Redirect Youtube to Invidious

Since YouTube started cracking down on ad blockers, I’ve been using Invidious more and more. There are many public instances of Invidious (https://instances.invidio.us/) that I can choose from.

However, Invidious isn’t great for content discovery. I find myself frequently going back to the YouTube homepage to browse content. For each video I want to watch, I copy the ID and open it in Invidious. But that gets tedious quickly.

I’ve found a creative use for the Safari extension, Page Redirect, that I blogged about recently. When I want to watch a video, I just use the extension to jump to Invidious. In other words, I go back and forth between YouTube and Invidious: YouTube for browsing & Invidious for watching. The extension I use has automatic redirection as well, but I mostly use it in manual mode because it’s easier that way to mix YouTube and Invidious in the same session.

Here’s how I configure the extension:

Origin
https://www.youtube.com/watch\?v=(\w{11})

Destination
https://yewtu.be/watch?v=$1