I’m building OpenWatch, an open-source self-hosted video platform as an alternative to YouTube. It’s designed for content creators who want to back up their content on their own infrastructure (in case of strikes) or for anyone who wants a personal video hosting solution.

The project is in early stages, but I’ve built out some core features:

  • Home feed
  • Video player with adaptive streaming
  • Playlists
  • Interactions (likes, comments, subscriptions)
  • Creator Studio (dashboard, content management, channel customization)

Tech stack:

  • Next.js 16
  • Tailwind CSS v4
  • Drizzle ORM (PostgreSQL)
  • FFmpeg
  • HLS.js
  • Zustand
  • Docker

GitHub: https://github.com/openwatch-app/openwatch

Feedback would be helpful, especially around self-hosting considerations and features you’d find useful.

  • boonhet@sopuli.xyz
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    4 hours ago

    Yea someone argued that “it’s not impossible to replace YouTube, [x] also stores massive amounts of videos” where I don’t remember what x was, but I’m fairly sure their massive amounts of videos is less than what gets uploaded to YouTube in a day, maybe an hour.