Common Issues

There are a few problems that you might encounter when using FreeTube, this includes the following:

429 Errors

A 429 Error means that FreeTube has sent too many requests to the YouTube / Invidious server and the server has blocked your IP address. This can commonly happen if you refresh your subscriptions fairly often. When blocked, videos will also not play.

This error will go away after some time. The exact time frame is not known however. Switching to using RSS Feeds can greatly help, as RSS feeds do not count towards your daily request limit. FreeTube will automatically force RSS feeds if you have more than 125 subscriptions active to attempt to avoid this.

If you happen to use a VPN, switching the VPN server you’re connecting to can also bypass this.

My Subscription Feed Is Not Showing the Video Duration

Your subscription feed is being generated by the channel’s RSS Feed instead of the traditional method. This happens automatically if you have more than 125 subscriptions in your active profile. You may also have this option enabled in your settings. If you have less than 125 subscriptions, disabling this in settings can prevent this.

If you have more than 125 subscriptions, you can create a new Profile that has less than 125 subscriptions. Refreshing your subscriptions while in your new profile will then show the full information in your feed.

For more information, check out the Subscriptions page.

Videos Are Only Limited to 360p

Your video player is either set to use Legacy formats, or your video player is having issues with playing the DASH formats and reverting to legacy. If this is a continuous problem, please create an issue in the FreeTube repository and we can investigate this further.

For more information, check out the Video Formats page about Legacy Formats.

Local API Error

If you’re seeing this error, that means that there’s a problem with a module that we use for the Local API. This can happen as time goes by and YouTube makes changes to their layout. There isn’t much we can do to be prepared for these changes and need to be reactive and update these modules whenever the changes happen. Once the modules are fixed, an update to FreeTube will be required.

If you see this error, please feel free to create an issue.

Switching to the Invidious API or enabling API Fallback in your settings can be used as a workaround depending on what failed. FreeTube will attempt to use Invidious for that part of the Local API.

For more information, check out the Local API page.

Invidious API Error

If you’re seeing this error, then that means that the Invidious server you’re connecting to has returned an error. Most likely the reason will be because it had a problem with extracting the data you requested. In some cases, the Invidious instance could have their API disabled, which would prevent FreeTube from using it. In other cases, the server could be blocking you as you have made too many requests (See 429 Errors). Lastly, the instance could be blocked from YouTube, therefore also not working with FreeTube.

A workaround would be to try to use a different Invidious instance for obtaining data. There are a list of public instances available to try.

Switching to the Local API or enabling API Fallback in your settings can be used as a workaround depending on what failed. FreeTube will attempt to use the Local API for that part of the Invidious API.

Consider creating in issue in the Invidious Repository if the issue persists.

For more information, check out the Invidious API page.

Another Problem

If you happen to see another problem with FreeTube, consider creating an issue.