Red - YouTube client for Linux

Red - YouTube client for Linux is a native application for accessing YouTube, YouTube TV, and YouTube Music from a Linux desktop. It presents these services in a lightweight window rather than requiring separate browser tabs. The software is intended for Linux users who want one client for video viewing, music playback, and related downloads.

Desktop mode displays the full YouTube website and supports light, dark, and system themes, along with a floating mini-player that stays above other windows. TV mode provides YouTube Leanback in full-screen and supports keyboard, mouse, and game-controller input for media centers, living-room computers, TVs, and handhelds. Music mode provides YouTube Music in the same window, with media-key and system-tray controls plus desktop media controls showing album artwork and track information. Ctrl+T switches to TV mode while carrying over the current video, and Ctrl+M switches to Music mode.

The client includes ad blocking that removes video ads, banners, and sponsored feed items before pages render, while leaving playback traffic untouched, as well as tracker blocking. SponsorBlock can skip supported sponsors, intros, reminders, and other segments, while Return YouTube Dislike restores dislike counts where available and an option can hide YouTube Shorts. Its downloader supports videos, playlists, and channels in MP4, MKV, or WebM up to 4K, and can extract audio as MP3, M4A, Opus, FLAC, or WAV. Downloads can include subtitles, thumbnails, metadata, and chapters, optionally remove sponsor segments, detect playlists from links, and use a queue with pause, resume, and retry controls. YouTube sign-in can be reused for age-restricted downloads, and the download engine configures itself on first use and updates itself.

In the MirrorNest catalog, the product belongs to the Linux and Multimedia categories and is offered under a commercial license. MirrorNest links directly to the official release instead of mirroring the software itself. This distribution arrangement lets the catalog describe and direct users to the release while the software remains available from its official source.