An ELI5 Guide to Getting Started with PeerTube

Saw this post this morning and figured people might be interested in me sharing/updating my own post about this issue. The Fediverse will never become mainstream if we make basic tasks unnecessarily complicated. With that out of the way…

PeerTube is the fediverse equivalent of YouTube with no ads (other than sponsorships creators might add to their own videos). Services on the fediverse are decentralized into instances/servers that talk to each other (think how GMail and Outlook can e-mail each other despite being different providers). Each instance makes their own rules and decides what instances they will communicate with. The more instances an instance communicates with, the more videos you will have access to. You can even host your own for full control, and you have the option to transfer your account to another instance if you don’t like your current one.

Here are three instances to help you get started with PeerTube right away (remember, you can always switch later!): **

• Currently, this instance appears to have **the most content available, although they are not allowing sign ups (but you do not have to be logged in to view the videos): https://tube.shanti.cafe/videos/browse

• The instance with the most videos that currently allows sign ups (so you can create a playlist, comment on videos, etc.) seems to be this one, although I have personally found it slow at times: https://dalek.zone/

• The instance with the second most amount of videos that allows sign ups is this one: https://video.4d2.org/ I haven’t had trouble accessing this one so far.

You can learn more about PeerTube here: https://joinpeertube.org/

You can browse the official instance list here: https://instances.joinpeertube.org/instances

(While I don’t expect this post to blow up, my sincerest apologies to the servers I’ve listed if it does lol)

Using PeerTube on iOS

Unfortunately, I personally have not found the official PeerTube app to be usable yet. I was also unfortunately having some trouble with the PWAs.

The best solution I have found so far, by accident, is the YouPlay app. Its main use is for avoiding YouTube ads. However, PeerTube instances seem to function pretty decently, compared to other options I have tried so far. Iirc, YouPlay is a free trial with a very affordable lifetime option.