Individuous

A local, single-user Invidious fork with a compact video wall, search groups, collections, creator feeds, hidden videos and hover playback.

This is the consolidated release source. Its default address is http://localhost:3012/star.html. Installed and development profiles use this same source with separate private configuration and data volumes.

Screenshots

A compact wall for browsing videos from your creators:

Creator pages keep content tabs, sorting and feed-order controls above the videos:

The watch page keeps the main player beside a wall of related videos:

Hover the page body and press S to shuffle the loaded videos on creator pages or the related videos on watch pages. The main player stays in place.

Start a fresh installation

Install Docker Desktop with Linux containers. On Windows, run Start.cmd. It generates fresh random configuration with Setup.ps1, then builds and starts the project. The first source build compiles Invidious and OpenSSL and can take several minutes. Subsequent interface builds reuse those layers.

From PowerShell:

./Setup.ps1
docker compose up -d --build

One local account is created automatically in the new database. No YouTube login is needed for local collections, search groups or creator follows. New accounts start without personal follows, search terms, history or imported sessions.

Empty Playlists, Search Groups, History, Hidden videos, Following, Search terms, personal YouTube feed and zero-result searches show contextual first steps with distinct transparent character poses and amber framed hotkeys. The creator-group tutorial appears only on the empty Following manager; its video feed shows loading/empty status and keeps the tutorial on the manager page. Menu has no character; its inline shortcuts use the same amber caps and explain Ctrl-click on the main video area opens YouTube. Guidance disappears when content appears. Artwork and prompts are documented in TUTORIAL_ARTWORK.txt and TUTORIAL_ARTWORK_ADDITIONAL.txt.

The default Compose project is individuous. For an independent development copy, set COMPOSE_PROJECT_NAME=individuous-preview and INDIVIDUOUS_PORT=3013 in its .env; its images, containers and volumes stay separate. Keep a consistent hostname and port for browser storage. Existing installations can specify their volume names with the INDIVIDUOUS_*_VOLUME overrides documented in RELEASE_NOTES.md.

docker compose logs --tail=80
docker compose stop
docker compose start

Use up -d --build again after source changes. Stop preserves data. Removing Compose volumes with down -v deletes the preview's data.

Protected combined views

Favorites offers All Lists and Search offers All Groups. Favorites combines saved videos from every playlist, showing each video once. Search combines all groups' terms, counting shared terms once. Both options are computed views and cannot be renamed or deleted. Choose a named playlist to save, move, remove or shuffle its videos; choose a named search group to add or edit terms. The combined contents are rebuilt from their source playlists or search groups and are never saved as duplicate collections.

Play and Following offer All Creators, which includes everyone you follow, even creators assigned to no custom group. The previous All following ID is kept; its display name migrates without changing follows or group membership.

Following groups

The play button sits at the top right beside Following. Its group-name rectangle chooses whose videos appear. All Creators always contains everyone you follow; custom groups contain the creators you choose, and creators can belong to several. The playlist selected on the left still controls where you save videos.

• A over the group name or in its open list: create a following group.
• R on a custom group in the list: rename; Enter saves, Esc cancels.
• X twice on a custom group in the list: delete the group, preserving follows.
• I over the group name: choose its creators with checkboxes and Save.
• G over a creator on Following (or their Groups button): edit all their memberships.
• X twice over a creator in a named group: remove that membership only. In All Creators, the existing two-press unfollow behavior remains.

Arrow keys and Enter select groups; Escape closes/cancels. In membership dialogs, Tab moves and Space toggles a checkbox. I over the person icon still edits the whole account follow list. All Creators cannot be renamed or deleted.

Groups are metadata in pt-following-groups-v1, synced to the isolated app-data service alongside playlists. They do not create YouTube subscriptions. Feed URLs include the group ID; restored walls also check group membership before reusing cached videos. Missing groups and unreadable group data produce an error without resetting the stored data. Older installations need no follow migration.

Downloads and transcripts

On a video tile or the main player:

• Click the red strip: copy the YouTube video URL and open YTUltra. Paste into its input. If clipboard access is blocked, Individuous shows the selectable URL.
• Ctrl-click the red strip (Command-click on Mac): open YouTube Transcript with that video's ID.

Menu → Downloads & transcripts lets you change these destinations. URL templates may contain {id} for the video ID or {url} for the encoded full YouTube URL. A plain downloader URL uses the clipboard handoff. YTUltra did not prefill its input in the tested ?url= navigation; the app does not promise automatic filling.

These actions open external sites. Individuous does not download media, run FFmpeg, extract transcripts or send your local YouTube session to those tools. Playback and hover previews still stream media through Invidious and its companion. External provider availability, sign-in requirements and results can change.

Optional YouTube connection

Menu → YouTube connection can import your own YouTube session for the personal home feed. A fresh preview has no saved connection. Connecting is optional and separate from the automatically created local account. Treat the cookie as a credential; enter it only into your own local app. It is saved in the private individuous_youtubeaccount volume, excluded from app-data exports. See the service notes.

Data and local hosting

Menu includes Save hash / Load hash and Export info / Import info / Clear everything. Save hash downloads a separate private credential file; ordinary info exports exclude that login. Loading a saved hash works offline, then the Menu checks authentication. A saved file cannot extend an expired session.

Info exports include collections, groups, follows, watch history, account preferences, native playlists, volume/crop settings and browser playback positions. Import replaces app information after confirmation and retains the current hash. Clear everything requires typing CLEAR EVERYTHING, removes app information, saved hash and automatic app backups, and returns to empty defaults. Downloaded media files remain. The automatic local sign-in account remains available.

Imports and resets reject stale writes, including native account actions. Collection conflicts pause saving and let you download your unsaved copy and choose the saved or local version. Menu → Recover saved data offers automatic copies if the store is damaged. Interrupted import/reset operations resume from durable intent before further reads or writes are accepted.

The default volumes are individuous_postgresdata (account, follows and history), individuous_appdata (collections and search groups), individuous_companioncache and individuous_youtubeaccount. Back them up while the preview is stopped. Never publish .env or volume contents. The app-data service also keeps daily and first-sync backups.

This is a local single-user app with automatic sign-in. Its port is bound to 127.0.0.1; do not expose it publicly. To choose another local port, change INDIVIDUOUS_PORT in .env before starting. Do not use the installed app's port.

Source and development

The complete upstream source and Git history are retained at Invidious revision 48c6110a83fc788b4199daf737279b71950cc0db (v2.20260804.1), the revision identified in the installed image's labels. The old installation's UPSTREAM.txt named a different revision; it was not used as the source baseline.

For Git clones, first run git submodule update --init mocks to fetch pinned upstream test fixtures. Source archives include those fixtures.

Dockerfile compiles the local source using the upstream build, then integrates the custom assets in ui/ in their required order. app-data.js hydrates saved data before interface scripts read it. docker/Dockerfile retains the upstream build for reference. The companion image is pinned to its inspected digest.

SOURCE_MANIFEST.json records the original UI input hashes before preview changes. The upstream Git remote points to iv-org/invidious. The origin publishing remote is dmitryalexander/individuous.

node --test tests/*.test.cjs
docker build -t individuous-data-test appdata
docker run --rm --network none -v "${PWD}:/repo:ro" -w /repo individuous-data-test python -m unittest discover -s tests -p "test_*.py"
powershell -NoProfile -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File tests/setup.test.ps1
docker compose run --rm --no-deps youtube-account npm test

See release verification for current checks. Preview verification preserves the earlier baseline. The historical upstream README is retained separately.

Credits

Based on Invidious, under the GNU AGPL v3 license. The optional account service uses YouTube.js 18.1.0 (MIT); dependencies and integrity hashes are locked in its package lockfile. The custom interface includes adaptations from Pinless (AGPL v3). Preserve the upstream license and notices when redistributing. Individuous is not affiliated with YouTube or the external tool providers.

Automatic daily copies keep the latest 14 days. First-sync copies keep at most 20 files, 128 MiB total, and 30 days of history (always retaining the newest copy). These are recovery aids; use Export info and Save hash for your own backups.