1. Go through ALL the settings in the settings app and turn off the BS you don’t want. You shouldn’t need a debloat script when there’s official toggles. People trust those scripts too much when it’s common that they break stuff. You got Win11 Pro, so you have local group policy editor. Even less reason to rely on a debloat script.
2. Same as 1, go through the privacy settings and toggle all personalizations off. Also try to set Windows up without a microsoft account. This can be done after the initial setup
3. Uninstall photos app (full of AI garbage), paint, notepad, and all those preloaded games. I’m not sure if edge in removable, but it’s worth a try
4. Avoid any app with AI garbage

google has been blocking any IP that uses lots of youtube bandwidth, and that means any public instance needs to do IP rotation.

I also heard they began blocking all IPs belonging to some cloud providers.

I run my own invidious instance from my home servr. Only I use it, so it’ll never be blocked, but I don’t have the same anonymity as if using a public instance…

It’s mostly for the benefits of using youtube ad-free without a google account, while having local bookmarks, watch-later, and subscription feed. If that’s your main goal Invidious is really easy to set-up.

I think a few more details are needed to get you a clear alternative:

• Which devices you want to cast from? what content you want to cast (DRM content like netflix, and/or your own media)? what kind of TV you have?

In my case after degoogling, I use mainly apple devices besides my windows pc. 2 of my TVs have AirPlay built in, so there’s no issue casting anything. If your TV is rather recent it’s likely to have it too.

The third TV is tricky, it’s an older 4k LG. I have a linux box connected to it and installed UxPlay in it. It only works with AirPlay “mirroring” so you kinda need an app that can treat the TV as a second monitor. Otherwise the mirroring won’t cover the entire TV screen. I’m still assuming apple devices here, but there’s OutPlayer and nPlayer in the appstore that can do this. It does support sound-only casting, so if it’s music you want it should be able to direct cast from your apps.

The second caveat for UxPlay is that it only works with DRM-free content (youtube, self hosted media). For DRM content I haven’t found a nice alternative for the old TV , so I use its built in apps (netflix, amazon prime). Kodi exists, but the plug-ins support for streaming sites isn’t good, often getting stuck to low-res content.

I’m guessing buying an apple tv/fire stick/roku is the only alternative for DRM content casting. I also explored the idea of “degoogling” my unused chromecast 3rd gen, but absolutely nothing exists for this and it just collects dust in a drawer.

Same, I’d take it any day over VLC because of native dark mode. VLC’s themes are janky and weird-looking.

Today most Invidious instances are experiencing very harsh ip address rate limiting, it is becoming very very hard to watch yt videos through

AFAIK this is not what’s happening this time. YouTube slowly rolled out a change over the past 3 days that requires some sort of app verification for the android yt app. This is affecting Invidious since it emulates the yt android client to fetch video streams. This affects invidious instances hosted privately as well.

The maintainers are aware of this, and are working on ways to solve it. Tools like yt-dlp/newpipe still work because they have working implementations to fetch data by emulating web/iOS/etc clients.

The fuck is the point then? you get to pay to have the privilege of paying more for a mobile game?

All the netflix games I see are just shitty mobile games, nothing of value will be lost.

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All I need from youtube are my handful of subscriptions and my watch later, so I have moved on to invidious. I’d recommend it

Now that we are recommending alternatives, iPhone/iPad/Mac have Yattee. It uses Piped/Invidious as backend and is in the appstore

RIP cheems

Didnt look at it like that tbh, and it makes sense now that I think about it.

Cat.

Those who are still on the ‘apple bad’ train like to forget they are running an OS built by an ads company.

Every phone manufacturer has some bad shit, I choose to stick with apple cuz I already have a big library of paid stuff.

Nah, when I think whether it was worth it overwriting 10+ years worth of content in Reddit I just look over and see them come up with yet another shit move. It instantly validates getting off that sinking ship.

After fucking up API access they decided to delete all PMs older than 2023, get rid of awards/gold, and add more dark patterns to force people to their garbage apps.

Seems now that they’re gonna add “tipping” as if it was a disgusting instagram clone with ‘content creators’

They’re quickly tearing down everything that made Reddit unique at all. They don’t want a discussion board, they want a tiktok clone or whatever.

Flashback of fallout 76 support ticket shitshow lmao