One of the most common uses of the Raspberry Pi is to surf the internet, so you will need a web browser that works under the ARM architecture, which is the one used by the microcomputer. You can have one by default, like Chromium, or use one of the compatible ones for it. These are Chromium, Firefox, Kweb, Vivaldi, Puffin, Konqueror, GNOME web, Dillo, Midori, NetSurf, Pale Moon, and Luakit, among others.
The first comes by default and offers good performance, although not so much on heavy webs and it may not be smooth enough in some HD and Full HD videos. The best options are therefore in this order, Chromium and Firefox, since others may provide lower performance, and in the case of Konqueror not be compatible, although you can try the one that interests you if you have another installed to see how it goes. With Kweb, for example, you can play videos with OMXplayer.
How to do it step by step
To be able to enjoy your content, you just have to open your browser and start using YouTube. We are going to tell you step by step what you should do to make the most of the audiovisual experience by accessing its contents with a web browser.
In order to start browsing the contents of your Raspberry Pi, the first thing you need is a good operating system. In this case, we can start with Raspbian. You can update it, in addition to updating or installing the web browser. To be able to handle it, you need to have a keyboard, mouse and a monitor or television, depending on where you want to view the content. The first step is to install the peripherals to later access the content that interests you from wherever you want.
You can access Chromium, the pre-installed browser, and write the YouTube.com address to choose the videos you want to watch, or you have the option of installing another compatible browser. You can also help yourself as players, as we will tell you later. You could already see your contents from there easily.
But this is something that sometimes does not work as we would like. Although YouTube videos do not have DRM (digital rights management) issues like other services, they can sometimes be slow and drop frames when played in full screen at any resolution. If you run into these problems, you can fix them with a Chromium specialized version which comes from the Chrome OS source code.
You just have to enter these commands to make it work better or correctly:
- curl -fsSL https://pi.vpetkov.net -o ventz-media-pi
- sh ventz-media-pi
A text will appear that says “Your Pi is now ready for all media.” You will have to restart, open Chromium Media Edition from the internet menu and you will be able to enjoy YouTube videos much more.
You can also install epiphany-browser in the standard repositories and tell YouTube to use the HTML5 player. To do this, type $ sudo apt-get install epiphany-browser Accept and choose the corresponding button and then you can browse the selected videos, although there are some that may not be compatible with HTML5.
If you have Firefox in your operating system it may be another solution. If not, you can install it on Raspbian with this command sudo apt-get install Firefox. You can also get it from the official Mozilla repositories.
Access from Kodi
If your browser gives problems, you see slow service or this does not convince you, or you simply find it more comfortable to use a media player, you can use Kodi to turn your Raspberry Pi into a multimedia center in which you will enjoy the best movies, series and, of course, YouTube videos. You can install it from the official repositories with the command sudo apt install kodi.
There are several ways in which you can access Kodi from your microcomputer, so we are going to discuss the easiest to use and optimized for this purpose. With LibreElec and OSMC you can easily access this service and enjoy your musical content whenever you need it. It is also found in OpenELEC and XBian.
With LibreElec
LibreELEC is a version of Linux designed to allow you to run Kodi, a multimedia player that turns your operating system into a multimedia center, allowing you to view a large amount of content, including YouTube videos.
It has a modular system of addons and plugins and it allows you to play any audio, video or image file, with which you can access not only the contents of the YouTube video service but also many others and televisions around the world. You also have a large number of applications that you can add to it.
You can download LibreELEC from official Web or in the Downloads section of the Raspberry Pi website. Remember to download the latest stable version. After downloading it, you will have to unzip it and save it to your microSD. To burn the card with the distribution image you will use Win32DiskImager in Windows or Apple Pi Baker in mac OS X. It is saved and can be used on the Raspberry.
You just have to remove the card on which you have created LibreElec, as well as the television, monitor or keyboard that you are going to use to manage Kodi and start the program, which you will configure to your liking and with which you will already have Kodi. You can also do it from NOOBS. Then you will have to go to Add-ons, install from repository and if you look for the video you will find YouTube. The installation will take a few minutes.
With OSMC
For its part, OSMC (Open Source Media Player) is a free, simple, independent and open source operating system that allows you to play any multimedia format, so you can watch YouTube videos from its modern, easily customizable interface. If you are interested in managing multimedia content, this will be one of your preferred operating systems.
What you have to do in this case is download correct image from the OSCM website, save it to a micro SD card and insert the card into your Raspberry Pi and reboot it. Records the OSMC image to a blank micro SD card. Insert the micro SD card into the Raspberry Pi (plus keyboard, mouse and monitor or TV) and restart it. It will start the installation with a few very simple steps and finally it will ask you what interface you want for Kodi. In the add-ons manager you can add YouTube easily and in a few minutes. In the Kodi OSMC installation you can customize your installation with My OSMC, so it may be interesting for you to try it if you are interested.
Other options
The pre-installed Chromium browser is one of the best options for watching YouTube videos and it usually works well, in fact, it is the first option we recommend. However, if you experience heating issues or find that it does not perform as expected in full-screen or full-screen video playback. good quality, You should know that this is usually due to the fact that the browser is not hardware accelerated by the GPU, so this creates the needs in many cases of speed up hardware to view multimedia contents with the use of external players. We are going to discuss some alternative options to those that we have discussed previously:
- With YouTube-DL. With this tool you will be able to obtain the link of a video from your browser without downloading it. You have to install it with the following commands to start using it. «$ Sudo -s # curl -L https://yt-dl.org/downloads/latest/youtube-dl -o / usr / local / bin / youtube-dl # chmod a + rx / usr / # local / bin / youtube-dl and exit.
- With OMXPlayer. This application is installed on Raspbian by default. It is a multimedia player that runs from a terminal and can be controlled with an ssg connection. It allows to play the video in real time without problems, since it is accelerated by hardware. You just have to look for it, as it should be installed by default. If not, the commands are: $ sudo -s # apt update # apt install omxplayer # exit.
- With QMMP. QMMP is a specialized multimedia player compatible with the main audio formats and with an equalizer that allows you to adjust the type of reproduction you want, as well as visual effects that you can see while listening to music. You can install it with the command sudo apt install qmmp. On the other hand, if you are interested, QMMP YouTube plugin is a QMMP (Qt-based media player) plugin that has been designed to search and play music directly from YouTube. This requires PythonQt, YouTube-dl, and QJson. When you have installed it, you will activate the plugin for YouTube in the main menu, settings and plugins. You must activate YouTube and YouTubeUI.
- Directly from mobile with Raspicast. You can also send the content from your mobile to Raspbian with an app called Raspicast. You configure it with your network data and share the video from the player for Raspicast (Cast). In Raspbian you would get to have the OMXplayer player. Remember to use the same Wifi network. You look for the video in the app, click on it, give it to share and select the icon that says Cast and that’s it.