User library

Video channels

You might have noticed it: your account on a PeerTube instance has the notion of "channels". On the contrary to YouTube where an account corresponds to a channel, on PeerTube you can group your videos per theme; those interested in your cat videos will then be able to subscribe to their dedicated channel, whereas those interested in dog videos won't see cats by just subscribing to the channel where you publish your dog videos.

List your channels

You can of course list and delete channels via the dedicated menu in your settings by clicking My Library near your username > Channels.

Create a new channel

To create a new channel, you have to:

1. click My Library near to your username in the left menu
2. click Create video channel button
3. enter informations: 1. Name: your channel's name (e.g.: cats@my-insance.tld) 1. Display Name: can be different from Name 1. Description: what's you channel is about? (supports markdown) 1. Support: where you can link to financing platforms or directly materials to support your channel
4. click Create button

Once your channel created, you can change its avatar by:

1. clicking Update button in front of its name in your channels list
2. clicking icon on the default avatar
3. selecting an image on your computer
4. clicking Update

Your channel is all set to have some videos!

Notify your audience when a video is published

Your friends and your broader audience can see and get notified of new videos without having to check them out regularly. To achieve that, they can "follow" one of your channels (or your whole profile):

• via their PeerTube account
• via their Fediverse account (supposes they have an account on a federated platform like Mastodon or Pleroma)
• via a syndication format (supposes they have an RSS or Atom aggregator)

Change ownership of a video

There is a menu option in My Library > Videos which allows you to transfer the ownership of a video to another user on the same instance.

The user who receives a transfer request does not get a notification, but has to look up the list at My Library > Videos > Ownership changes and confirm the transfer.

That way a group of people could contribute to a common channel, even if a channel can be only managed by one user.

Video history

By default PeerTube is storing a history of the videos you have watched, a setting you can disable anytime in My Library > History on the left menu. Nothing is done with this data except for the following usages, and you can delete the history anytime via the button placed on the right of the history list.

Catching up where you left off watching a video

Once you have begun watching a video, it will get into your history. But more than that, if you leave the video before the end, the history will remember at what time so that you can resume watching it the next time.

The feature is represented by a coloured bar below the video miniature.

Playlist

Much like what you might expect on other video platforms, a playlist on PeerTube is an ordered collection of videos that can be shared or kept private. You can freely add to a playlist your own videos, or videos from others.

You actually already have a private playlist associated with your account: your "Watch later" playlist!

Creating a playlist

Creating new playlists can be done in the My Library section on the left menu > Playlists.

Notice that a playlist can be associated with no channel, or any channel of your choice. However, when making a public playlist, it has to be associated with a channel.

You can choose a thumbnail for the playlist, as well as a title and a description. They will be the first thing seen when users see when doing a search.

Adding videos to playlists

Quick actions appearing on miniatures on hover help you add videos quickly to your playlists.

Adding video to your watch-it later list

1. click
2. click Save to playlist
3. click Watch later checkbox

Adding video to a playlist

1. click
2. click Save to playlist
3. click your playlist name

or, if you want to add it into a new playlist:

1. click
2. click Save to playlist
3. click Create a private playlist
4. add a display name for your playlist
5. click Create button
6. click your playlist checkbox

The video is now in your selected playlist.

Ordering a playlist

Playlists are ordered, so that viewers can watch videos sequentially. It is up to you to order videos in your playlist once you have gathered them. Click the "Edit" button in the list of playlists to access a playlist drag and drop ordering list.

Watching a playlist

Viewing a playlist triggers a special mode of the video player: the videos of the current playlist are listed in a pane on the right of the player, to quickly navigate among them, and see the upcoming videos.

In the right panel, you can:

• (de)activate autoplay by clicking
• loop the playlist video by clicking