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Grayjay: follow video creators on multiple platforms

Posted on January 22, 2024January 22, 2024 by Martin Brinkmann

Grayjay is a new application for Google Android devices to follow video creators on multiple platforms.

Depending on how active you are when it comes to streaming media, you may know that many video creators publish content to different platforms. A basic example is a Twitch streamer who also publishes some footage on YouTube.

Keeping up with just a single creator may require following them on different platforms. Follow more and add more platforms and it can get complicated quickly.

Grayjay set out to fix this. It supports a good number of platforms already. Besides YouTube and Twitch, Grayjay supports PeerTube, Odysee, Kick, Patreon, Rumble, Nebula and SoundCloud. Support for Subscribestar is under development already and there is a good chance that more platforms are added in the future.

The app does not require an account. Since it supports the downloading of videos, it is not available on Google Play. You may download it for Android from the developer website.

One effect of using Grayjay is that you can watch videos without ads. While you can block ads on YouTube and other platforms, it is another benefit of using the app.

Using Grayjay

YouTube is the only source by default. You may change that with a click on Sources and the selection of one or multiple sources. All of these are shown in the main interface. The developer notes that adding more sources may impact loading times, as videos from different platforms need to be loaded.

Tap on any video to play it right then and there in Grayjay. This is useful already, especially since Grayjay supports a queue, custom playlists and watch later functionality. The option to download any video is also provided. The downloads menu lists options to change the quality of the video before downloading it.

The main feature of Grayjay is its follow option. You may subscribe (follow) on any video page or by selecting the channel name. Options to enable notifications and follow only streams or videos are provided.

You need to subscribe to sources individually. There is no option at the moment to select a creator and follow them on all platforms that they publish or stream on.

Still, this is one time process to follow creators on multiple platforms. You may create groups for subscriptions to improve organization. Options include creating groups for individual creators or themed groups based on interests.

The app supports imports and exports of data. This allows you to share subscriptions across multiple devices or migrate subscriptions to new devices.

Verdict

Grayjay appears to be free to use at the moment. The app is open source and you may access the source on Gitlab. There is a “buy” link under “more” in the app that is asking for a payment of €9.99 plus tax. Several developers work fulltime on the app according to the page. The developers hope that enough users find their app useful to pay for it and make it sustainable.

Grayjay works well already. It would benefit from additional features, including the ability to follow a creator on all platforms with just a tap. While that may be difficult to automate, it could maintain a database of developer accounts on various platforms and use crowdsourcing to maintain it.

All in all, it is an interesting app that shows a lot of promise.

O&O AppBuster: uninstall locked Windows apps

Posted on November 12, 2023November 12, 2023 by Martin Brinkmann

O&O AppBuster is a free application by O&O Software GMBH. The program enables Windows 10 and 11 users to uninstall apps that Microsoft does not want users to remove from the system.

While some apps are critical components of Windows, the same can’t be said for all locked apps. Apps like Photos, Phone Link, Game Bar or Tips can’t be uninstalled from the Settings app.

PowerShell has long been the primary option to remove locked apps on Windows 10 and 11. It is a great option for system administrators and experienced users. You may check out my guide on uninstall the Photos app on Windows 11 as an example.

Regular Windows users may not feel comfortable enough running commands from PowerShell.

O&O AppBuster comes to the rescue. It has an easy-to-use interface to remove locked apps. Other features include mass removal of apps, including third-party apps, and more.

Tip: check out our review of O&O ShutUp10++ as well. This free program may improve your privacy.

O&O AppBuster: an overview

You can run the application right after the download. An installation is not required. The application has a clean interface that lists all installed apps and programs immediately.

The program lists all applications with their name and publisher, installation date, status, storage and also the number of users it is available for. A click on a column header at the top allows users to sort the list accordingly.

This is a handy option to sort by installation date or storage.

The Desktop and Windows tabs at the top lead to filtered listings:

Desktop lists all user-installed programs.
Windows lists all native apps and Store-installed apps.

A search allows users to find specific apps next to these. The search matches the name and publisher, which is an excellent option to quickly find multiple apps.

Using the program to remove Windows apps

One of the main applications of O&O AppBuster is the removal of native Windows apps. While Microsoft is making progress in this regard, by unlocking more apps for removal, it continues to lock some.

It is a welcome change of course, but slow-paced and not complete. O&O AppBuster supports other features that make it a good choice. First, by supporting mass uninstalls. Second, through an optional safety feature that relies on System Restore.

Here are the required steps to remove native Windows apps:

Select Actions > Create a System Restore point to create a restore option.
Pick “yes” when asked whether you want to create a system restore point.
Switch to the Windows tab in the program interface.
Check any of the apps that you want to remove.
Activate the “Remove” button once done.
O&O AppBuster displays a prompt immediately afterwards with three options:
- Current user — removes the app(s) only for the logged in user
- All users — removes the app(s) for all users that exist consequently.
- Computer — removes the apps from the entire machine.
Select yes after you have made the selection.
At this instant, O&O may display a prompt to create a system restore point. This happens only if you have not created one previously.
Select Close to complete the removal.

Other features of O&O AppBuster

The program supports a number of other features furthermore. While the main focus is on the removal of Windows apps, it may also be used for other purposes.

You can use it to uninstall Win32 programs. This works a bit differently as the default uninstaller is spawned each time.

You need to be careful here, as some installers may prompt for a reboot.

Mass removal of apps and programs is a useful feature of the program. Just select all of them and hit the remove action afterwards.

Closing Words

O&O AppBuster is a useful program for Windows. It offers an elegant option to remove system apps from Windows as well as regular desktop programs.

Integration of System Restore ensures that you can go back to a previous state. Mass uninstalls is another useful feature, as it speeds up the process significantly.

Now You: do you keep or remove native Windows apps on your devices?

Spacedrive: cross-platform file manager with a twist

Posted on October 14, 2023October 15, 2023 by Martin Brinkmann

Spacedrive is an open source cross-platform file explorer that is powered by a virtual distributed filesystem written in Rust.

Note: the software is alpha at this point. It may contain bugs and issues, and its main purpose is testing at this stage. I experienced some hangs and issues during the test.

All modern operating systems come with file managers. Windows has its File Explorer, macOS Finder and Linux lots of them.

These file managers provide basic functionality. While that is usually sufficient to find, run, move or delete files, they are also lacking in many areas.

Windows’ File Explorer, for example, only lists data from connected drives. Anything that is not connected at the time is not displayed. Other issues may include a lack of organization, a messy interface, search that works so-so only or a focus on folders.

Spacedrive is a different kind of file manager

Spacedrive uses virtualization to display files from any location that you have added in the past. This can be folders and files from different local, removable or network locations, and even files from different systems.

This location-based approach changes a core characteristic of traditional file managers.

When you launch Spacedrive for the first time, you are greeted with emptiness. The file manager displays files only from locations that you add to its virtual filesystem. The first task, therefore, is to press the Add Location button to add a location to it.

The app supports local drives and partitions, folders, network drives as well as removable drives. Spacedrive indexes the content so that it remains visible in the app even after the storage location is disconnected.

The developers describe Spacedrive in the following way:

Organize files across many devices in one place. From cloud services to offline hard drives, Spacedrive combines the storage capacity and processing power of your devices into one personal distributed cloud, that is both secure and intuitive to use.

The Virtual Distributed Filesystem

At its core, Spacedrive’s virtual distributed filesystem (VDFS) is keeping a record of all storage locations that users added to the application. Record is another word for index. This index is not restricted to a single device or machine either, which is one of the main advantages of the technology.

The developers point to a UC Berkeley research paper by Haoyuan Li, which offers information on the underlying VDFS concept. The focus of the paper was on cloud computing, but the developers of Spacedrive say that the concepts apply to consumer software as well.

The core idea is not new. Applications such as DiskCat for Windows index drives or disks and make the data available even while offline. These solutions are not as advanced as this one and often not open source, but the main idea is similar.

What you can do with Spacedrive right now

The current version lets you add local and network locations to the virtual filesystem. Support for adding devices is coming in the future.

Select the add location option and pick a drive letter or folder on a connected drive. Spacedrive indexes the location so that it remains accessible, even if disconnected.

The app lists all indexed files in its interface. It supports three display modes currently: grid, list and media view. The first two modes list all files, the last only media files. Options to change the size of icons and sorting are also available already.

You may then browse individual locations or all data. A search is provided to find files across all locations quickly. Double-click on a file to launch it using the default file viewer or press the Space-key to display it in the program’s own quick viewer.

Options to edit files, e.g., rename or delete files, are also provided. You may add tags to files and create new tag categories. These may then be accessed in the sidebar directly.

A check of the preferences lists options to switch between light and dark mode, change display formats and even keybindings. There is a lot to explore already.

The future

The developers of Spacedrive have big plans for the app. The roadmap lists a key manager, to use encryption, an AirDrop-like feature and cloud integration as the next features in versions 0.2 and 0.3 of the file manager.

That is not all though. The roadmap reveals plans to add extensions supported, a media encoder, encrypted vaults, a timeline feature and much more.

Verdict

Spacedrive may not be ready for use in production environments, it is alpha software after all. It is one of those projects that you want to keep an eye on, as it is ambitious and could turn out to become an interesting app for many computer users.

Photographers or media archivers, for example, may use it to keep an always up-to-date index of all their media files, regardless of location.