Last two weeks every time I use Piped I am getting error "Sign in to confirm you are not a bot". It happens on every instance and videos work very rarely. It seems like Google enforces you to log in if you try watch lot of videos from one IP. I hope this will not be end of Piped and there will be solution for this problem.
I've noticed Invidious instances having trouble recently as well. I'm sure they're not dead though, just need to get the next mouse for the endless cat and mouse game.
Same thing I've noticed with invidious instances lately. My clipious on Android is broken more often than not. Freetube still seems solid although I think they each use different apis.
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.
If you're looking for an ad-free client that still works right now; In the 6 years I've been using YouTube (re)vanced on android, I've only had it fail to play videos for 1 single day around 6 months ago. That was fixed within 24hrs.
Not quite the same as a full custom instance/frontend like piped; but it'll do the job while you wait for updates.
Sometimes you can find an instance that works but you have to go through a lot of them and it may only work for a few minutes or even less. Invidious doesn't work at all for me. I hope they find a workaround because I already started committing a very serious crime against my freedom by visiting youtube.com
Now I've tried almost all of them in the Piped instances list (Several domain name for sale and server not found errors) and only the smnz.de one works for me. :( I am wondering whether a freshly installed self-hosted private Piped video instance will work fine.
It happens once in a while. I would continue moving instances or using over services.
Google is actively attacking so it takes time to come up with a defense. In the end Google is just making us stronger. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger after all.
I dont know if can help but if you search the direct server to a specific instance maybe can jump the problem.
For example: lunar.icu instance can work if you search piped.lunar.icu or kavin.rocks instance by piped.kavin.rocks.
Sometimes if the instance work can be useful