When I try to play certain videos, I just get the thumbnail of the video with a message overlay that says “No compatible source was found for this media”. I also get an error toast that says “SyntaxError: Unexpected end of JSON input”. The whole program seems a bit buggy, tbh.
I can confirm that… but it is not 100% the fault of freetube, but rather a problem with youtube itself. Google tries to lockdown youtube more. That makes it difficult for the devs to keep up.
However, there are 2 methods. Use the local API (direct connection) or the invidous API (indirect connection). If it can not crawl from local, it will use a external server.
I get still errors, but at least i can watch everything with: https://invidious.13ad.de
Maybe that helps 
I tried that link and it didn’t work. In fact, it messed up even more and I got this error:
<html>
<head><title>403 Forbidden</title></head>
<body bgcolor="white">
<center><h1>403 Forbidden</h1></center>
<hr><center>nginx</center>
</body>
</html>
<!-- a padding to disable MSIE and Chrome friendly error page -->
<!-- a padding to disable MSIE and Chrome friendly error page -->
<!-- a padding to disable MSIE and Chrome friendly error page -->
<!-- a padding to disable MSIE and Chrome friendly error page -->
<!-- a padding to disable MSIE and Chrome friendly error page -->
<!-- a padding to disable MSIE and Chrome friendly error page -->May i ask which video?
file:///opt/freetube-bin/resources/app.asar/dist/index.html#/watch/F4b5rBD8X1U
Okay, I’ve noticed that videos that were previously streamed live are the ones that produce this error, but videos that were pre-recorded and then uploaded to youtube work fine.
Ok in freetube it don’t work, because no compatible source has been found… but this works:
https://invidious.13ad.de/watch?v=F4b5rBD8X1U&quality=dash&autoplay=0
… still 403
I was not using freetube earlier, just a browser.
Ok, but I want to watch videos in Freetube, which is why I installed it? Lol.
Suggestion: Bug Report…
Well it doesn’t work, so…
The original issue has already been reported upstream.
YT frontends (Freetube, Invidious, Newpipe, SkyTupe) have a hard time keeping up with YT code updates. It’s a cat and mouse game. It’s been like what? 2 months? that search and channels don’t work anymore with Invidious. FOSS developers have a life outside of github so be patient, or learn coding and join a team. Invidious has 390 issues opened and the project owner retired in August. 134 for FreeTube.
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If i had a nickle for every time I’ve been told that, I would be quite wealthy. I’m not a programmer, and it’s very likely that I never will be because, just like the FOSS developers, I have a life. 
FreeType packages come from the AUR repo. If you want to report bugs you have to swimm upstream.
I (we) can just confirm that yes, there is actually a problem using FreeTube, suggest alternatives and tell you where to report bugs. Done.
So you’re told that often you say? I wonder why…
What about replacing this sentence by something like “Could someone confirm this behavior or help me through this, thank you”?
I feel pretty confident you’ll never hear it again.
But, I’m digressing and I’m afraid I’m going down a rabbit hole. So I’ll leave it here. Have a nice day.