Otto Pilot - Floatplane + YouTube

joshgarde · October 6, 2018

Introducing Otto Pilot

Check it out on the Chrome Web Store

-link removed-

What is it?

In a nutshell, Otto Pilot is a web extension that allows anyone with a Floatplane subscription to watch their favorite creator on YouTube with the benefit of higher quality Floatplane video sources. Otto Pilot is the result of months of off/on development work, a simple problem, and a complicated solution. It's basically a Rube Goldberg machine.

Is this supported in any way by Floatplane Media or YouTube?

No, this is a completely unofficial and unassociated browser extension made by a third party. Floatplane Media and YouTube do not endorse nor are associated with it. Floatplane Media and YouTube are trademarks of their respective owners.

How does it work?

For the end user (that's you), it's as simple as logging into Floatplane and then browsing YouTube like you normally do. No configuration, no complicated settings to change, no fiddling with code. Everything is taken care of for you by the plugin. When a Floatplane-enabled video is detected by the plugin, it'll switch out the YouTube video sources for Floatplane sources and notify you with a little Floatplane icon at the bottom right of the player. If you don't want to watch the Floatplane sources, just click the button again and the video sources will be reverted back to YouTube sources.

How do I know you won't steal my credentials?

The extension's permissions are limited to YouTube and Floatplane's domains. I've limited the plugin as much as I can in terms of how much it needs to access in order to do it's job. You can check for yourself too. It's source code is available by unpacking the extension or by checking out the github page @ -link removed-

But how does it really work?

Otto Pilot is the result of hours of work reengineering the wheel on both YouTube and Floatplane's platforms. I could spend a couple of hours talking about the various methods used in this plugin to do it's very simple job, but in a nutshell here's how it works: My plugin loads up, loads your Floatplane subscriptions, and caches all the video titles and links available by the creator into a local search index. When you load a video on YouTube, the creator's id is checked to see if they're a Floatplane creator (done with a simple map) and then the video title is looked up against the search index. If the search index comes back with a result over the confidence threshold, the video source is swapped for a Floatplane source with the YouTube source cached incase you want to revert back. The search index was necessary because some videos on Floatplane's catalog don't have the exact same title as the same video on YouTube so an exact match cannot be used. This solution, while not the prettiest, is the simplest & fastest I could come up with without needing to utilize 3rd party search APIs and potentially violating some ToSs. For a full overview of the implementation, checkout the github page @ -link removed-

Why do only certain videos work, but not others?

Because of differences in video titling between the platforms we have to use a search index to find the Floatplane versions of videos. To not violate any ToS, this search index is kept local to the computer. Due to this limitation, matching a YouTube video to it's Floatplane counterpart can be difficult and sometimes a search comes up inconclusive. At some point, perhaps a better solution will be found.

Why's it so buggy?

It probably has a lot to do with how this extension is inherently designed and because both Floatplane and YouTube are constantly in development so there's bound to be bugs. Please bare with me while we get them ironed out. If you spot a particular bug you want fixed, submit a bug report.

Download: -link removed-

AskTJ · October 6, 2018

Has this been approved by Floatplane themselves?

kirashi · October 6, 2018

46 minutes ago, joshgarde said:

What is it?

In a nutshell, Otto Pilot is a web extension that allows anyone with a Floatplane subscription to watch their favorite creator on YouTube with the benefit of higher quality Floatplane video sources. Otto Pilot is the result of months of off/on development work, a simple problem, and a complicated solution. It's basically a Rube Goldberg machine.

How does it work?

For the end user (that's you), it's as simple as logging into Floatplane and then browsing YouTube like you normally do. No configuration, no complicated settings to change, no fiddling with code. Everything is taken care of for you by the plugin. When a Floatplane-enabled video is detected by the plugin, it'll switch out the YouTube video sources for Floatplane sources and notify you with a little Floatplane icon at the bottom right of the player. If you don't want to watch the Floatplane sources, just click the button again and the video sources will be reverted back to YouTube sources.

Wow. I'm impressed, and I'm not even an Floatplane Subscriber. Nice work!