FreeTubePlusTabs

FreeTube + Tabs is a free, open-source YouTube desktop client that adds browser-style tabbed browsing to the FreeTube privacy platform. It lets you watch YouTube without ads, without tracking, and without a Google account, while opening videos, channels, and searches in separate tabs just like a web browser.

The tab system supports middle-click to open in a new tab, drag-to-reorder, right-click context menus (close, close others, close to right, duplicate), and full state preservation per tab including scroll position, video timestamp, and playback state. Tabs persist across app restarts. Standard keyboard shortcuts work out of the box: Ctrl+T, Ctrl+W, Ctrl+Tab, and Ctrl+1-9 for direct tab switching.

Under the hood, FreeTube + Tabs is a fork of FreeTube that stays in sync with upstream through regular merges. Every FreeTube feature is intact: Local API and Invidious support for private video fetching, SponsorBlock for automatic sponsor segment skipping, DeArrow for community-sourced titles and thumbnails, local subscriptions and playlists with no account required, and full import/export compatibility with existing FreeTube data. Your subscriptions, playlists, history, and settings carry over automatically if you are already a FreeTube user.

The tab implementation is a pure Vue.js component inside the existing Electron app. No additional dependencies, no webview hacks, no Electron workarounds. This is the same architectural pattern used by VS Code and Notion for their tab interfaces. The upstream FreeTube project explored three other paths for tabs (the electron-tabs library, a Tauri migration, and native Electron tabs) and reached dead ends on all of them. This fork takes the fourth path.

Available for Windows, macOS, and Linux. Distributed as .exe, .dmg, .deb, AppImage, Flatpak, and NixOS flake. Licensed under the GNU AGPLv3, the same license as upstream FreeTube.