Alternative frontends that will improve your privacy and maybe even your user experience

In recent weeks we have talked about various alternative frontends with which we can see our privacy improved. The big tech companies, with Google at the helm, spy on us at the very least, and everything we do to hide ourselves a bit is little, despite the redundancy. Frontend is the word used in programming to refer to the part of a code that ends up showing the user interface, and there are many with the intention of freeing us from the clutches of these great and not so great technologies.

You can do a search on the Internet and find a lot of information about it, and that is something that I have done myself to write this article. There is almost everything, and here we are going to do two things: the first is to recommend a GitHub page that is dedicated precisely to collecting all kinds of alternatives to official applications and services; the second is a small list with the best proposals, being possible in all cases to use them directly from the browser.

The website worth visiting is mendel5, and the link is this. There is more than what we need (although surely there is some case that we don't), and we don't just talk about alternative frontends, even if the project bears that name; also we find applications alternatives, among which there are many for Android, others are for Windows, macOS, Linux and even some for iOS/iPadOS/tvOS that do not require a jailbreak, such as Yattee to watch Piped or Invidious videos without having to go through Youtube.

List of the best alternative frontends

The best alternative frontends, in my opinion, are those that provide more than just a different interface. For example, privacy. And the best ones for me are these (if we don't add an explanation it's because we link to a complete article or because the only thing to say is that it's a different and/or more private frontend):

• Google: Whoogle or SearXNG. The first shows only results from Google, and the second is a metasearch engine that can search in any engine that we configure from the options.
• YouTube: Piped, Invidious or ViewTube. (Right now I prefer the first one). There are instances that allow you to create accounts, which helps us to subscribe to channels and all that. ViewTube shows a more aesthetic interface. Whatever you choose, it never hurts to have several options.
• YouTube Music: beatbump o hyper pipe. Both have a very well-crafted interface that looks very similar to a real player like Spotify or Apple Music. They play music from YouTube, with a musical interface, without going through the official service and without advertising. The second supports user accounts and save libraries. Share accounts with Piped.
• Google Translate: Linguistic.
• Twitter: nitter.
• TikTok: ProxiTok. It allows you to carry out any search and shows it in a more private window, although it is not at all prettier.
• Reddit:freeddit.
• Imgur: rimgo.

How these alternative frontends usually work

Without going into too much detail or using technicalities, almost all, if not all, of these alternative services or interfaces work. making use of what is known as "scraping". Basically, what they do is visit the services through software, find separate components and put them together in their own interface, which is what we end up seeing as users.

Let's give an example: if someone knows how, you can create an application so that it enters this same article, finds the title tags, the paragraph tags, the link tags, the lists, the images, and the bold, and then assembles them as the developer would be more interested. That way you would have the article in your application with your design, and for that to be possible you first have to "scratch" the original source.

Therefore, what we are seeing with these alternative frontends is the same as what is in the official services, but without them being able to collect our information because we see it through something like a different window.

Self-hosted or on instance?

There is more and I recommend visiting the previously mentioned page, but there are some that I don't see as very necessary (such as the Vaultwarden frontend for BitWarden that Garuda recommends on his page), and for other services there simply aren't any. In addition, there are extensions that redirect directly to these services so that we do not visit the pages that will give us a digital X-ray. For example, LibRedirect.

You have to understand how these frontends work, or most of those who think about our privacy. It is likely that we will find an official page and then instances, or maybe just the latest. These instances are maintained by an individual or team, and news comes when they implement them. Also one is likely to fall or not work at a certain time, so I think it is important to explain this. More than anything, in case one fails, you have to learn to go to its instance page, if it has one, and look for another.

Each instance also has its philosophy. They may allow you to log in, they may not, some say they collect data, some don't… All this information is available on the project pages, which are usually on GitHub.

And if none convinces us, there is always the possibility of hosting everything in our team. In this case we will be the ones who decide what to implement, how and when, but this is more complicated than looking for an instance that we like. In those that save information, such as our preferences, they are usually stored in a cookie in our browser. And subscriptions to services like YouTube in a database that is removed with just one click.

If you were looking for privacy, here you have it.