Front Ends

Privacy Front Ends and Mainstream tech alternatives

Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy. The savage’s whole existence is public, ruled by the laws of his tribe. Civilization is the process of setting man free from men. - Ayn Rand

Privacy Front ends are interfaces that interact with well known services that dont respect your privacy. Apps like Youtube or Facebook can be accessed via privacy respecting generally open source apps.

Apple AirPlay

  • RPiPlay - An open-source AirPlay mirroring server for the Raspberry Pi. Supports iOS 9 and up.
  • air-pi-play - Turn a Raspberry Pi into an Airplay server using RPiPlay to enable screen mirroring on tvs, monitors and projectors.

Apple Music

  • Cider - Cross-platform Apple Music experience based on Electron and Vue.js written from scratch with performance in mind

Discord

  • gtkcord4 - A lightweight Discord client written in Golang which uses GTK3 for the user interface

Facebook

  • SlimSocial - Android, alternative front-end for Facebook, built with Java
  • Frost - An extensive and functional open source third party app for Facebook (Android app)

Facebook Messenger

  • fb-messenger-cli - Use your Facebook account to chat with your friends sneakily in the command line, it’s as easy as logging in, choosing a convo and chatting away
  • Caprine - Unofficial and privacy-focused Facebook Messenger app with many useful features
  • Whoogle Search - A self-hosted, ad-free, privacy-respecting metasearch engine for Google
  • Searx - Searx is a free privacy-respecting internet metasearch engine which aggregates results from more than 70 search services. Users are neither tracked nor profiled. Additionally, searx can be used over Tor for online anonymity
  • SearXNG - SearXNG is a free internet metasearch engine which aggregates results from various search services and databases. Users are neither tracked nor profiled (SearXNG is a fork of searx)
  • LibreX - Privacy respecting free meta search engine (free as in freedom).Small and simple meta search engine, fetches and anonymizes results from Google only, has API support, allows redirects to Invidious/ Bibliogram/ Nitter/ Libreddit

Google Translate

  • Lingva Translate - Alternative front-end for Google Translate, serving as a free and open-source translator with over a hundred languages available
  • SimplyTranslate - Provide fast and private translations to the user without wasting much overhead for extensive styling or JavaScript. Supports Google Translate, DeepL, ICIBA and LibreTranslate.
  • SimplyTranslate Mobile - Unofficial Android client of SimplyTranslate.
  • InstaLate -Distraction-free translation for Android, to be used directly from within any app. Supports Beolingus, DeepL, Dict.cc, GNU CIDE, Heinzelnisse, LibreTranslate, Linguee, WikDict and Wiktionary.
  • DeepL Android - Unofficial Android client for DeepL
  • Crow Translate - Simple and lightweight cross-platform translator that allows translation using LibreTranslate, Lingva, Google, Bing, and Yandex, as well as text-to-speech using Google

Hacker News

Imgur

  • Rimgo - Self-hosted frontend for Imgur ritten in Go.
  • Rimgu - Self-hosted alternative frontend/ proxy for Imgur
  • Imgin - Minimal Imgur front end
  • Omgur - Omgur is a free and open-source alternative Imgur front-end focused on privacy. Inspired by the Invidious, Nitter, and Teddit projects.
    • No JavaScript or ads
    • All requests go through the Omgur backend, client never talks to Imgur
    • Prevents Imgur from tracking your IP or JavaScript fingerprint
    • Lightweight
    • Self-hostable
    • Mirror of the original repository on Github: https://github.com/geraldwuhoo/omgur
  • Imgrs - Imgrs is a free and open-source alternative Imgur front-end focused on privacy. It’s a Rust rewrite of a previous Imgur proxy project, Omgur.

Instagram

Mastodon

  • Pinafore - Alternative web client for Mastodon, focused on speed and simplicity
  • Sengi - cross-platform multi-account Mastodon & Pleroma desktop client
  • TheDesk - cross-platform Mastodon & Misskey desktop client
  • Tootle - simple GTK-based Linux Mastodon client
  • Tusky - lightweight Android Mastodon client
  • Fedilab - multi-account Android Mastodon client
  • Hyperspace - cross-platform Mastodon client for the fediverse written in TypeScript and React

Medium

  • Scribe - Alternative front-end to Medium.com

Other services

  • MediathekViewWeb - Video content of German public-service television broadcasters (e.g. ARD, ZDF)
  • NoPaste - NoPaste is an open-source website similar to Pastebin where you can store any piece of code, and generate links for easy sharing
  • PrivateBin - Zero knowledge encrypted paste-bin. A minimalist, open source online pastebin where the server has zero knowledge of pasted data. Data is encrypted/decrypted in the browser using 256 bits AES
  • Vaultwarden - Password manager. Unofficial Bitwarden compatible server written in Rust, formerly known as bitwarden_rs
  • Snapdrop - Similar to Apple’s Airdrop but in your browser. A Progressive Web App for local file sharing
  • Hedgedoc - Collaborative markdown editor. A platform to write and share markdown
  • etherpad-lite - Collaborative rich text editor. A modern really-real-time collaborative document editor
  • Gitea - Lightweight git server. Git with a cup of tea, painless self-hosted git service
  • ArchiveBox - Open source self-hosted web archiving. Takes URLs/browser history/bookmarks/Pocket/Pinboard/etc., saves HTML, JS, PDFs, media, and more
  • Wikiless - A free open source alternative Wikipedia front-end focused on privacy
  • Librarian - Alternative frontend for LBRY / Odysee.com

Reddit

Due to recent changes with the Reddit API Policy you may have mixed success with these. These are kept here in the vent that this changes, but otherwise these are mostly dead projects

Redirection

  • Watch on Odysee - Browser add on that redirects you from YouTube to odysee a decentralized Youtube alternative
  • LibRedirect - App that redirects multiple apps to privacy front ends. If you click on a link of a Youtube like it will redirect to you to Newpipe, Twitter to nitter, Wikipedia to Wikiless etc.
  • Privacy Redirect - A simple web extension that redirects Twitter, YouTube, Instagram & Google Maps requests to privacy friendly alternatives
  • libredirect - A web extension that redirects popular sites to alternative privacy-friendly frontends and backends. Actively maintained fork of Privacy Redirect that supports Youtube, Youtube Music, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, Imgur, Reddit, Searx, Google Translate, Google Maps, Wikipedia, and Medium
  • Farside - Farside provides links that automatically redirect to working instances of privacy-oriented alternative frontends, such as Nitter, Libreddit, etc. This allows for users to have more reliable access to the available public instances for a particular service, while also helping to distribute traffic more evenly across all instances and avoid performance bottlenecks and rate-limiting.
  • UntrackMe - UntrackMe transforms Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, Reddit and Medium and Wikipedia links to links of open source, privacy friendly front-ends. Converts Google Maps links to OpenStreetMap links. Removes tracking parameters from any url. Then delegates the action to other apps that are capable of handling them. (Android app)

Reuters

  • Neuters - An alternative front-end to Reuters.com. It is intended to be lightweight and fast, and was heavily inspired by Nitter

Shazam

  • SongRec - Open-source Shazam client for Linux, written in Rust.

Spotify

  • psst - Fast and multi-platform Spotify client with native GUI
  • Spotiqueue - Minimalistic queue-oriented macOS-native client for Spotify, with Guile Scheme scriptability
  • Spot: Gtk/Rust native Spotify client for the GNOME desktop. Only works with premium accounts
  • Spotube: A lightweight and free Spotify crossplatform-client which handles playback manually, streams music using Youtube & no Spotify premium account is needed
  • SpotX: Modified Spotify Client for Windows (Windows Only) - Blocking ads and updates for the desktop version of Spotify, disabling podcasts and more
  • Kotify - Requires Spotify Account - Multiplatform desktop client for Spotify focused on library organization for power users. Relies on official Spotify client for playback
  • Librespot - Requires Spotify Premium Account - librespot is an open source client library for Spotify. It enables applications to use Spotify’s service to control and play music via various backends, and to act as a Spotify Connect receiver. It is an alternative to the official and now deprecated closed-source libspotify. Additionally, it will provide extra features which are not available in the official library
  • Oggify - Download Spotify tracks to Ogg Vorbis (with a Spotify premium account), based on librespot
  • Spotiflyer - Download free content from Youtube, Spotify, Sound Cloud and more

Telegram

  • Telegram-FOSS - Unofficial, FOSS-friendly fork of the original Telegram client for Android.

TikTok

Twitch

  • streamlink-twitch-gui - Multi platform Twitch.tv browser for Streamlink
  • Twire: Alternative and open source Twitch client for Android
  • Xtra - Twitch player and browser for Android
  • ElectronPlayer - Electron Based Web Video Services Player. Supports Netflix, Youtube, Twitch, Floatplane, Hulu and more

Twitter/X

Due to recent changes with the Twiiter API Policy you may have mixed success with these.

  • Nitter - Alternative Twitter front-end - Lightweight, no ads, no tracking, no JavaScript required
  • Shitter - Android, alternative front-end for Twitter, built with Java.
  • Harpy - Android, alternative front-end for Twitter, built with Flutter/Dart.
  • Twidere X - Android, alternative front-end for Twitter, built mostly with Kotlin, in early stage.
  • Tweeterr - A tool to use Twitter from the command line on the fly.
  • Tweet-app - Desktop Twitter client only for tweeting. Timeline never shows up.
  • Tweepy - Twitter for Python
  • Fritter - A free, open-source Twitter client for Android.

YouTube

YouTube Music

  • ytmdesktop - Cross-platform (Windows, Mac, and Linux) desktop app for YouTube Music. Has a (proprietary?) remote control app for Android.
  • Beatbump - An alternative frontend for YouTube Music created using Svelte/SvelteKit, powered by Cloudflare Workers.
  • AudioTube - Client for YouTube Music. Plasma-mobile project with an interface designed for Linux phones.
  • th-ch/youtube-music - YouTube Music desktop app based on Electron bundled with custom plugins (including built-in ad blocker and downloader).

Youtube Alternatives

  • ODYSEE - A decentralized video platform built on the LBRY network. With the recent SEC Judgement against ODYSEE the long term future of the platform is uncertain.

  • Madiator - Privacy focused front end for LBRY, the network that hosts ODYSEE.

  • D.tube - A youtube alternative.