PeerTube, a popular open-source YouTube alternative, has released its inaugural mobile apps for iPhone and Android seven years after its inception.

PeerTube is an open-source and decentralized video network, with videos hosted across thousands of interconnected servers, from large YouTube-like public servers to smaller ones set up by individual creators.

PeerTube brings a bunch of different video platforms in a single place. The developers explained, “Videos and live streams are increasingly watched on mobile devices,” developers wrote. “We knew the next step to widen the audience of the PeerTube network of platforms was to develop a mobile client.”

You can browse and watch videos from over a thousand different servers—the app calls them “platforms” in some places—and you don’t need an account with any of them to use the mobile app. You can also favorite videos, subscribe to channels, follow your favorite creators (regardless of the server they’re hosted on), create custom playlists, and add videos to a watch list.

The mobile app integrates the Sepia search engine (like the website) to search across hundreds of PeerTube instances at once. Each video is designated appropriately to highlight the platform that hosts it.

In order to be accepted into the App Store and Play Store, PeerTube had to include a list of allowed servers that meet Apple’s and Google’s guidelines. For the time being, the iPhone app won’t let you add any video platforms that are not on that list.

The developers are continuing to find ways to avoid Apple’s limitations, but Apple’s rules are hard to bend, so I’m not overly optimistic. On the other hand, they’ve managed to find a way around Google’s restrictions, meaning Android owners can already add the platforms they want.

In early 2025, features like background play and account support (to get your comments, likes, subscription perks, etc.) will follow. Later in 2025, the app should be able to downloaded videos for offline watching and gain native versions for tablets, TVs, and Apple TV. However, those features depend on whether PeerTube will be funded enough through donations.

Uploading your videos, publishing them to video platforms through PeerTube, and live-streaming are both on the roadmap, but the team is still “wondering where, when, and how to get funds for this undertaking.”

Created in 2017 by a single developer, PeerTube is now maintained by the French non-profit Framasoft. The service uses the WebTorrent protocol, where each device relays chunks of videos to other people. Known as peer-to-peer networking, this is how people shared music via Napster and Limewire in the 1990s. PeerTube also lets you download videos, which YouTube doesn’t allow for free accounts.

PeerTube uses the same ActivityPub protocol as Mastodon, Meta’s Threads, PixelFed, and other services, meaning you have a bunch of servers to play videos from. You can even follow creators on PeerTube from Mastodon.

You can download PeerTube through Apple’s App Store and Google’s Play Store. The app doesn’t collect or share data with third parties or track you for advertising purposes.

Source: PeerTube