 6 to 8pm (CET), on this link. Click on the image to get to the livestream (and if all goes well, we’ll publish the replay on the same channel) #### Funded by you... and Europa! As we stated sooner in this (long) blogpost, we were fortunate enough to get grants from the European Commission program NGI, through the NLnet foundation (many thanks to them!). The previous grants helped us fund a quarter of our six years of work on PeerTube. We are glad to announce that we got another grant for 2024, that will cover planned development costs. It means that, as it was for 75 % of the work until now, funding the rest of our plans relies on donations. Communicating about PeerTube and its ecosystem, sharing experience with diverse actors, design costs, community support and management, etc. All those costs will be, as usual, funded by... some of you! Our current donation campaign will determine Framasoft budget for 2024, and from its success we will know if we can secure a stable job for our second developer, while keep on all the other projects and actions that we take on. Once again this year we need you, your support, your sharing, to help us regain ground on the toxic GAFAM web and multiply ethical digital spaces. So we’ve asked David Revoy to help us present this on our « Support Framasoft » page, which we invite you to visit (because it’s beautiful) and above all to share as widely as possible: **If we are to balance our budget for 2024, we have three weeks to raise €138,659: we can’t do it without your help!** Support Framasoft

12.12.2023 00:00 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

PeerTube v6 is out, and powered by your ideas ! It's #givingtuesday, so we're giving you PeerTube v6 today! PeerTube is the software we develop for creators, media, institutions, educators... to manage their own video platform, as an alternative to YouTube and Twitch. **🦆 VS 😈: Let's take back some ground from the tech giants!** _Thanks toyour donations to our not-for-profit, Framasoft is taking action to advance the ethical, user-friendly web. Find a summary of our progress in 2023 on our Support Framasoft page._ ➡️ Read the series of articles from this campaign (Nov. - Dec. 2023) The sixth major version is being released today and we are very proud! It is the most ambitious one since we added peer-to-peer livestreaming. There is a good reason for that: we packed this v6 with features inspired by your ideas! We are so eager to present all the work we achieved that we'll get right into it. But stay tuned: in two weeks, we'll take more time to talk about PeerTube's history, the state of this project and the great plans we have for its future! #### This year: two minor updates and a major achievement In 2023, and before preparing this major update, we released only two minor versions... but one of them brought to the table a major technical feature that will help democratize video hosting even more. ##### March 2023: PeerTube v5.1 You'll get more details in the news dedicated to the 5.1 release, so to keep it short, this version brought: * An "asking for an account" feature, where instance moderators can **manage and moderate news account requests** * A **back-to-live button** , so when you can lag behind during a livestream, you can go back to the direct * improvements on the **authentification plugin** , to facilitate signing on with external credentials ##### June 2023: PeerTube 5.2... As you'll find out in our 5.2 release blogpost, there were some smaller but important new features such as: * Adapting **RSS feeds to podcast standards** , so any podcast client could be able to read a PeerTube channel, for example * The option to **set the privacy of a livestream replay** , that way streamers can choose beforehand if the replay of their live will be _Public_ , _Unlisted_ , _Private_ or _Internal_ * Improved mouse-free navigation: for those who prefer or need to **navigate using their keyboard** * And **upgrades in our documentation** (it's quite thorough: check it out!) ##### ...with a major feature: Remote Transcoding But the game changer in this 5.2 release was the new remote transcoding feature. When a creator uploads a video (or when they are streaming live), PeerTube needs to transform their video file into an efficient format. This task is called video transcoding, and it consumes lots of CPU power. PeerTube admins used to need (costly) big-CPU servers for a task that wasn't permanent... until remote transcoding. Remote transcoding allows PeerTube admins to deport some or all of their transcoding tasks to another, more powerful server, one that can be shared with other admins, for example. **It makes the whole PeerTube administration cheaper, more resilient, more power-efficient**... and opens a way of sharing resources between communities! We want, once again to thank the NGI Entrust program and the NLnet foundation for the grant that helped us achieve such a technical improvement! #### PeerTube v6: powered by your ideas! Enough about the past, let's detail the features of this new major version. Note that, for this whole 2023 roadmap, we developed features suggested and upvoted by... you! Or at least by those of you who shared your ideas on our feedback website. ##### Protect your videos with passwords! That was a very awaited feature. Password-protected videos can be used in lots of situations: to create exclusive content, mark a step in a pedagogical plan, share videos with people trusted by the ones you trust... On their PeerTube account, creators can now set a single password when they upload, import or update the settings of their videos. But with our REST API, admins and developers can take it a step further. They can set and store as many passwords as they want, thus easily give and revoke access to videos. This feature was the work of Wicklow, during his internship with us. ##### Video storyboard: preview what's coming! If you like to peruse your videos online, you might be used to hover the progress bar with your mouse or finger. Usually, a preview of the frame appears as a thumbnail: that's called a storyboard feature, and that's now available in PeerTube! Please note that as Storyboards are only generated when uploading (or importing) a video, they will only be available for new videos of instances that upgraded to v6... Or you can ask, very kindly, to your admin(s) that they use the magical `npm run create-generate-storyboard-job` command (warning: this task might need some CPU power), and generate storyboards for older videos. ##### Upload a new version of your video Sometimes, video creators want to update a video, to correct a mistake, offer new informations... or just to propose a better cut of their work! Now, with PeerTube, they can upload and replace an older version of their video. Though the older video file will be permanently erased (no backsies !), creators will keep the same URL, title and infos, comments, stats, etc. Obviously, such a feature requires trust between videomakers and admins, who don't want to be responsible for a cute kitten video being "updated" into an awful advertisement for cat-hating groups. That's why such a feature will only be available if admins choose to enable it on their PeerTube platforms, and will display a "Video re-upload" tag on updated videos. ##### Get chapters in your videos! Creators can now add chapters to their videos on PeerTube. In a video settings page, they'll get a new "chapters" tab where they'll only need to specify the timecode and title of each chapter for PeerTube to add it. If they import their video from another platform (_cough_ YouTube _cough_), PeerTube should automatically recognize and import chapters set on this distant video. When chapters are set, markers will appear and segment the progress bar. Chapter titles will be displayed when you hover or touch one of those chapters segments. ##### Stress tests, performance and config recommandations Last year, thanks to French indie journalist David Dufresne's Au Poste! livestream show and his hoster Octopuce, we got a livestream stress test with more than 400 simultaneous viewers: see the report here on Octopuce's blog [FR]. Such tests are really helpful to understand where we can improve PeerTube to reduce bottlenecks, improve performance, and give advice on the best configuration for a PeerTube server if an admin plans on getting a lot of traffic. That's why this year, we have decided to realize more tests, with a thousand simultaneous users simulated both in livestream and classic video streaming conditions. Lots of thanks and datalove to Octopuce for helping us deploy our test infrastructure. We will soon publish a report with our conclusions and recommended server configurations depending on usecases (late 2023, early 2024). In the meantime, early tests motivated us to **add many performances improvements** into this v6, such as (brace yourselves for the technical terms): * Process unicast HTTP job in worker threads * Sign ActivityPub requests in worker threads * Optimize recommended videos HTTP request * Optimize videos SQL queries when filtering on lives or tags * Optimize /videos/{id}/views endpoint with many viewers * Add ability to disable PeerTube HTTP logs ##### ...and there's always more! A new major version always comes with its lot of changes, improvements, bugfixes, etc. You can read the complete log here, but here are the highlights: * We needed to settle a technical debt: **v6 removes support for WebTorrent to focus on HLS (with WebRTC P2P)**. Both are technical bricks used to get peer-to-peer streaming in web browsers, but HLS is more fitted to what we are doing (and plan to do) with PeerTube * The video player is more efficient * It is not being rebuilt anymore every time the video changes * It keeps your watching settings (speed, fullscreen, etc.) when the video changes * It automatically adjust its size to match the video ratio * We have improved SEO, to help videos hosted on a PeerTube platform appear higher in the search results of search engines * We worked a lot on improving PeerTube's accessibility on many levels, to streamline the experience of people with disabilities. #### What about PeerTube's future? With YouTube waging war against adblockers, Twitch increasingly exploiting streamers, and everyone becoming more and more aware of the toxicity of this system... PeerTube is getting traction, recognition and a growing community. We have so many announcements to make about the future we plan for PeerTube, that we will publish a separate news, in two weeks. We are also planning on hosting an "Ask Us Anything" livestream, to answer the questions you'd have about PeerTube. Please stay tuned by subscribing to PeerTube's Newsletter, following PeerTube's Mastodon account or keeping an eye on the Framablog. Click to support us and help Sepia push back Videoraptor – Illustration CC-By David Revoy #### Thank you for supporting PeerTube and Framasoft In the meantime, we want to remind you that all these developments were achieved by only one full-time payed developer, an intern, and a fabulous community (lots of datalove to Chocobozzz, Wicklow, and the many, many contributors: y'all are amazing!) Framasoft being a French not-for-profit mainly funded by grassroots donations (75% of our yearly income comes from people like you and us), PeerTube development has been funded by two main sources: * French-speaking FOSS enthusiasts * Grants from the NGI initiative, through NLnet (in 2021 & 2023) If you are a non-French-speaking PeerTube aficionado, please consider **supporting our work bymaking a donation to Framasoft**. It will greatly help us fund our many, many projects, and balance our 2024 budget. Once again this year we need you, your support, your sharing to help us regain ground on the toxic GAFAM web and multiply the number of ethical digital spaces. So we've asked David Revoy to help us present this on our support Framasoft page, which we invite you to visit (because it's beautiful) and above all to share as widely as possible: **If we are to balance our budget for 2024, we have five weeks to raise €176,425: we can't do it without your help!** Support Framasoft Thanks again for supporting PeerTube, Framasoft's team.

28.11.2023 00:00 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Version 5.2 of PeerTube is out! This version comes with a small technical challenge that we're proud to have overcome! This new feature won't be as visible as a graphical change, but it will make hosting a PeerTube platform easier, more resilient and cheaper. Let's see what it's all about :) #### This is a resolution: video transcoding Video transcoding is the process of converting a video file into different formats that can be played on different devices. In simple terms, it takes your video file (for example, mp4) and converts it into different formats that can be read by web browsers, applications, etc. Transcoding is done when a video is uploaded to the PeerTube instance, during live broadcasts or when editing your video with the PeerTube Studio. In addition to the formats, transcoding allows you to have different video qualities (from pixel mush to the possibility of seeing an ant when zooming in on a panorama). These are the famous '720p', '1080p' and so on. The problem is that transcoding 4k videos of kittens requires a lot of server computing resources (called "CPU"). Even a small kitten. And big CPUs mean big prices. It's a shame to have to rent a more powerful server just to transcode faster one big video a month. If only we had a solution... 🤔 #### This is an evolution: remote transcoding The solution we propose: **remote transcoding**! The idea is to let the servers of the PeerTube platform broadcast the videos, by having the ability to run transcoding tasks on other computers (for example, remote servers, that could be dedicated to the task, that could be shared, etc.). You can find out how to do this in the documentation. We explain here how to set up one of these remote servers by installing a "PeerTube runner" on it. You can even turn your personal computer into a runner using command lines, just long enough to transcode your videos! Yes, it is THAT flexible! For the more tech-savvy among us, this feature was inspired by Gitlab runners for their architecture and BOINC for their ease of use. This is one of the strengths of free-libre softwares: rather than reinventing the wheel, we take inspiration from the work of those who were there before and build a new brick for those who come after us! You can find out more in our documentation. You can see how it's done on this video and also learn more from this video of Jeena (who shares his chronicles as a PeerTube platform administrator on his PeerTube instance, of course) presenting how remote transcoding works. #### This is a (French) revolution With the federation of video catalogues, the peer-to-peer broadcasting in the event of a video's success, the redundancy of videos for PeerTube platforms that want to help each other, the possibility of storing videos on a dedicated server... PeerTube has always aimed to democratize online video hosting and distribution. Remote transcoding takes a step further by encouraging the pooling of CPU-intensive tasks and (we hope) encouraging communities to work together. From now on, a PeerTube platform can be hosted on very low-power (and therefore low-cost) servers. In addition, this new feature has been designed to, in the future, enable other CPU-intensive tasks to be performed remotely (such as audio-to-text video transcription). A technical feature like remote transcoding isn't exactly sexy. These developments are not the easiest to fund, especially through donations. We'd like to thank NLnet for supporting us and giving us access to NGI0's funding programs that funded this feature! #### These are improvements In addition to remote transcoding, 5.2 includes a number of improvements: * RSS feeds for podcasts: a first building block has been developed to allow your PeerTube content to be integrated into podcast players! * Mouse-free navigation: if you like to navigate using only the keyboard, you'll love some improvements! * The Studio feature (introduced in version 4.2), which allows you to edit an uploaded video, has finally been documented (even though it is incredibly simple)! * Define the visibility of a replay: it is now possible to define a different visibility for a replay than for a live. This means you can make a live public, but make the replay private (or vice versa, or whatever)! This feature was developed by Wicklow, a PeerTube development intern: thanks to him! #### This is a call for donations Remote transcoding is brand new: **we need your feedback** on how to improve it (and you can also just tell us you like it). The best place to do this is our forum). **What's next?** PeerTube is on its way to v6, towards the end of the year. In this version you'll be able to password protect videos (thanks to Wicklow!), get a preview thumbnail by hovering over the playback bar, add chapters to your video and even upload a new version of your video. In short, we've got a lot of work to do! Do you want to help us improve PeerTube? You can do so **by contributing to the software, sharing this information** and (if you can afford it) making a donation to our not-for-proft, Framasoft. Thanks in advance for your support! Framasoft

21.06.2023 00:00 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

PeerTube 5.1 is out! Version 5.1 of PeerTube has been released! On the menu: moderation of account creation, a button to resume live broadcasting, improved management of external authentication plugins... and other useful developments. Let's take a tour of the new features! #### Moderated account creation requests First new feature in this minor release: account creation requests can now be validated a priori by administrators. When this feature is enabled and a person registers on an instance, they will have to fill in a field (such as "_Why do I want to create an account on this platform?_ ") and then wait for their registration to be validated before they can access their account. The moderators see the different requests and can accept or reject them. An email is sent directly to the user when the request is processed. The account is automatically created when the request is approved. In this way, we hope to allow different instances to reopen their registrations without risking potential waves of spam. #### New "Resume Live" button A "resume live" button has been added to the player! The button is red when the player is synchronized with the current live stream and grey when it is not. **A single click to resynchronise the live stream** is quite handy! #### Improved management of external authentication plugins Developers will be able to take advantage of an **improvement to the APIfor external authentication plugins**: define a quota for users, update users or implement an automatic redirect to the external service when a session expires. These improvements were financed by the Department of Public Education (DIP) of the State of Geneva. Thanks! #### And more... This version has seen various improvements to the accessibility of the interface, as well as performance improvements (optimized rendering of the home page editor and more efficient comment retrieval). Another development worth mentioning is the arrival of two new languages: Icelandic and Ukrainian. Thanks to the contributors for these translations! We have also fixed many bugs reported by the community. We are now up to more than 4000 tickets processed since the beginning of the PeerTube project, and that seems huge! This time spent improving, maintaining and supporting the software is **funded directly by you** , through your donations. Thank you very much! We hope you find this new version useful and we thank again all PeerTube contributors! Framasoft

28.03.2023 00:00 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

What 2023 will bring for PeerTube... We (Framasoft, a small not-for-profit association!) are proud to present our roadmap for **the developments and side projects we have planned for PeerTube in 2023**. This roadmap combines both the progress we wanted to make to the software and the proposals you have sent us over the last few months. It is important to note that we are dedicating only one developer to PeerTube (yes, only one!), PeerTube being one of more than fifty projects led by our association. #### End of February: PeerTube 5.1 We plan to release version 5.1 at the end of February. Here are the new features we are planning to release: * Easier management of account registrations (with administrator approval) * Developers will be able to take advantage of an **improved API for external authentication plugins** (setting a quota, updating the user, etc.) * Optimize **retrieval of video comments** * Adding a **Resume Live** button in the video player * Improvements and bug fixes (including bugs found during the end of December load test, in French) #### May 2023: PeerTube 5.2 This May we plan to release PeerTube 5.2, which will feature **remote transcoding** (feature that received many votes!). This will reduce the power required for a PeerTube server by delegating power consuming tasks to external machines. Initially this will only be for hosted videos, but will be designed to be able to evolve (for livestreams for example). Quite a technical challenge ahead! #### November-December 2023: PeerTube v6 We plan to release the next major version of PeerTube at the end of the year, and the new features are all **inspired by your suggestions** on our feedback tool _Let's Improve PeerTube_. You will find: * Adding chapters to videos * Displaying a preview thumbnail in the progress bar * Protecting videos with a password/token * The possibility to upload a new version of your video #### But also... At the beginning of this year, we welcome Wicklow in the team, for a 6 months internship. This is an opportunity to support the PeerTube developer and to familiarize more people with the code base of the software. We will also of course continue to **fix bugs, clean up the code and improve the architecture** of the software and **support external and community development** , such as the Live-Chat plugin. Finally, we will work on **content curation** for our Peer.tube showcase platform (yes, with a dot in the middle!), to allow us to present a gateway to PeerTube, which looks like Framasoft. PeerTube, like all our projects, is **mainly funded by donations to our association**. On this roadmap, only the remote transcoding feature of v5.2 is already funded, thanks to a donation from the NLnet foundation. Do you want to help us achieve this roadmap? You can support us **by contributing to PeerTube** , **by sharing this information** and (if you can afford it) by making a donation to Framasoft. Thank you in advance for your support! Framasoft

08.02.2023 00:00 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

A statement about the German ISD study on PeerTube We, Framasoft, have been developing the PeerTube software for 5+ years. Framasoft is a French non-profit of 38 members (10 employees, 28 volunteers), PeerTube is one of our 50+ projects, and we do all this work with only one developer (who is not event full time on PeerTube). Please note that maybe 2 or 3 among us understand, more or less fluently, German. On dec. 19th, a journalist from Tagesspiegel Background informed us that a study by German researchers on the use of PeerTube by right-wing extremists was about to be published. He asked us 3 questions about the scope of the problem and what could be done, and we answered him that day. On dec. 20th, we have been able to get this study (it is available online here) and translate it. This is why it took us time to write and publish a collective statement. First of all, we would like to thank the researchers of the Institute for Strategic Dialogue for their work. The more we will gain knowledge of how disinformation manipulators and right-wing extremists use PeerTube, the more the PeerTube communities will learn how to effectively protect themselves from such content. Shared knowledge is shared power. #### PeerTube says no to fascists and conspiracy manipulators Let's be crystal clear: Framasoft's values are fundamentally opposed to right-wing extremism. This is also true for conspiratorial manipulations that lead to hurting and killing people (here is our recently published manifest stating our core values - Warning: may be poorly translated from French). We agree with the results of the study. In our experience, right-wing extremists represent a very, very small share of the PeerTube federation (called the "vidiverse"), but they know how to be very loud, energy consuming trolls. We should not ignore the fact that, in 2022, if any society is producing fascist and Nazi groups, it is not because of technology, but because of a deeper problem, which is mainly related to the complacency of some governments with extreme right-wing ideas. Nevertheless, it is also true that some technical devices that work on the basis of audience measurement and advertising are the first to disseminate extremist ideas. The Fediverse does not work like that, but we should work to keep it healthy. PeerTube is free software, we cannot prevent these people from using it. Germany, France and most modern democracies have already introduced laws that can lead Justice to condemn PeerTube administrators who knowingly and willingly host hateful and Nazi content. What we can do (and have been doing and are willing to continue) is giving PeerTube communities the tools to moderate, protect themselves from and ostracize right-wing extremists and harmful PeerTube platforms. We "moderate" (read: ban) fascist content from any tool we manage. Thus, we regularly clean the instance index. For example we removed from the index problematic instances, several of which are German. This does not prevent these instances from existing, but at least we try to keep the index healthy. #### We need the communities to step up The study clearly states it: one of the major solutions to such content relies in empowering the communities. PeerTube-isolation is a blocklist that is maintained in total independence from us. Installing their plugin on your PeerTube platform can help you make sure you won't federate with dangerous content. We encourage anyone who wants to help to contribute to the PeerTube-Isolation community work. We automatically pull out the instances they block from the index that feeds SepiaSearch, our PeerTube Search Engine. Our goal is to keep harmful and hateful content isolated in their own federation bubble, where they can be as loud as they want. Thus they won't contaminate others with their dangerous filth. Thus they'll understand they are not welcomed in the PeerTube vidiverse, and they won't have any interest trying to invest it. In addition, we are always exploring new ways to help PeerTube communities and administrators moderate hate speech and harmful content. If you can think of a feature we could add to PeerTube to help isolating such filth, please share it on Let's Improve PeerTube. #### A call to (help) PeerTube instance administrators That being said, a tool can only do so much. Instance administrators need help, because they have several tasks to fulfill: system administration (backup, updates, etc.), content curation (do I want to host edutainment videos? original fictions? videos by Queer creators?), federation policies (which platforms do I want mine to follow? which follows do I accept?), moderation policies (and moderation can be needed in the federation choices, content hosted, comments, etc.) It is a very complex job, and usually you should not to be alone to complete it. It is a crucial job, though. We need instance administrators to have rules about the platform they federate with, so they can enforce their own policies and - hopefully- stop the dissemination of harmful and dangerous content. But it is a lot of work, so it requires a lot of help. If you want to help, try to join a PeerTube administration team. Offer them help. Report problematic content. If public organizations can provide training, help, and tools, it can always be useful ! But PeerTube is a Commons: we cannot address such an issue unless we work together as a (diverse and plural) community. #### Shared knowledge is shared power The PeerTube communities sure need more shared knowledge on right-wing extremists, their content, their methods, their arguments & fallacies, and how to protect ourselves from it. But we also need more people helping and taking charge, together, as communities, because we are very invested in keeping PeerTube ecosystem healthy.

21.12.2022 00:00 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

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